Brown v. Wagner eFG%; Smith v. Brooks +/-
I apologize if this was discussed at length in one of the b-ball threads last night, but I came away from last night's game with two nagging questions. Both seem like topics that have been given little postgame attention from the local pundits.
1.) Why not draw up a late-game shot for Chaundee Brown?
Chaundee Brown has been Michigan's most efficient outside scorer this postseason. To me, it seems like a fairly big oversight by Howard to have favored late game offense from Wagner over Brown. Their eFG% splits are listed below. Given the large disparity between the two players, it feels like a disservice not to have given Brown at least one late game look. These are based on my calculations, so please let me know if I've made an error.
- Season
- Brown: 83.6%
- Wagner: 68.4%
- March
- Brown: 91.5%
- Wagner: 56.7%
- NCAA Tournament
- Brown: 116.7%
- Wagner: 45.7%
- UCLA
- Brown: 120%
- Wagner: 10%
2.) Why put Smith back in at the point?
Like the LSU game, Michigan clawed back into this game by sidelining Smith and putting Brooks at the 1. Smith had the worst +/- of any player on the court last night, registering a -10. Conversely, Brooks was -3. Again, this is similar to the LSU game when Smith was -11 and Brooks was +5. IMO, this is more hot takey than the above post, but it seemed odd to revert back to the less efficient lineup for the late game stretch.
This is not a post to suggest that Wagner is not an elite player or that Cronin out-coached Juwan. Michigan held UCLA to ~0.9 PPP and did enough to put itself in position to win, time and time again. That said, it seems odd that when Michigan most needed a bucket they went with two players who, statistically speaking, were not their best available options, be it this game, this tournament, or this month.
March 31st, 2021 at 11:59 AM ^
It doesn’t matter anymore. Analyzing it only makes the sting worse.
You clicked on the link and took the time to reply even though you don't want to talk about it.
Correction: He doesn't want us to talk about it - because he cares about us and wants to save us from the pain. This is a selfless, caring act. I appreciate you looking out for us, friend.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:01 PM ^
Yeah, it was obvious. And this is where Juwan being a player and a players' coach bites him. He did it as a reward to how Wagner and Smith had played over the course of the season, not out of a sober look at how they'd done that game or the last few weeks.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:25 PM ^
I'm not sure this is true. I can't imagine Howard rewarding season accomplishments with the game on the line.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^
There is no other explanation for how much he stuck with Smith in this game.
Come on, of course there is. We're not exactly loaded with backcourt depth and Eli Brooks isn't really a guy who can break down a defense.
It's pretty normal to play your starting point guard starter's minutes - especially when you don't really have a backup.
Would you really want to put all that on Eli, when 1) he's more naturally a shooting guard and 2) is at a quickness disadvantage against Campbell?
If Juwan wanted the feel good story why not let his kid take the final shot--son of Fab 5er leads Michigan back to the Final Four and Coach and Jalen are vindicated for the one they missed. Now that is a great story, so I do fault the coaches but for picking the wrong player to try to give a special, memorable moment for the rest of his life. He won't have his kids on the team forever...Homer Drew did it and he is an HoFer
March 31st, 2021 at 12:01 PM ^
The play with .5 seconds, it didn't matter who they drew it up for. The play with roughly 10 seconds left, I agree I don't understand why it was drawn up for Franz. He was so open it seemed like UCLA was daring him to shoot which is the right move.
Also agree on the Brooks/Smith. I thought the best lineup was Brooks/Brown/Franz/Johns/Dickinson.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:18 PM ^
Franz can create with the ball in his hands. He’s not only a good scorer but also an excellent passer, and unlike Smith/Brooks, he wasn’t bothered by UCLA’s length on defense. It makes sense to run that set through him. He maybe didn’t need to take that shot but it was wide open so I can’t really fault him. At any rate, we did manage the clock a lot better this time than the last time we were in this situation (against OSU) and had time to recover after that miss.
What’s really maddening is that we took four shots in the last 15 seconds of the game, all pretty good looks, and missed them all.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
The play was initiated by Franz because Michigan really only has two creators: Smith and Franz. Franz had just closed the gap to two with a drive and FTs so they felt like they had something with him. They drew up the play at the end of the OSU game for Smith and it didn't go great sooo....lot of Wednesday morning QB'ing here.
The problem with "drawing up a play" for Brown is that he's not really a creator. You can't just give him the ball and ask him to do something with it. He's reliant on others drawing the defense and then kicking to him, which was certainly part of the play yesterday but UCLA sagged on Franz, daring him to shoot while denying Brown the ball. It's not like the defense doesn't have a say.
