The Youth Will Understand
3/3/2019 – Michigan 69, Maryland 62 – 26-4, 15-4 Big Ten
The Youth will understand things because of Zavier Simpson. Every time he hits a hook the announcers go on a giggly Craig Ross tangent—about old people, not communism—with details about basketball players from the Paleozoic.
ah yes the famous basketballer cliff hagen
— Ace Anbender, fan of basketball, the only sport (@AceAnbender) March 3, 2019
I can't blame them, for I giggle internally in the same way whenever Simpson defies nature to thunk in a sky-hook from the next county over. Sometimes I make up players I am reminded of. Simpson's second hook was a Zebediah Reynolds joint, but his third had more of a Jehoshapat Williams feel to it. Reynolds wore an onion on his belt, which was the style at the time. Williams played most of a season with a raccoon gnawing on his shin. Peaches hadn't evolved yet so the league had to find guys with really big mouths and pay them in conch shells. These are the players Simpson reminds me of.
Why you'd develop such a goofy shot was made explicitly clear on Simpson's most audacious hook to date, a late-clock masterpiece on which Bruno Fernando knew exactly what was coming. Even that flat-topped marvel of human engineering was helpless in the face of the mighty hook:
THE HOOK SHOT! pic.twitter.com/EeA2lBm1ru
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 3, 2019
He topped that in the second half with another late-clock desperation heave. This, like Joe Wieskamp's absurd winner against Rutgers, hit the top corner of the backboard.
My bad, that's what I get for not fact checking what I thought I heard on CBS. Maryland lost to Illinois at home too. But.... THIS !! pic.twitter.com/UiYxHzyKDQ
— Ron Chaney (@ChaneyRon) March 4, 2019
The difference is that Simpson meant to do that.
He meant to do all the things he did, no matter how improbable they look. A few years ago I wrote a column about Spike Albrecht during the grim injury-beset period of 2015 in which I noted that for guys Albrecht's size every venture to the basket is an exercise in improbability:
Basketball from the perspective of Spike Albrecht is a multi-dimensional differential equation in which almost all answers are emphatically wrong ones. To avoid being postmarked to Lake Michigan, Albrecht has to swoop through the lane several times to induce dizziness in the opposition and then find the one local minima that will result in a shot instead of an Ent-shaped man flexing.
He does this regularly.
Simpson has taken this art form and refined it to a knife edge. Five times in this game X bailed Michigan out of a possession that was going nowhere. Michigan twitter, incensed by the Bruno Fernando dunk tracker, pounded the table for a Hook Tracker, and CBS complied. One tracker is about a genetic lottery winner's physical dominance. The other is about a short guy's sheer cussedness.
The Youth will understand old basketball players and geometry. They will be able to trace out parabolic curves from angles diverse. They will have big moods.
Can we stop and appreciate how terrifying X can be when he wants to? pic.twitter.com/vt7jdOLnGv
— Noah Neidlinger (@candor_for_sale) March 4, 2019
At basketball camps across the state 5'6" middle-schoolers will be flinging up shots from behind their ear. Thirty years from now the play by play guy will reference Zavier Simpson when a point guard re-invents the hook out of desperation.
In certain contexts even your author qualifies as Youth. I grew up in an era where the "true point guard" was rhapsodized but rapidly approaching extinction. The shooting guard shot. The point guard was a little guy who ran around gluing parts of the team together. He didn't really shoot; he didn't have to. This was already a rapidly dying concept in the era of the Bad Boys, let alone the Billups-era Pistons or Burke-era Michigan teams. These days, forget it: it's Steph Curry's world.
So I thought all that reminiscing about the real PG was your typical Old Man Yells At Sport stuff. I still do, mostly. Shooting is a good skill to have in the game where all your points come on shots.
But now I get it. The Youth will understand that is magnificent when the guy with seven shots dominates the game. Simpson made or assisted on all but one of Michigan's first-half makes. The decisive three-possession sequence for Michigan was Zavier Simpson with the game on a string. First he finds Teske on a pick and pop; then he takes advantage of Maryland overplaying Teske for a layup; then he takes advantage of Maryland playing both those things and finds a cutting Brazdeikis for a layup. Bang, bang, bang. Surgery.
Maryland was scoring on the other end. The Human Element Center was packed to the gills and screaming, and Zavier Simpson dissected the opposition without batting an eye. The Youth of College Park understand all too well this morning.
