M Basketball Snowflakes

I’ll leave my snowflake here. It sucked. 

The best thing about this game is the bball season is 3x as many games as football so there is a lot of time to...play better than that.

Playing Arizona in Vegas is basically a road game and the Wildcats are an athletic side that came to play.

Just cutting back the charging fouls would do wonders for this team. As would sinking a 3 from time to time.

We should grow a lot this season since we have so many young players. First thing to fix is the defense.

Howard needs to play who is producing now and not the HS pedigree. Play Bufkin.  He has earned it.  Sit those who can’t shoot.  

Houstan is the biggest disappointment so far.  He has been out of his league.  Apparently, the vaunted IMG was overrated in comparison with the international talent.

1.Multiple issues on defense..2.Poor point guard play...3.A very poor three point shooting team 17-73 (players not named Eli Brooks)....Pieces are there to be a good team at some point

That game was a low energy bummer.  Too many turnovers, too few shots made.  The team rebounds better than it shoots at the moment.  Young and not much chemistry yet.  Looking forward to growth and improvement. 

Frustrating because we set our expectations so high. 

Defense is straight up bad....can't rebound and play lazy, confused.

Only 2 reliable scorers in Eli and Hunter.  Diabate will grow but will take time. 

Looking ahead at the schedule, we have 2 tough matchups at UNC and against San Diego St coming up.  Lose both or even split those and we'll probably have to go 12-8 in the Big Ten to get a tourney bid. 

This team needs to improve quite a bit, but there is a very long season ahead of them. My biggest concern is Jones. I wonder how much better he'll get given his age and limited athleticism and height. But it's way, way too early to give up on the freshmen. 

It's not hyperbole to say that this team is in danger of missing the tournament. They have played *that* poorly to begin the year. 60% of their starting lineup just flat-out sucks right now. They can't shoot to save their lives. They turn the ball over constantly. The defense is putrid. Arizona just did the same thing over and over again, and Michigan could never stop them. Howard whiffed badly on Jones. It's unbelievable how bad he has played. And, as a fifth-year senior, I doubt he's going to get any better. He has no business playing for a B1G team. Same goes for Johns. Michigan was literally laughed at by the announcers in this game. What a disaster.

Not good. Wagner, Livers, Smith and Brown deeply missed. Without them, spacing is more or less non-existent and our key defensive wing rotation from last season is out the window. This issue cropped up in earlier games, but Arizona came in with a team built to exploit that with aggressive play on both sides of the ball.

Felt like Michigan spent all day trying to drive into a brick wall and Arizona made that pretty much impossible without some clever cutting, which was the source of our better looks.

On the other side of the ball, Arizona was constantly in attack mode, pushing the pace at every opportunity. We couldn't stop them on their drives without fouling. Really felt like there was no answer for a lot of these possessions. Gonna give credit to Arizona where it's due: it felt like their entire team was UNLV's Diabate, just imposing offensively and defensively at will.

Throwing in the towel on this team (like turning on a "hot seat" warmer for a few threads down) this after this game is stupid, but it's going to be a rebuilding job for this Michigan squad. Took a lot of things for granted, and I think it's fair to re-adjust expectations for this team. We were spoiled by the new additions last season jelling quickly, but it's going to be a work in progress for this years team. We'll see how we look in March, but structurally, this team is going to need to be tougher and figure out how to integrate the new pieces if we want to be contenders down the stretch.

Thoughts:

1) Retroactively give Franz national DPOY for last year.

2) Our defense is a mess.  Too many gambles, which means others have to help, which leads to bad rotations and easy buckets.  And shit rebounding.

3) Hunter's getting doubled and making solid passes out of it most of the time, but don't have the shooters right now.  Houston has to find his stroke from high school or we are in serious trouble.

4) If Jones can't stop taking two stupid fouls a game, he shouldn't be on the floor.

5) Make the whole offense out of Eli/Hunter pick and roll and try to find some shooters to surround them with.

We can not shoot from the outside and you will not win many games against teams with a pulse like that. When I read in the pregame write-up that Arizona was number 1 in 2 point defense and the tallest team in college basketball I knew we were screwed. 

What has been most frustrating is the passive nature of this team. It seems like everyone is waiting for someone else to make a play until Eli is forced to fix it all. That will not work but it is also an area that could improve quickly. Bufkin needs more minutes. He may not be doing much yet but he looks smooth and competent which is more than can be said about Houstan at this point.

Dickinson sucked tonight.  Johns can't be a starter, or play much for that matter.  Houstan....we have a problem.  Jones is not a smart player.  Lots of issues to fix!

Johns really has to snap out of it and he and Jones need to play with more veteran poise, especially with all these young kids they put on the floor. Houstan straight up stinks so far; I think he has a lot of ability and you can see that he has major potential but until he can contribute more, they have to cut down on his minutes. I'd like to see more Bufkin and Frankie Collins is probably the best option at PG at the moment.  I have confidence that Juwan will get it headed in the right direction but this was straight up ugly tonight. They really slimmed down their margin for error now. They better get it together quick.  

