1st Basketball Open Thread

Norfolk State zones us and Brooks hits a 3 over it. Great for him but we're gonna need that this year, other wise we'll be zoned all year and struggle.

Free throws looking not improved, hooray

Teske misses 2 FTs and then Matthews has an opem 3 rim out. Hopefully some of this is rust/early season jitters or else yikes

Davis with a hilarious 2 off his FT miss.

Wow we really can't seem to shoot, hopefully it gets better but they look terrible shooting it.

Austin Davis with the award for being the only player on the court paying attention...

Duhhhhhr, what's a 1 and 1???

Shooting and ft’s might be a problem this year. D looks good

Simpson's shot is still too stiff, not fluid at all.

Matthews and Z have each missed another 3, Davis a front end FT. The D is great though, their only bucket is a FT line jumper banked in.

We Cincinnati now bois

Shooting por favor.

Hmmm....Apparently we forgot to practice free throw shooting over the last 7 months. Maybe someone could make a note of that for next year. 

I like this new Not-Just-A-Shooter™ Jordan Poole.

A lot of perimeter passing but great job by Poole to attack, break dowm the zone and kick it to Livers for 3.

Then Iggy hits a 3 for his first bucket. Lets hope that's a thing because we'll need him to be a reliable shooter.

I know it's just Norfolk State, so I don't want to over-react, but I think we go undefeated this year. 

I want a Teske triple dammit

Shooting has started to pick up which is nice. Lets see it at the line too.

Isaiah Livers aka Duncan Robinson aka Nik Stauskas aka Sauce Castillo. 

Imagine if we opened the game shooting halfway decent. We'd be up 40-5 instead of 25-5. 

Teske could be a first rounder if he could finish at the basket. 

Pretty cool rings.

Free throws, man...

We have like 3 threes rim out 

MSU gonna be a tough team. But Kansas is going to get much better as the season goes along. MSU too, but I wouldn’t expect the same leap.

I can't believe the free throws are still an issue.  Beilein's teams were excellent from the line for years until last year and now are the worst.

CM needs a shot psychologist.  

Sheesh the FTs are killers.

Starting to call ticky tack fouls now

Horrible 1st half shooting. Especially free throws. I guess we forgot to practice that. First game so I know Beilein will get us going.

Pretty disappointing last 8 min, Matthews doesn’t look to great. Eli Brooks looks better this year. I liked what I saw from Livers too. I don’t think Iggy will have quite the impact everyone expects him too. It’s early, literally the first game, but you can clearly see where Michigan is gonna struggle this year. The D will be solid every night though.

1st half impressions:

D: As good as advertised, granted there's level of competition caveats especially since Norfolk is missing their best 2 players.

Shooting: Started awful, was average during the middle portion of the half, ended awful. FT shooting was terrible.

Brooks: 1/2 from 3 and some plays/passes when running the point.

Livers: 2/2 from 3 with good D and some other stuff chipped in. Seems like a good glue guy.

Iggy: Some freshman nerves/issues but 1/3 from 3 and would have been 2/4 if one wasn't wiped out by a Simpson foul.

Teske: Great D. Mid range shot was there but bad at the line.

Poole: Shot wasn't there (not too worried about that long term) but the playmaking was great.

Matthews: Shot was awful, from 3 and the line. He was good on D, rebounding, passing and finishing at the rim but it's disappointing to see no progress with the shot. Unless he fully regressed I don't think he's this bad though.

Simpson: Provided nothing on offense and the shot was just as bad as last year. However the D was great and when he went out Norfolk got their only easy buckets.

MSU lost as well which is nice.

I counted 33 first half possessions.  Things were looking up at 30-7 through the first 25 of those, but NSU’s 6-2 run to end the half took some additional luster off of the performance.  I have 0.97 ppp for Michigan and 0.39 ppp for NSU, assuming you want to charge them for the last shot (I did, since it almost went in, but I could see an argument either way).

The shooting percentages are awful — 36.4% from the floor (42.1% from 2, 28.6% from 3 for an eFG of 42.4%) and 30.8% from the line.  Michigan’s advantage in this game comes from controlling the boards — they collected 40.7% of available OREBs and 90.0% of available DREBs.  Turnovers are a win for Michigan — 15.1% vs. 24.2% — but that number looked better before the end sequence as well.

If a few more shots fall in the second half, the efficiency numbers are going to look OK (and that defensive efficiency is off-the-charts good, even for a MEAC opponent).  As for the shooting percentages, well... Michigan may be relying on quite a few Teske OREBs this year.

LSU still number 7...what in thee fuck

Started reading these posts and thought we had lost.  Checked the score and said WTF.  Get a grip.  

The ACC?!? What the actual fuck?

Horseshit call