MBB and Big Early Deficits - Some Numbers
Michigan has obviously developed a bad habit in the last five games of getting into big holes early. They've dug themselves out three times, fortunately. I decided to look at a few numbers and try to figure out if there was a consistent theme in these games.
For each game, I looked at shooting %, offensive rebounding %, and turnovers at the point of biggest deficit and then again at the end of the game.
| Opponent | Iowa | OSU | ||
| Deficit | -16 | -18 | -9 | 10 |
| Time Left | 26.13 | 0 | 29.49 | 0 |
| UM 2ptFG% | 45% | 48% | 22% | 39% |
| UM 3ptFG% | 14% | 36% | 40% | 47% |
| Opp 2ptFG% | 43% | 43% | 80% | 48% |
| Opp 3pt FG% | 86% | 59% | 0% | 15% |
| UM Oreb% | 25% | 28% | 36% | 42% |
| Opp Oreb% | 33% | 43% | 33% | 24% |
| UM TO | 2 | 12 | 2 | 9 |
| Opp TO | 2 | 7 | 1 | 8 |
| Opponent | Wisconsin | MSU | Purdue | |||
| Deficit | -18 | -13 | -11 | 9 | -19 | 1 |
| Time Left | 21.12 | 0 | 28.43 | 0 | 27.42 | 0 |
| UM 2ptFG% | 36% | 41% | 30% | 54% | 25% | 50% |
| UM 3ptFG% | 17% | 38% | 25% | 42% | 13% | 26% |
| Opp 2ptFG% | 42% | 46% | 75% | 68% | 57% | 49% |
| Opp 3pt FG% | 40% | 41% | 60% | 39% | 71% | 29% |
| UM Oreb% | 25% | 23% | 20% | 23% | 33% | 36% |
| Opp Oreb% | 40% | 30% | 20% | 29% | 33% | 38% |
| UM TO | 7 | 9 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| Opp TO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 13 | 3 | 11 |
Iowa
Why did UM get so far behind?
Shooting. At the 6:13 mark of the first half, Michigan was down by 16 points. Turnovers and rebounding were about equal, but Iowa had hit 43% of its twos and an amazing 86% of its threes while Michigan had shot 45% and 14%. If memory serves me, a lot of those were uncontested for Iowa.
Why couldn't UM catch up?
Shooting pretty much evened out after Iowa's big run, but Iowa increased it's Oreb% by 10 up to 43% and forced 10 UM more turnovers to their 5.
Ohio State
Why did UM get so far behind?
OSU's two point shooting. At the 9:49 mark of the first half OSU held a 9 point lead. While OSU didn't hit a three, they hit 80% of their twos. Rebounding and turnovers were about the same. Uncontested transition buckets were the name of this game.
How did UM come back?
Offensive rebounding and declining OSU shooting. By the end of the game, UM had rebounded 42% of its misses to only 24% for OSU. OSU's 2 pt% had also plunged to 48% while they only hit 15% of their threes on the game. Michigan's shooting also improved to 39% / 49% during the comeback.
Wisconsin
Why did UM get so far behind?
Wisconsin led by 18 with 1:12 to play in the first half. This was a pretty perfect storm. UM only hit 17% of their threes to 38% for Wisconsin. The Badgers held a 40%-25% edge in offensive rebounding and Michigan commited 7 turnovers to Wisconsin's 1. Basically, nothing was good.
Why couldn't UM catch up?
Really, they were too far behind (and of course Kaminsky went off when it got close). The final numbers show that Michigan dented UW's dominence in the second half, but it wasn't enough to make up that big of a hole.
Michigan State
Why did UM get so far behind?
Shooting. State led by 11 with 8:43 remaining in the first half. The teams were even on the boards and MSU had 3 TOs to Michigan's 0. But State's 75%/60% shooting was smoking UM's 30%/25% line.
How did UM come back?
