Big Ten referees all own Snuggies

2 hours and 5 minutes

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1. Offense vs Indiana

starts at 1:00

Selling out versus loading up: when Michigan went pistol IU went balls for the wall against the run, even bringing corners to the line of scrimmage before the mesh point. All three(!) play-action passes were big gains. Something to talk about with the receivers finally, including Shoooooon. Blake Corum: still Hart but Fast, not saying Barry Sanders okay OKAY? Edwards is good not Corum good. Offensive line met resistance but didn’t give up pass-rush: that’s opponent variant. Disagreement on Barnhart.

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]

Helpful: The UFR Glossary. Final reminder: Eyabi [was Anoma]'s name is now Eyabi Okie.

Substitution Notes: With scrub season over the depth chart compressed down to 20 guys in the rotation and 22 who played total. M also went small in this one, matching 12 personnel with a nickel and 11 personnel with Makari Paige in for a linebacker. Goode was the 4th DT to play but got bowled around and Benny came in. On the other side, UMD kept trying to get weird matchups with 2 or 3 RBs, multiple tight ends doing WR or RB things, etc.

Formation Notes: Nothing new. Reminder that a position in a parenthetical means he's covered and "Fritz" is a pistol with the QB flanked by two more RBs (or an RB and TE, whatever). L'shanah Tovah!

[After THE JUMP: Oh right, this is what it's like to play a Big Ten team.]

12/31/2020 – Michigan 84, Maryland 73 – 8-0, 3-0 Big Ten

Hunter Dickinson got the ball on the outer edges of what could be called the left block, patiently waited out a dig-down, and put the ball on the court for a couple dribbles before spinning back to his right. Then he launched Tim Duncan's shot.

This is not an analogy. That is literally the thing Tim Duncan—one of very few NBA superstars in history to have bank shot compilations floating around Youtube—used to do, except Dickinson is left-handed. The first clip of this, yep, Tim Duncan bank shot compilation is exactly the above:

I laughed in the same way Ace and Adam did in the press box after Jourdan Lewis's interception against Wisconsin. Encapsulated therein: relief, disbelief, happiness, the feeling of reaching in your coat and pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. Michigan may have pulled Tim Duncan But Angry At Maryland out of Juwan Howard's first recruiting class. Michigan State pulled a guy who can't beat out Thomas Kithier for minutes. Cackling is authorized.

Dickinson finished 10/11 from the floor. He's shooting 77% in Big Ten play and has cracked the Kenpom Player of the Year leaderboard*. Despite reports from the Maryland side of things that Dickinson was never particularly interested in the Terps—not a surprise since they haven't gotten a DeMatha player in 18 years(!)—he managed to inflate minor perceived recruiting disrespect into a reason to Kubrick stare at Mark Turgeon every time he scored. This was found to be so intimidating that Dickinson was assessed a technical.

On one level this was an outrage. On the other hand, yeah, I kind of get it.

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Michigan just had this game against Nebraska, except Maryland is not Nebraska and the level of unconscious Maryland shooters reached was somewhere between nuclear and… uh… I had something for this… really nuclear. There is one thing to do when your opponent hits 59% of their threes: bitch about randomness and take the L.

Except when you shoot 75% from two and 90% from the line, and the opposition doesn't quite crack 42% inside the line. Only good teams can survive strategic bombing outta nowhere games. Teams that have a lot of slack against a top 50 team. Michigan gets that slack in one line on Kenpom:

Michigan is a top five team inside the line at both ends of the floor, and conference play has not yet cracked that number. Michigan's actually better in conference play so far. (Against three lower-end Big Ten teams, granted, but this is a no-days-off conference.) They have the #1 eFG defense in conference play despite opponents hitting 44% from deep.

I entered the season with modest expectations. Two transfers, defensive question marks, the #1 recruiting class coming in next year: I was prepared to take a bid as enough and anything else as a win. Every time a tall guy does something against Michigan's backcourt I feel the "ah well" re-emerge. And then Michigan wins by double digits against increasingly good teams.

I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out of something and it hasn't yet. Maybe Northwestern and their five-out offense will be a problem. Wisconsin rather looms in 11 days. At this point it feels like those two games are inflection points between a top 25 team and a top 10—maybe top 5—one. This is encouraging.

It's especially encouraging because Juwan Howard did this by leaning into his wheelhouse. He grabbed the closest analogue to himself in the most recent recruiting class and has coached him—and his teammates—up to a point where he's a top ten player in college basketball eight games into his career.

Michigan's good at the repeatable, sustainable things. Being good at them also feels repeatable and sustainable. The program itself sort of has a Tim Duncan vibe right now.

*[Notable for a couple different reasons. #1: Big Ten players (Garza, Dosunmu, Jackson-Davis) are currently 1-2-3. #2: Loyola-Chicago center Cameron Krutwig is #5. Yes, that Cameron Krutwig. He was just a freshman during their Final Four run.]

[After the JUMP: is 90% good?]