[After THE JUMP: Pruno Fernando. As in he's pruned, not that his fingers are wrinkly. nvm I'll start again.]
[After THE JUMP: Bruno Fernandidn'tmakemanyshots]
[Sherman]
Fernando neutralized. Bruno Fernando had 12 points on 14 shot equivalents, three TOs, and one assist. In two games against Michigan he's shot 10/23 from two and gotten four FTs with two assists and six TOs. In a table:
| 2PT% | FT rate | TO rate | A/GM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs Michigan | 43% | 17 | 26 | 1 |
| vs rest of B10 | 60% | 63 | 24 | 2.4 |
(Apologies for the assist rate copout. It's hard to calculate on the fly.)
God bless Jon Teske and, to a limited extent, Colin Castleton knowing when to foul that dude on the floor. Fernando is a first round NBA center and he put up 92 and 97 ORTGs against Teske. Watching Fernando bang into him and then boggle at the fact that he wasn't going anywhere was quite a thing. Hell, two of his buckets across the two games were inch-perfect alley-oops nobody in the world was going to defend and a couple more were dunks when Teske had to help. When it was one on one in the post it was a blowout. By the second half of this game I was perfectly happy when Maryland dumped it into the post.
…on one end, anyway. Fernando's six blocks went a long, long way towards keeping Maryland in the game. Two or three of those were shots that looked real real nice until Fernando swooped in out of nowhere, and then Maryland was able to convert on ensuing transition opportunities. Fernando turned this into a block:
[Sherman]
JFC. A couple were debatably on their way down, but 1) the defense always gets the benefit of the doubt there and 2) who blocks shots at the apex!?
Fernando also seemed to bother Teske into another grim night from three. Like the first matchup Teske was 0-for-many until hitting a critical late one; again these were mostly short. It felt like Teske was rushed and maybe changing his shot angle because of the threat of a Fernando block.
Related: the drought. Simpson picked up two quick fouls at the beginning of the first half and suffered an autobench that lasted from ~18:30 to the under 12 timeout. Michigan was –8 during this period and +17 for the rest of the game. The difference was night and day:
Simpson picked up his third foul with 18:35 left in the second half and didn't return until the 11:01 mark. It was the only time he sat. Maryland scored 18 points during that stretch on 8-of-14 shooting to grab a two-point lead.
Simpson returned, and Maryland missed its next eight shots, going nearly eight minutes between made field goals.
Approximately half of the minus section was because David DeJulius successfully executed a euro-step in transition for an easy layup only for Fernando to get a spectacular block, which eventually resulted in the questionable and-one suffered by Livers. That was one of two four-point swings induced by Fernando blocks out of nowhere. The other is pictured above.
Autobench, oblig. Simpson picked up a silly third foul that led to the autobench described above. I got the DDJ portion of said autobench, I guess: put Simpson on the bench so you can be like "HEY DON'T DO THAT PLEASE" and get him a little rest—IIRC he did not come out in the first half. Extending that to the under 12 really ground the old gears because Poor Damn Eli Brooks got the last four minutes there, badly missing two shots and looking much like he's looked for the whole of conference play.
Simpson did not pick up a foul in the final 11 minutes and change, because he averages a foul every seventeen minutes.
Oh and also. It's actually a disappointment that there aren't more actual PGs in the league, because we haven't had the same ability to point to him wrecking shop as we did last year. But Anthony Cowan is one. Cowan in this game: 4/15, one assist, four TOs.
Aaargh. Michigan was 1/11 from three in the first half and the make was Michigan's worst look, a contested shot from Iggy. The others were semi-contested at best and mostly wide open; Iggy's make was literally the first non-hook Michigan had made away from the rim. Thanks to Michigan's defense this year they were able to get to halftime with a lead, but man that first half felt like a giant missed opportunity to run Maryland out of the building.
Michigan was 5/9 in the second half to get up to 30% for the game. It feels like any game in which Michigan is able to hit 40% from three is going to be a laugher.
[Sherman]
Iggy on the attack. Quite a stat: Brazdeikis drew nine fouls and committed none. He again had one of those days where you look at the stat sheet and he's got 21 points out of nowhere. During the aargh section of the first half he kept Michigan afloat by getting to the line and grabbing offensive rebounds.
Encouragingly, he was able to diversify his driving from straight line stuff to some change of direction. His spin moves often caught Maryland hands grasping at him and drew those fouls.
