zeb jackson

Sorely in need of a better showing after last weekend's debacle against Minnesota, Michigan faced an overmatched and severely undersized Southern Utah team on Saturday night. They got that much better showing, on both ends of the floor. To be clear, Southern Utah is not a good basketball team on a national level and this game will not go down on Michigan's tournament resume. But the Thunderbirds are also not abject either, the projected Big Sky preseason favorites and KenPom only saw this as a Michigan by 14 game. So for the Wolverines to win by 37 is a welcome step in the right direction before the holiday break, no matter how small that step may be. 

The first 5.5 minutes were close, as Michigan led by just 11-10 at that juncture, following a Dre Marin three pointer. After that, it was not close again. The Wolverines strung together a fourteen point run and seized the game quite rapidly. Before you could blink, it was 31-14, and then 45-16. Cumulatively, it was a 34-6 stretch that lasted over twelve minutes of game time. Michigan led by 29 at the break and the game never got closer than a 27 point margin in the second half. It was complete and total domination by the home team in white. 

Michigan's start to the game was fueled by a nice stretch of basketball from DeVante' Jones, who went 5/6 from the field with six rebounds, three assists, and just one turnover. There's not much that can be read from this performance due to Southern Utah's small size, but if there is one thing to be genuinely encouraged about, it's that the transfer PG went 3/3 from beyond the arc.

A nice outing from Jones [Campredon]

As Jones' impact faded, Hunter Dickinson snagged the spotlight with a dominant performance, as expected, against a team that didn't have a player taller than 6'7". The sophomore center posted 22 points in 27 minutes on an incredibly efficient 11/15 from the field, and 11/13 from two (!). 

Once Michigan had command of the game, the bigger story became the contributions of some bench pieces who have been seldom seen in other games, notably Zeb Jackson and Kobe Bufkin. Jackson looked sharp in his 14 minutes, with 8 points on 3/4 from the field, which included him draining both threes he attempted. It's been an erratic season from Jackson, but those kinds of outings will do a lot to gain the confidence of Juwan Howard. Bufkin went o-fer on his threes but was efficient inside the arc and posted 11 points in 18 minutes. 

The rest of the scoring summary is quite varied, with nearly everyone getting involved in a game this offensively explosive. Moussa Diabate and Caleb Houstan notched 8 and 9 points, respectively. Frankie Collins had five, but came up short on a potentially electrifying alley-oop attempt. Brandon Johns Jr., Terrance Williams II, and Eli Brooks each had a few points, with Brooks' performance being rather muted despite playing 24 minutes. The garbage time squad got involved too, as Jaron Faulds, Jace Howard, and Adrien Nuñez all saw the floor in the game's waning moments. 

Hello Kobe! [Campredon]

In all, it was a plainly dominant offensive showing by the Wolverines. Michigan shot 56% from the floor, 39% from three, and scored at 1.26 points per possession. As stellar as it was offensively, it was nearly as dominant defensively. Michigan held a Southern Utah team that had scored 70+ in each of its other two games against KP top 100 teams to just 50 on 33% from the field and 17% from three at 0.72 points per possession. A very strong game all the way around. 

Michigan has one more game until the holiday break, back at it at 7:00 pm on Tuesday night against Purdue Fort-Wayne, who are (per the KP rankings) the worst team Michigan will see all season. It is poised to be another easy win before the Wolverines' improvements are tested in Orlando against UCF on December 30. The Tuesday game is at home and is on Big Ten Network. 

[CLICK THE JUMP FOR THE BOX SCORE]

12/7/2021 – Michigan 102, Nebraska 67 – 6-3, 1-0 Big Ten

You don't want to take too much away from a game against Nebraska, because there are two kinds of games against Nebraska: one in which they hit a bunch of garbage and you have a mildly competitive game, and 35-point blowouts. After Keisei Tominaga hit two tough threes—one a relocation, the other a stepback over a Brooks contest—to give the brief semblance of the former, this one quickly settled into the blowout.

