Michigan vs. ISU (Snowflakes) Thread

He is a slick player on offense and decent perimeter defender.  Still needs another 10 to 15 pounds.  Probably need to switch to 2-3 zone in that situation or sit him.  Good experience overall for the team.   And fire Borges!

A healthy, fully in game-shape, well practiced McGary and this game would've been a 7-10 point win.   It's all good.  

- We need to shoot better and get McGary in the rotation more when he gets more stamina going.

-Walton and Irvin looked a bit shaky, they're freshmen, they'll get better

- At the end of the game, we did a bad job of trying to get open and go for 3's.

- Morgan and Horford had bad games, especially Morgan.

- It wasn't the worse loss, we can learn from it, it's still a great team that will contend all year.

I thought LeVert and GR3 forced things on O a few times. LeVert's time in the front court should be limited/eliminated, if a switch forces him down low we need to look to help ASAP.

Great to see McGary back and doing McGary things like his steal + coast to coast. Walton played very well considering the environment.

When Stauskas threw that dunk down was the best part of the game

Are we really that upset about the "Fuck McGary" chant? What, you think it hurt his feelings? I'm sure he'll recover. 

we just didnt execute

We didn't make our 3-point shots because they were contested - the only way you can open that up is to go inside. When we tried to go inside, they were fairly rough and were not getting called, but on othe other end of the court we couldn't have a clean block without getting called. Because of that, our defense opened up, probably more than it needed to. When you're playing a different game at each end of the court it makes things really hard. This is a major issue with NCAA basketball - either the team needs to learn how to adapt to it or we're going to have another dissapointing end to our tournament run.

Also, even mentioning the OC in a basketball thread should be a 1-week ban.

Disappointing.  We seemed in control for long stretches but didn't finish either half well.  We settled for too many threes, a lot of them rushed.  It's going to take a little while for the offense to get the kind of consistent flow it had last year, with an experienced Burke.  We're also going to have to figure out how we're going to defend big 4s because the LeVert experiment there was not the best.  Oh well, it's a learning experience.

Stauskus has added a dimension this year and looked like our best player at times, but it look like he still gets a little too caught up in the moment emotionally. McGary is a stud--hopefully he'll be more centrally incorportated in the offense as he gets healthier (including the late-game offense). Spike looked like he was in control out there, and I liked what I saw from Walton, too. I was curious not to see McGary and Horford out there together. I think it may have helped get McGary more active on offense in a sort of Webber-like role, and we could've used more protection around the rim on D.

Not sure what to think about GRIII--he seems like a fourth or fifth option on offense who should just be getting clean-up buckets and alley-oops. Doesn't seem like someone who should be taking jumpers (especially 3's). I think the offense should run through Stauskus, McGary, and Walton in games, and that's where it will end up. 

Levert didn't help make the case that he's a viable crunch time player against real competition.

In sum, fire Borges.

This is a good loss. This will prepare the young guys for what they will be getting into on 12/3 and in the B1G season. 

Off to Puerto Rico 

Vamos Azul!

It's not surprising that we didn't get anything considering that it was the NC game refs that we were playing with.

When Mcgary's back in the starting lineup, we'll be starting 4 sophomores and a freshman.  And we lost the POY.  It'll may take a little time--but it only matters what happens in March and April--as we discovered last season.

Many concerns, but only only the third game of the season, so I'm not going to panic:

1. Interior defense: Really bad to say the least... I don't know why Irvin played that long when Morgan alongside McGary would have been a much better defensive option... Either way, we have to be a lot better there.

2.  Way too many 3s: While shooting the three ball is one of our strong suits, we cannot really rely on it to keep us in these types of games... Rarely fed the ball into McGary (his main points really just came on putbacks) and GRIII was very unintelligent with his shot selection. While I can deal with Stauskas taking 8-10, I don't like the rest taking 25 combined.

3. Working the ball around: While we looked very good at times here, the ball movement looked very shaky especially late in the game (probably because of youth).  I feel like this is a team made to have a solid combination of a powerful inside game with a sharp threat outside as well. Heck, I feel like we look the best in transition.  This team is probably the most complete that I have seen in years... We need to put it all together now.

Again, still terribly early in the season... This upcoming weekend should really give this team strong experience against more quality opponents...

Also, ISU is a bunch of classless neanderthals, students at least.