This team lacks energy right now. Dickinson has picked up a nicer mid-range shot, but he's not dominating at both ends of the floor. Brooks is reliable, everyone else is erratic. They looked like they haven't been practicing, or not at full speed. Hopefully that will change over the next month or so.

This team lacks energy right now. Dickinson has picked up a nicer mid-range shot, but he's not dominating at both ends of the floor. Brooks is reliable, everyone else is erratic. They looked like they haven't been practicing, or not at full speed. Hopefully that will change over the next month or so.

It's a young team that has players figuring out what to do in college ball but they're mostly struggling in no small part because guys like Jones and Johns, who have experience at this level, are underperforming.  Johns in particular just isn't there and I don't see him ever being more than a bit part.  Jones I'll give it a bit more time because the uptick in competition is clearly a lot for him, but there are still mental mistakes being made that aren't likely to disappear completely.

I always thought the FF talk was a bit optimistic given the metric ton of talent they were replacing, but they'll need to shore up some of these deficiencies.  The Big 10 does seem down as a conference so that'll help a bit.  This team does have the potential to turn it around come tourney time, but right now they aren't a top-25 team.

Just the usual, unfortunately. 

I don't think Houstan has taken a three off the dribble, yet he is ball handling and coming around screens as much as Eli. Why? If he is a shooter, why is he mostly dribbling? Livers was a shooter. He largely patrolled around the perimeter providing spacing and would cut when necessary. Houstan is playing to his weaknesses!

Zero spacing at all. There was that awful moment where Dickinson and Diabate both were just standing by the free throw line, just chilling.

Honestly, Johns didn't stick out as being too bad tonight...unfortunately this is a reflection on the rest of the team more than Johns.

Jones was the same he has been all year. 

Players are passing up WIDE OPEN three pointers left and right. Michigan never made Arizona pay for doubling Dickinson on nearly every possession deep in the post. Too many half-open chances that the team just isn't letting loose on. 

I would mention the defense, but I don't think my mind has wrapped itself around that just yet. 

Offensively, I think this team needs to speed the game up. Get out in transition, use your athletes and create more chaos on that end of the floor. Michigan is straight up predictable on offense. It is similar to the football team's mentality of "we will just out execute the other team to victory even though they know exactly what we are going to do" and it just isn't going to happen with such a young team right now. 

This being said, I think this team has a lot of talent and can put together a good season. Definitely a lot to worry about though. This team is currently a train wreck on both sides of the ball. 

I don't think this roster has any 'one and done' players. The lack of three point shooting is shocking; they need to get that worked out pronto. Without an outside threat, it's going to be tough sledding.

I get the roster differences and new/young player angles and they are legitimate sources for many of the issues on display in the last three games, however these players were also woefully unprepared to play tonight and that is on the coaches.

I would expect young players new to the team and schemes to have trouble running sets/schemes and to occasionally be undisciplined, but what it seemed like tonight was that there was no scheme to run and an almost complete lack of discipline in some of the most fundamental aspects of basketball. 

Howard is really going to have to reset and hope he can get the players on the same page and develop them as a team or this season is likely lost.

Nunez needs to get zero quality minutes of PT, and John's should be put on notice...again. Zona has a solid team and these Pacific starting times didn't help, but this experience will help this young team learn and prepare for something greater. 

Edit: If you think Houstan needs to have his minutes cut that's just crazy talk for so many reasons. 

This team is soft right now.  Maybe Jim Harbaugh can give a speech and talk about grit.  Seriously, the guys look like they are going through the motions.  Effort level is bad.  Defense is really bad.  Offense is bad.  Nobody is leading.  The teams looks adrift at sea and if Juwan doesn't reel them in quickly we will be scrapping just to make the NCAA tourney.

You can’t run an efficient offense through the low post without guys who will hit threes off of the switch.  All the bullshit shot fakes in the world won’t fix that since the other team’s center is still down by the basket where your center is.  Unless you are an elite finisher you ain’t scoring on the drive and the defense will recover.  At best you can draw another help defender and kick it out to the guy he left.  But, guess what, if that open guy can’t shoot either, it’s the same shit all over again with even more bodies in the lane. Plus the potential help is already close by because they are sagging off to start with.

You can’t athlete your way out of this difficulty.  You need shooters.  I don’t understand why they didn’t chase some of the better shooters on the transfer market instead of Jones, whose elite skill so far has been committing fouls. 
 

On defense, I still don’t get the hard hedge instead of the drop, but that’s only a small issue.  The bigger issue is that many of them are really bad on ball defenders.  I know Brooks is good, and Moussa is pretty good (going to be great, watch his foot speed on the perimeter- he’s long but plays defense with his lower body first).  But Jones is wild, Johns is just ok, Houstan is awful, and the other guys seem to struggle. They also struggle with rebounding and some of that is on Dickinson.  He’s got to be dominate there. 
 

I think the window on Johns is closing.  Jones still has time but he’s behind even very reasonable expectations.  I’m also a little disappointed in Williams.  I thought he would be a better player than he is right now.  I still might try him at the three with Houstan at the four.  Houstan will get crushed in the post, but he’s getting killed on the perimeter anyway at this point.  Some of the freshmen have to get up to speed shooting sooner than later, because no offense will work with no three point threats.