Shooting and turnovers. UM bumped its shooting line up to 54%/42% while State's fell to (a still impressive) 68%/39%. Turnovers (13 to 3) also gave UM 10 more possessions which is obviously tough to overcome for MSU when everything else is basically even.
Purdue
Why did UM get so far behind?
Shooting. Purdue held a 19 point lead with 7:42 to go in the first half. Rebounding and turnovers were a dead heat, but Purdue was hitting at a 57%/71% rate compared to Michigan's 25%/13%.
How did UM come back?
They shot better. By the end of the game, UM had doubled it's shooting line to 50%/26%. Purdue cooled to a more reasonable 49%/29% for the game. By the end of the game, the numbers were basically a draw across the board (which of course makes sense in a 1 point OT game).
What does it mean?
This is even too tl;dr for me at this point, but what's interesting to me is that there are a variety of causes to this issue. Poor shooting for UM and hot shooting for the other team does seemsto be the overwhelming issue, though. Iowa and OSU were getting pretty uncontested shots while Wisconsin, MSU, and Purdue were just drilling things. I hate the cliche as much as anyone, but without an obvious fatal flaw and the way the eye test has looked, it seems that UM just isn't quite ready to go out of the gate for whatever reason.
February 27th, 2014 at 2:53 PM ^
What it means is that Michigan needs to start pregame warm-ups an hour earlier than normal for the rest of the year. I think a lot of the other stuff, especially opponent shooting, gets a lot better if Michigan is shooting better early.
February 27th, 2014 at 2:54 PM ^
There was another interesting stat thrown out there on Twitter last night actually that speaks to this phenomenon a little bit. Per the tweet, in the last five games, Michigan has been outscored 102-46 in the first ten minutes of play, and then in turn we have outscored our opponents 309-264 in the remaining 30 minutes. Very interesting.
February 27th, 2014 at 9:06 PM ^
February 27th, 2014 at 3:01 PM ^
I was oddly confident when we were down 19 yesterday. Frustrated that YET AGAIN some dude had nearly 20 pts in the first half against us, but strangely confident we'd pull it out. Maybe because this is becoming habit.
Yogi, Marble, and Johnson all had halves of their lives against us - weird.
February 27th, 2014 at 3:09 PM ^
Id like to see them start Beilfeldt early in the game, to maybe prevent this, for the first five minutes.... he seems to play really tough in the paint.... we're digging ourselves in holes far too many times.
February 27th, 2014 at 4:08 PM ^
Seriously? Your solution is to start a guy who has logged almost no meaningful minutes in Big 10 play?
February 27th, 2014 at 8:56 PM ^
February 27th, 2014 at 3:15 PM ^
of the Trevor Siemian effect against us in football. Just so happens there's gonna be a guy that looks destined for the pros against only Michigan. Hell even Ferentz breaks all his dinosaur coaching rules against M
February 27th, 2014 at 3:25 PM ^
No data to back this up, but my feeling has been that teams are throwing out different defensive looks than what UofM anticipates based on scouting. UofM adjusts in game and things get better.
Defensively, sometimes a team comes out hot and hits 80% of their threes. When that happens, usually they regress to the mean in the second half, so in general I worry less about hot shooting early in a game (similarly when we are making every shot in the first half, I worry that we might regress as well).
February 27th, 2014 at 3:47 PM ^
I think a small part of the problem is that at the beginning of each game, it seems like several possessions are devoted exclusively to getting GRIII going. These possessions mostly end up in contested twos or wild, unsuccessful drives to the basket. It also seems to be part of a larger problem; Michigan hasn't gotten into their free-flowing, ball-movement-based offensive rhythm until the middle of the first half. It's not that they're shooting cold, it's that the quality of their looks has been markedly worse in the opening moments of games than when their offense functions at full efficiency later in the game. This was definitely the big problem against Wisconsin; Michigan didn't record an assist the entire first half.