And the defense gave Franz a wide open three. Hard to complain about that but he's not very good at hitting it off the dribble it seems.
I think the real plan was to get Hunter's hands on the ball, either on the pick or roll or on the rebound.
They ran a pick a roll for Hunter, but Franz's defender tries go under the screen when Hunter rolled to the basket, leaving Franz wide open for the three.
So okay fine, plan B, take the shot from the top of the key and leave Hunter facing the basket in good position to put back the miss. Hunter is actually in really good position to grab a rebound if it hits the rim or the backboard.
Unfortunately Franz completely airballs it.
I think putting up wide open shot where your 7 footers is in great position to put back the miss is a great play call with 10-12 seconds to go.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:03 PM ^
Someone somewhere wrote that Brown was heavily guarded for those final shots because UCLA had a pretty good idea that we'd want him to have the ball.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:09 PM ^
I also read that, but it's simply not true. The shots at 13 seconds and 6 seconds are very clearly drawn up for Wagner, with Brown just sitting in the corner. The 0.5 second is less clear, but it seems unlikely given Chaundee's position to the baseline and inbounder that they were trying to get the ball to him.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:15 PM ^
Ok but how were they supposed to get it to him? I get Chaundee has been great from 3, but it seems it always comes as a spot up 3 from someone else. Now suddenly he's going to make space and hit one off the dribble or something? They had him in position to do what he's done all year if he gets a pass.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:20 PM ^
They have run screen and curl opportunities for him this season, albeit not as frequently as with Franz.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Exactly. I'm not sure what OP is thinking on the Chaundee thing. He's a (great) catch & shoot player, not the person you want creating a shot with 10 seconds on the clock.
Honestly, I don't know how anyone can be mad with the end of game strategy. We got two great looks from two pretty good shooters. We missed. It happens. If Franz makes that shot everyone is talking about how UCLA was crazy to just leave him all alone.
Shooting a basketball is not a memoryless statistical phenomenon. Your most recent results can matter much more than your season average. Wagner's shot was open, but it was from 2 feet behind the top of the arc, i.e. one of the longest reasonable threes you should ever take. Given that he was 1-8 up to that point, it was a poor decision. Maybe it's more Wagner's fault than Juwan's, but still, Juwan could have and should have emphasized the need for a short two or a three from Chaundee. Wagner's ability to create a shot means a lot less when he's clearly having an off night. You act like it's utterly impossible to draw up a play where Chaundee can get a reasonable shot off. That's bs.
Smith's shot was likewise not a particularly spectacular look from a guy who has been ice cold shooting all month. A running, stop and shoot three pointer, in the double bonus with 6 seconds left? C'mon. The fact that Chaundee didn't even touch the ball on the last 3 plays was a travesty.
I think you're a little too focused on recency. Just because one player has missed a few shots on a given night and another player has made a few does not drastically change their odds on the next shot. It's a small sample of shots. They're going to shoot at roughly their season average.
UCLA gave Franz a totally uncontested three. He probably hits a shot like that close to 50%, and it would have put us up 2. That's a better shot than a contested Chaundee 3 or drive, IMO.
I think you are vastly underestimating the role of confidence and a shooter being on/off. Making or missing a few shots absolutely *does* change the odds for the next shot drastically. It can be extremely hard to get out of a rut in any given game, and if you haven't done so by the time there's 15 seconds left, it's just wishful thinking to assume a player who has shot 1-8 up to that point isn't significantly affected by the confidence blow. On the flip side, Chaundee was riding fairly high. He had a season high in points against LSU. He was 6-9 shooting that game, and 5-6 against FSU.
I know this blog prides itself on trusting statistics and ignoring things like "player's wisdom", and for a while academic researchers did believe the "hot hand" in basketball was a myth. But the best, most recent papers have shown that the original studies fell victim to the Monty Hall fallacy. If you looked at all of Wagner's streaks where he missed 3 shots in a row, and measured the odds he will hit the next shot, in all likelihood you would indeed find that he shoots close to his season average. But that's actually *worse* than the statistics would say, because you've removed a significant number of missed shots from the overall sample. Just like Monty Hall always removed a "wrong door" and not a "right door" on Let's Make A Deal. For the original 1985 study that concluded no "hot hand" exists, the difference when accounting for the Monty Hall bias completely reversed the conclusions. Players are more likely to make a shot after they've had a previous streak of made shots, and more likely to miss a shot after they've had a previous streak of missed shots.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2709837
I'm not a statistician, but the Monty Hall paradox seems fundamentally different from hot-hand shooting. In Monty Hall, the doors have a dependent relationship because there's always one door that has the car. But basketball ball shots have an independent relationship -- Franz could make all his shots or miss them all, and missing an earlier shot doesn't make it more likely the next one will hit.
