2018-19 Purdue #1

Things discussed:

• Shutting down Carsen Edwards was a team effort
• Surprised Haarms hasn't progressed more.
• Northwestern hit a lot of weird shots, good defensive team.
• Poole and Brazdeikis are their best isolation players but that's not their offense
• Brian not so hard on Austin Davis—blamed the refs.
• The 14-2 run with Teske on the bench with foul trouble was too stark
• Could use less Matthews usage but that's not gonna change
• Post-Michigan coaching comments
• Defensive strategy leads to fewer fouls: not a lot of help/reach-ins
• The Big Ten is deep, some poor bubble team is going 8-12 in this league.

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Podbean.

Segment two is here. Segment three is here.

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"I turn on the game and I'm like who is this 60 year old freshman?

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The Question:

Why is this team exceeding expectations?

Ace: Just wait until Jordan Poole gets goin— oh, I see.

Seth: 1/1 Charles Mathewses agree: this is not a good development.

Lol @ Matthews pic.twitter.com/KyIzBq3Lwm

— Mike Persak (@MikeDPersak) December 1, 2018

Ace: We can start with the obvious: Michigan had one of the best defenses in the country last year, upgraded on that end at the four and five spots (and arguably the two as well), and also moved into year two of Luke Yaklich’s teachings taking hold. Now it’s the best defense in the country by a significant margin so far this year.

This is very much Zavier Simpson’s team. Matthews’, too.

BiSB: To the defensive question, we didn't know if Iggy could play defense. Turns out... yeah, very much so.

Brian: His first real test is "hey, check Eric Paschall with zero help defense" and that goes spectacularly.

Seth: Let's not leave out 7'2" Zavier Simpson.

BiSB: Big Trogdor?

Ace: I meant in terms of temperament. Jon Teske is clearly one of the main reasons this team is so good. He’s a defensive savant. It’s not just that he can block shots, he’s almost never in the wrong place, his hands are great, and he moves surprisingly well.

BiSB: His foul rate is also insanely low.

Brian: Michigan's two point D is stunning and it is most stunning when The Big Sleep is on the floor. 31%!

Ace: (pulls out bullhorn)

AND HE HITS THREES NOW!

[After THE JUMP: Florida gets mentioned once. Also Duke.]

12/1/2018 – Michigan 76, Purdue 57 – 8-0, 1-0 Big Ten

Bigs are the college basketball equivalent of offensive linemen. They're hard to project. They take a significant amount of time to refine into their final product. Also they are big.

Once you get outside the rarefied air of the kids who go to basketball factories so fake they can't even bother to come up with a real name—there is now a place called "Spire Academy" which naturally now houses LaMelo Ball—when centers arrive on campus they've mostly spent their time raining fire on 6'3" guys who keep asking the ref if they can use pitchforks against it. Also, they are big, so they've been slotted into basketball teams whether or not they really care to be. The bigger the person, the more foreordained it is that they will play center despite a total lack of basketball-related skills. There's a 7'6" dude from Dakar named Tacko Fall who plays for UCF and shoots 27% on free throws. QED.

So when you hear the new big who looks like a newborn deer during the brief moments he's permitted on the court is nicknamed "The Big Sleep," well… this is our concern. Not even the guy with literal narcolepsy got called The Big Sleep.

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Two years later, Purdue has switched Carsen Edwards onto The Big Sleep. This is a thing Purdue just does on instinct at this point. Does the tall man's jersey read "Michigan"? Okay, switch a firefly onto him because the one thing Michigan never does is post up. This gambit has waned in its effectiveness over time but usually because the Boilermaker on the guard is a great lumbering thing or, now, a Frenchman on a dilapidated bicycle. Michigan still doesn't post up, basically ever.

This time Jon Teske puts Edwards on his back, receives an entry pass, and dunks. Edwards shrugs afterwards. His face says "what I am supposed to do with that?" He knows the answer is nothing.

This is Teske now, with the rough edges sanded down. He puts up 17 points on 8 shot equivalents. He spearheads the #1 defense in college basketball. There are a lot of reasons that opponents are hitting 36% of their twos, but the foremost among them is Teske. When he's on the court teams are hitting 31 percent. 31! When he goes to the bench opponents get 13 percentage points worth of relief. Teske got switched onto Nassir Little in the last game and matched Little's drive to the basket. That ball ended up in the stands.

Teske roared afterward, much like he does in the photo that leads this post. That came when he put poor Grady Eifert on a poster:

Attack this week like Jon Teske attacked the rim against Purdue pic.twitter.com/BiA2IbmATb

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) December 3, 2018

At the top, Simpson is doing his Big Mood walk despite having no involvement in the play. And that's right too. Teske deserves to roar; he deserves all the chest-bumps and weird awkward arm-lock thingies Michigan is doing this year.

He still looks like the nice boy down the street after you increased his pixel count by 50%, and that's why he'll always be Big Sleep to me. Saddi Washington attempted to rebrand Teske as "Big Nasty" last year, but let's keep The Big Sleep around. Big Nasty is taken by Corliss Williamson and generic anyway. Ain't nobody named Big Sleep.

We just have to look at it a different way. The Big Sleep isn't about what Jon Teske is. It's about what he does to your offense, and sometimes your defense. The Big Sleep is a noir movie. The Big Sleep is a wrestling finisher. The Big Sleep is what happens when you tell Cement Ricky you'll have his money in two weeks and don't.

The Big Sleep is what happens when you manage to get past the forest of poking arms around Michigan's perimeter: a giant man in a trenchcoat throws you over his head into the water.

[After THE JUMP: cat and mouse between Beilein and Painter]