Michigan vs. ISU (Snowflakes) Thread

GR3 is overrated. It's not his fault, but I have no idea where all the hype originates. He's not All-American caliber, and he might not even be All-Conference 1st team. He's a solid player, I love having him ... but he's not going to carry a team.

I'm always less bummed out by early-season losses in basketball because they usually don't hurt you late in the year unless the opposition just craters.  ISU looked like a tourney team, and a road loss is going to help this team establish itself going forward.  It remains a team a level behind MSU, but otherwise this team still looked decent despite McGary coming back from injury and the team still finding itself with the new parts.

It's borges's fault, he should be fired.

I just want Nic shooting our late threes to get back into the game more often.

The areas for improvement I noticed the most are: 1. Walton's ability to feed the bigs down low. When the threes go cold we've got to have the ability to pound it inside for easy buckets. This was a huge part o Burke's game and something we're missing right now. 2. Team defense is lacking. Just need to figure out the new roles and I'm confident this will improve. 3. GR3 has gone from one end of the spectrum to the other as others have said. He's been forcing a lot so far this season. I think he may have heard the calls to make his own offense a little too much both in the locker room and outside it. Just needs to find the right balance. 4. We need someone who can drive the lane with some level of success. It seems like Stauskas and Levert have some ability to get to the lane but I don't know about their ability to actually finish contested at the rim and I think later in the year teams will figure out they're just going o kick it out and adjust.

I'm confident well improve

is more than a jump shooter.

1. Too many quick jump shots.  For any team, unless they're on, this is pretty much a recipe for poor shooting and easy transition looks for the other team.  We seemed to be rushing out there in general, which is probably the result of a young team playing in a tough road environment early in the season and also inexperienced point guard play.  The times Walton and Albrecht took the opportunity to assertively compose the half-court offense, we executed and established command of the game flow, but these were few and far between.

2. We got out-muscled on the interior.  I realize McGary's minutes were being limited, so this could have a played into to why he wasn't ever on the floor together with Horford, but having Caris defend in the post as opposed to GRIII had the same result - getting overpowered for high-percentage deep posts looks and offensive putbacks.  I don't agree with general sentiment on this blog that "2 bigs doesn't work."  This may be true for teams that primarily or entirely use small lineups, but if we don't use two bigs against teams like Arizona, MSU, and some other B1G teams, it will be very, very tough to win those games.  It's all about matchups.

I also realize that Beilein may have been going small to try to have a better offensive flow, but in basketball, it's much easier to get an offensive flow initially established through transition opportunities generated off of defense than half-court execution.  The small lineup couldn't get enough stops and rebounds to sufficiently generate these opportunities.

An interesting principle I've recognized in basketball is that defensive lineups work better for coming back from deficits, while more offensive lineups work better for maintaining leads.  Basketball is all about getting high-percentage shots, which come off of transition, low-post position, and offensive rebounds.  The team that's forced to take more jump shots in half-court offense will almost always be on the losing side.

Yet another game in which GRIII failed to impress. And I continue to fail to understand the hype this kid gets. 

With the injection of McGary this team had to take a step back until everyone gels and is on the same page.  This team will be ready by the time the Big 10 season begins and will run deep into April.

We played the best when McGary was on the floor. Although the hockey-frequent substitutions did seem to have everyone unbalanced, and that was partially necessitated by the need to limit the length of McGary's stints out there.