Either way, it was a wide open look and while I wish Chaundee had gotten a chance, it's hard to fault Franz for taking it.
March 31st, 2021 at 11:42 PM ^
Not sure if you read the article I linked, but if so you missed the whole point. In 1985 there was a famous study that seemed to show previous makes or misses had no effect on the next shot. But the authors committed a statistical error related to the Monty Hall problem, and when you correct for that error, the data from the 1985 study *does* show a relationship between previous and future shots. Ergo, basketball shots are NOT independent. If you're cold you are more likely to miss your next shot, an if you're hot you're more likely to make your next shot.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Brown typically is in the corner waiting for a spot-up opportunity. That’s been his role in the offense. What would you have wanted us to do with him? Run him off screens like the Miami Heat do for Duncan Robinson? We haven’t done too much of that with him.
Plus, in a one-point game where we were in the bonus, we didn’t really need a three. Franz took it when it was there but Juwan probably would have preferred him to take it to the rim.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:04 PM ^
You're overthinking.
For one, when you draw up a play, there are going to be multiple scenarios presented depending upon what the offense does.
For two, Brown is a ball-stopper. Franz can shoot, drive to score, or drive to pass. The shot we got with him that resulted in an airball was an *excellent* shot. If it hadn't been there, he had a lot of other stuff in his toolbox.
When you're trying to score, you want Smith in the game. If you're taking him out, you're taking him out for Brandon Johns, who isn't reliable from distance. You need shooters out there. Brooks was still out there, remember.
You're way, way overthinking this.
I am not suggesting that the Franz shot was a bad look. As you and the poster below correctly pointed out, Franz presents multiple threats that Brown does not. That's a valid criticism of my post.
That said, Chaundee Brown is not Matt Vogrich. They have run screen and curl opportunities for him before (albeit far less frequently than Wagner). His body of work this season and at Wake Forest suggests that he can be utilized as more than just kick-out shooter. This team failed to make a basket over the last 5 minutes. Drawing up a screen and curl opportunity for your best catch and shoot player seems like a reasonable solution to consider, IMO. This is especially true on the last shot of the game. Using him as a vague decoy seemed like an underutilization of his greatest asset, IMO.
The Smith stuff is valid, although I was referring to a much broader stretch of time (the last ~10 minutes - I can't remember when he checked back in) than the last minute. That was not clear from my post.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:06 PM ^
This isn’t football where the players do exactly what the coach drew up. You run actions and the players make decisions themselves based on what comes up.
Juwan very likely didn’t call for Franz to shoot a 3 with 15 seconds left but UCLA chose to go under the screen and left him wide open. He chose to take the shot.
As for why we ran that pick and roll with him, he’s one of two guys (Smith the other) who can consistently create shots off the dribble. There are more options available for them. One option might have been to drive and then either shoot or kick it out to a shooter like Brown, but Franz took the shot that was there.
Brown is a catch-and-shoot guy, he’s not a playmaker. If you run a play for him and the shot isn’t there, then you’ve got nothing. It usually makes more sense to have Smith/Wagner penetrate and then have Brown as a perimeter option to kick it out to.
It really wasn’t a bad possession. We took an early shot (unlike OSU), it was wide open, and we got the rebound. Unfortunately Brooks rushed the putback.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:14 PM ^
This exactly. The play was for Wagner turning the corner and either pass/drive going to the hoop. UCLA went under, giving him a wide open look. If he hits it, everyone calls it a brilliant call.