Nebraska's always been a team with huge roster turnover and this year is no different, so you have things like Michigan casually walking the ball upcourt and still getting what's more or less an open transition three for Caleb Houstan:

Jason Benetti is depressed on behalf of all basketball coaches everywhere who had to witness this. At some point even the partisan observer is asking Nebraska to show some sort of organization so that maybe this can be a better measuring stick

But! Nebraska has been reasonably competitive this year and this performance was far better than others against similar (or worse) levels of competition. At this point anything that suggests Michigan is working some things out is more than welcome. Bullets ahoy:

BULLETS

Shot quality: a thing. It's conventional wisdom in the land of the tempo-free stats that three point percentage against is largely random. This game set out to disprove that, with Michigan getting uncontested looks more or less whenever they wanted them and Nebraska throwing up piles of crap—step-backs, 30-footers, transition attempts on which the shooter never comes to a standstill, blindfolded HORSE shots. If you were to re-run this game over and over again there might be a few iterations where the teams came out with similar numbers from behind the arc, but the heart of Michigan's distribution would probably be 40% while Nebraska's was 20%.

The conventional wisdom is likely because most games against similarly matched teams have a similar quality of look from a similar quality of shooter. Over time things tend to even out. This does not mean that there are not individual shots that are good or bad. Usually the quality gap is much, much smaller.

[After THE JUMP: TEBJJ]

2021-22 B1G Basketball Season Preview... previously: Season preview podcast, Power Rankings Lower Half, Power Rankings Upper Half

It's almost here! Michigan basketball is now just a couple days away from tipping off for real, following the exhibition outing against Wayne State on Friday. I did not get to see much of that one, but I have gleaned the insight from the other writers out there and will pepper it into these preview pieces when appropriate. Today we start our positional previews, with this post looking at those players whom I have assigned into the "guard" bucket. Of course, in the modern era of positionless(ish) basketball, it has become harder to simply limit players to just the distinction of being a "guard", so I'm listing the five players on Michigan's roster who best fit that designation here, but acknowledging that some players on here may show up at wing (and I note it in the piece). Let's kick it off with Juwan Howard's high profile transfer acquisition: 

Devante’ Jones

Year: Senior/GRAD

Height/Weight: 6’1/200

Key Counting Stats: 32.8 MPG, 19.3 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 2.9 APG, 2.8 SPG, .487/.368/.862 **

Key Advanced Stats: 25.0% usage, 116.5 ORtg, 5.1 OR%, 17.5 DR%, 16.1 TORate, 17.0 Assist Rate, 43.3 FTRate, 4.3 Steal Rate **

** = at Coastal Carolina

Michigan went shopping for a veteran PG for the second straight season, emboldened by the success of reeling in Mike Smith from Columbia last year. This year’s Halloween present (if that’s a thing) is Devante’ Jones, who comes to Michigan by way of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. The New Orleans native spent three years at Coastal, with last year being his best, earning Sun Belt Player of the Year honors and in the process becoming one of the biggest transfer names on the market. Juwan Howard sold him on Michigan and its system, and Jones is now penciled in as the starting point guard.

Most will run to make comparisons to Mike Smith for obvious reasons, and the comparison has some merit. Their level of competition at their previous destinations was similar, with the Ivy League and the Sun Belt being ranked pretty similarly by KenPom. However, the comparison loses its utility the harder you look, because Jones and Smith are pretty different players.

For one, Jones didn’t really play PG last year, being shifted more into a SG role after playing the point in 2019-20. Secondly, Jones is a bigger player than Smith, listed at 6’1”, compared to Smith’s 5’11”, and Jones’ game thus revolves more around getting to the rim, as opposed to the perimeter shooting that Smith offered. Jones has a range of tricks in his bag when it comes to shooting from two, and he’s shot remarkably well from inside the arc as a collegiate player, >54% in all three seasons at CC. Here’s a survey of said moves:

That floater you see in the first clip is Jones’ most trusted weapon, 80th percentile on Synergy at nearly 1.0 PPP. But beyond that, you see all the moves in his repertoire, the eurostep, the spin move, the ability to cut past defenders and get to the rim, as well as the comfortability to step back and hit the fade away jumper. Pair this with Jones being a prolific scorer in transition and you see how his profile inside the arc allowed Jones to be a lethal offensive player at Coastal Carolina, a 116.5 ORtg on high usage. Indeed, he posted the best ORtg of any player with at least 24% usage in the Sun Belt last season, shedding light on why Jones was the Player of the Year in that conference.