I don't know exactly why this is; it seems like a combination of not coming out with great focus, not playing smart to open up the game in addition to not being ready for the different defensive looks opposing teams throw at them. I'm not sure how they fix this, but it seems more likely that this is just randomness than a trend indicative of slow starts to come in March. At least that's what I'm telling myself. Because John Beilein's too good of a coach and this team has too much offensive talent to come out this cold this consistently. It's frustrating to watch but I bet they'll make an adjustment soon, either through some sort of tweaks to their gameplan or simple regression to the mean.
February 27th, 2014 at 3:49 PM ^
It'd be interesting to see what UM's assist numbers were like in cold starts vs. hot finishes.
February 27th, 2014 at 5:10 PM ^
It was so bizaare: good shot, then CLANG. After a stretch of maybe 6 of those, accuracy declined as Purdon't closed down on shooting lanes. Such a weird game.
February 27th, 2014 at 5:18 PM ^
I think this team is still trying to take that next step to being a great program. They need to learn to be ready from the opening tip to take the other teams best effort on a consistent basis. The big games, sure, they are ready and I think the info above shows that sometimes it's just a matter of a cold start for Michigan or a hot start for the opponent and then it evens out over the course of the game. But other games I have seen a team that starts out expecting to win and not playing with the full effort required to match the other team's best effort. They get down, suddenly you see the extra bit of hustle on redounds, the extra bit of effort on defense, the extra precision on offense. I'm not saying the team doesn't try hard, or show effort. It's just different when every team you face is trying their best to say they beat you. You have to be willing to give that same effort for 40 minutes. Very few programs can get to this level on a sustained basis. As much as I hate Duke, during the peak of their glory days they always played their hardest for 40 minutes no matter who they faced.
February 27th, 2014 at 5:58 PM ^
I mean UM is not a great defensive team even when its trying (they have short moments of great D play though). Combine that with little intensity on D to start games and that equals Player X going off on UM in the first half all the time.
And for some reason we as fans chalk it up to "that just have that guy going off, if he didn't do that we would be killing them". Of course by now its a consistent theme. Even back a couple years with Ohio U knocking us out of the tourney. This is my biggest fear opening weekend of the NCAAs. UM getting in a big hole vs inferior team and some guy going Yogi Ferrell on UM.
We are basically the Oregon Ducks or <insert BIG12 football team here> of bball. As of late we are letting teams score TDs on nearly every possesion to start games only to come back and win 56-42...
I'm starting to think it is something we are going to have to expect under Beilein and his wildly efficent Offensive teams. Perhaps the trade off for always having four shooters on the court is that you are just not going to be as good at defense. Although Duke makes it work...I tend to think its bc their shooters are a tad more athletic.
My hope is that we can get a legit 5 that can rebound, start the break, and defend the rim at some point to make up for our deficiencies on the perimeter (I think we will always have it). I'd also like for one player out of our 1-3 to be a lock down defender type but its rare to have a lock down guy who is a Beilein quality shooter.
All this being said, I would rather an efficient O and free flowing team than a grind it out all defensive team that can't shoot. Even if those teams win championships. O is just more fun to watch, esp in the college game. PLus we will send a pipeline of 1-3 players to the pros with this style.
February 27th, 2014 at 6:05 PM ^
Oregon would be the worst one on trying to compare great offense and bad defense.
Oregon's defensive rankings according to Football Outsiders:
2013: #22
2012: #4
2011: #11
The better comparison would probably be Oklahoma State. They got explosive offense but their defense is sub-par at best.
February 27th, 2014 at 7:32 PM ^
well I did say <insert big12 team here> as I know they are basically flag football teams.
I also tend to think that Oregon's D is overrated. Thats just me though. I feel like it looks good when there O is rolling but when there O gets punched in the mouth the D is usually not able to make up for it.
February 27th, 2014 at 7:04 PM ^
No more big early deficits, please.
Unless Michigan wins.