Brooks put back is not getting talked about enough. If he doesn't rush it and just plants his feet and goes up, it's probably a layup or foul.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:16 PM ^
I think this is all good analysis, and would add that UCLA forced Franz to his left and he cannot drive to his left so the three was a better option. I would have preferred seeing Eli bringing the ball up and having Franz's pulling a defender to the perimeter to open up the lane and to have him available to crash the boards for a put back, rather than Eli.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:42 PM ^
Brooks seemed bothered by UCLA’s length. He didn’t look for his shot too much and when he did, he settled for floaters. I think going to Franz made sense. Especially since he’d just drawn a foul and gotten two FTs on the previous trip.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:16 PM ^
How did that Eli putback attempt play on TV? Being there live (and about 80yards from the court) it literally looked like he was well outside the paint and basically did a volleyball set behind his head. Was he actually in position for a potentially successful, traditional reverse layup that was just off the mark? Or was it really as rushed and far from the hoop as it appeared live from the 400s section? There was a lot of looking around near me of the "what the heck just happened" variety at that particular attempt.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:20 PM ^
He was too far out for the reverse layup/flip shot he tried. But he had room to turn and take a real shot. He should have done better, but it happens.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:28 PM ^
He also could have passed it back out as there were still about 10 seconds left. Of course it’s easy to say that sitting on your couch.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:21 PM ^
Without having rewatched it, it seemed he got control under the basket and instead of pivoting to put it up with his left hand or doing a reverse (which seemed cut off) he panicked and tried to lean back and put up an out of control prayer.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
The TV angle on it wasn't great, but it did seem like he was a little too far from the basket to try to put it back the way that he did.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:32 PM ^
I suspect he lost track of time and thought there was :01 left and not :10.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:37 PM ^
Okay, my initial take was way off. Having rewatched it, his shot wasn't as bad as it seemed initially. He had to get it up fast or it would have been massively rejected. He probably needed to do a step back fadeaway or kick it back out, probably to Chaundee.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:33 PM ^
I had the same thought, having Brown take the last shot, and not Franz, who has never played in a game this big.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:46 PM ^
Hasn’t he played professional ball in Germany?
What big games has Brown played in that Wagner hasn't? Wake Forest never made the tournament in his three years there.
I didn't mean to imply Brown has, but it is evident he is unfazed by the big game... last night I kept finding myself wishing they'd get Brown the ball to take a three.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:46 PM ^
Based on your numbers, Brown should have been starting.. obviously more than that goes into their decision making. Plus Michigan fans would have lost if if Howard benched Wagner, but based on your data, that should have been the case.
No one was making the argument that Wagner should have been benched.
Wagner was clearly a starter -- anyone arguing against that is crazy. Brown's best role was as a super sub. This blog's position (and I agree with it) is he was the B1G defensive player of the year. He also just played a very good game against FSU. He just happened to put up a stinker against UCLA.
But yes, at the end of this particular game, I would have loved a Franz drive and if he didn't have a clear path, a kick to Brooks or Brown or a dump off to Dickinson.
March 31st, 2021 at 12:59 PM ^
Down 1, we wanted Wagner going to the rim, because he could shoot, pass, or get fouled. The WORST thing he could do was pull up for a 3. Unfortunately, that is what he chose to do.
I don't think Howard told him to just jack the 3. But having Wagner creating in that situation was not a bad call. He just fell into the trap that so many players do and overestimated his shooting ability. If he instead drives to the hoop the odds that something good comes out of it are high.
I love Michigan basketball the team coaching staff and fans. Pure and simple that 3 pointer by Franz is not by statistics the shot we wanted, first he shoots 56% on 2 pointers 84% on FT’s and 34% on 3 pointers for the season, and he was 2-16 on 3 pointers in the tournament 4 games 12.5%. He has to drive it there not shoot the 27 footer.
If Wagner just catches a little bit of rim Hunter probably gets the putback.
I don’t know the splits but Brown’s offensive efficiency is mostly from catch and shoot so highly assisted. Wagner can create his own offense (or does that historically). I think the argument of getting a catch and shoot opportunity for Brown is logical but the argument of why give Wagner shots vs brown likely has to do with the fact that UCLA was allowing us to create shots off the dribble but trying to limit catch and shoot opportunities.
This was a game where our shot makers had to make shots. They didn’t and that’s the game.
Not sure how many options Juwan had -- Brooks played 37 minutes. He had to hope that Smith would find himself, and after Smith hit that 3 pointer around the 7 minute mark, you think good thoughts as a coach and a fan. Unfortunately, that was it, and Smith had his 3rd bad game out of the last 5, with his only good one being Texas Southern. Not coincidentally, UM lost two of those games. And of course, only 6 games ago, Smith played about as well as you'd ever want a PG to play with his great game against Maryland. But it was a bad time to suffer a crisis in confidence or whatever that caused his late season slide.
As far as a last second shot, I would have targeted Brown or Brooks (with Dickinson down low an option) as well, but going with your first-round draft pick, who had just hit two clutch free throws, is a reasonable alternative.
When UM lost Livers, not only did it reduce their margin for error a bit throughout the game, but it severely impacted end of game -- there is no one on the team I'd rather have take a late game 3 or free throws than Livers. But that's not the situation UM was in, and we had our chances.
Thanks to Mike, Franz, Chaundee etc and hopefully the team can build on their success next year.