Integrating him into Michigan’s offense may not be silky smooth, despite the talent that Jones possesses, because it bears repeating that his profile is different than Smith's. Michigan’s offense relies heavily on ball screens, yet Jones has not been the ballhandler in the screen and roll game that often in his career, partially because CC doesn’t feature it as much in their offense, but also because he wasn’t playing PG last season. On the other hand, Smith was a polished savant as a PNR ballhandler coming out of Columbia. Similarly, Smith shot 41.8% from three last season, while Jones is just a 33.4% career shooter from beyond the arc, without any obvious clues that suggest Michigan should see upward regression in those numbers next year.

For the record, your author thinks Jones should be just fine as a passer out of the PNR. He may not have a wealth of experience doing it, but the clips of Jones passing out of screens that have been put together by various people analyzing his game have shown me enough to feel comfortable with him in that role. He sees the court well:

The one question regarding Jones as a ballhandler is the turnovers, which have been at an acceptable rate when he’s played as a scoring guard but were at 3.4 per game (a quite bad 21.9 rate) when he played as a PG back in 2019-20. Did those go up as a result of him having to handle the ball more? Unsure, but it’s a storyline to monitor. An additional data point to munch on: Jones had four turnovers in the exhibition against WSU. 

I’m much more uncertain about Jones’ ability to shoot from long range. His 36.8% three-point percentage last season was a career high, but just a year prior Jones was at 29.6%. Unlike Smith, who was taking a lot of bad shots at Columbia because his team was atrocious, which suggested obvious upward regression in 3PT% on a more talented team, Jones hasn’t really been forced into a multitude of bad shots, yet has never shown the ability to shoot from outside as well as Mike Smith. He’s been as good of an offensive player (if not better) than Smith because he’s far more effective inside the arc, but on a Michigan team that’s losing a ton of perimeter shooting talent, it does not appear that Jones is an obvious solution to this. In summary, on the offensive side of the ball, it’s reasonable to assume that Jones will be a very good offensive player, maybe better than Smith, but it’s not a 1:1 substitution in terms of role, and there could be growing pains if Michigan asks Jones to play that same function in the offense.

On defense, though, Jones should be a clear upgrade on Smith. In adding Devante’ Jones, Michigan is getting a premier ball thief, one who posted the 18th-best steal rate in the country last season at 4.3. This will add an intriguing component to the Michigan defense that wasn’t present in 2020-21, as the Wolverines, despite the suffocating defensive numbers, were the 26th-worst team in steal rate last year. Jones is also an excellent defensive rebounder for a point guard, and his height and wingspan advantage compared to Smith will pay dividends on this side of the ball. Need more evidence of his defense? Look at these on/off splits for Coastal Carolina’s defense with and without Jones:

The wide gap in 2PT% is most startling and the clearest indicator of how important Jones was to the Coastal defense. Mike Smith was Michigan’s weakest defender among the starting five last year, and the Wolverines will be swapping him out for a clear plus at that position in Devante’ Jones, which raises the team’s defensive ceiling.

Role: Jones is going to be the starting PG and should get a Smith-like role, somewhere around 30 minutes per game. He is one of the biggest swing factors for this Michigan team, with the ability to both submarine this team below their expectations or push them to even greater heights. ‘Tis life when you hand the keys to the car to a player who has never yet worn the Maize & Blue in an NCAA game. Jones will orchestrate the offense out of the PNR and will probably be, along with Dickinson in the post, one of the two safety valves for late shot clock offense. Get to know him now, because you’ll be seeing a lot of Devante’ Jones this year.

[AFTER THE JUMP: The Professor says class is in session]