Castleton, established. Colin Castleton is not yet ready to take on the Fernandos of the world but during his first half stretch against Jalen Smith he was completely fine. He did this…
That's MISTER Castelton to you. pic.twitter.com/kw5JyydVDU
— Due# (@JDue51) March 3, 2019
…and that's a thing, there, that separates him from the Austin Davises and Mark Donnals of the world. I will occasionally describe an opponent as a "dunk on assists guy" in a somewhat derisive fashion, but being able to dunk a lot is a good trait to have. It's helped Michigan out on various alley-oops to Teske; its absence has been painful when other guys have manned the 5.
I don't want to fast forward through March but I am looking forward to next year when Michigan once again has a very good backup C.
DDJ got pulled for Brooks for reasons that remain opaque to me. He did chip in a little when he was in: he made a nice move to the basket in the first half that drew Jalen Smith's second foul and sent him to the bench for ~10 minutes. Also until Bruno erased it that transition take was pretty good.
The kiss. Iggy post-game:
My girls the baddest tho so I stay winning ♂️ good road dub https://t.co/hQ0ijkvHEw
— Ignas Brazdeikis (@_iggy_braz) March 3, 2019
As a veteran of the aughts-era Yost student section I must exhort the Maryland student section to ramp their game up.
Who says "I want to play for this guy?" Izzo was at a peak even for him after the Indiana game:
Tom Izzo had some thoughts after Michigan State's loss to Indiana. pic.twitter.com/WDPSJonTYp
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) March 2, 2019
I have no idea how MSU recruits.
Beilein postgame. Via the Daily:
Standing at the podium 20 minutes after the buzzer, John Beilein took a long pause and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to find the right way to describe Simpson’s presence on the floor.
“Security blanket, is that the wrong word to say?” he asked, before answering himself. “It probably is. I just think there’s a confidence factor when he’s out there.”
Also this is a hell of an X story:
Livers saw that for the first time back on one of his first days in uniform for the Wolverines last season. Assistant coach Luke Yaklich, then newly-minted, was conducting what Livers called Sunday, “this terrible drill that I don’t recommend for anybody.” For 15 minutes, Michigan’s roster was crouched down in a defensive stance, sliding back and forth.
Simpson didn’t let a single person off the hook.
“If you gave up, he’s on you,” Livers said. “Like, ‘Why are you giving up? Get up! Get up! Get up! We’re gonna be solid. We’re gonna be a great defensive team this year.’
“And obviously, numbers don’t lie.”
He's pushing Steve Grote out of my heart. Yeah, I'm old.
Mentality-wise, Simpson would have fit very comfortably on that '76 team.
If Teske could develop a little Wagneresque shot fake and drive-into-the-lane move on those 3 point looks, he would be all-world. Those hard Fernando close-outs that bothered his 3 point attempts would morph into an embarrassment of open drives to the hoop. And it would cause Fernando to worry about the drive option, thus inducing some hesitation in his close-outs.
I'm not complaining - Teske played a man's game again on Sunday. His defense was lights out. But the shot fake from 3 point land is one aspect of Wagner's offensive game that I dearly miss.
EDIT: Maison Bleue beat me to the punch!
Something something... great minds... something something.
When he finally hits that hook behind the 3 I better immedialtely read his lips to say “Are you not entertained?”
Love this Savior Zimpson of ours!
Also Tesk3! because he only needs 1 three to dominate a game.
Don't play with my heart like that. I think it's not outside the realm of possibility that he could hit that shot from 3. I just picture us up 15 points on MSU with under a minute to go and he drives to the right corner and just gives it a shot. It goes in, and that shot defines the Beilein era. More than Burke vs. Kansas. More than Mo vs. Ankles. More than Poole with the split leg dagger.
It will never happen but until it doesn't, I'm hoping for that 0.00001% chance.
haha. i remember bob lanier taking a baseline 3pt hook shot. i'm guessing because his feet were so damn big he had to have them sideways. that said, the hook shot was his specialty too.
Z is the freaking man.
Admittedly, I was starting to get a little concerned that Z's hook has become his "go-to" when he drives the paint - as opposed to what I call his quick little "slip" lay-up that always seems to go in even with blockers present.
But in the last couple of games I've noticed him using both - The slip layup when he beats a guy off the dribble, the hook when he doesn't.
I still think he could get that slip layup in in some of those cases where he has gone to the hook, but I'm fine with it: They seem to go in at the same rate and let's face it, the hook is just so damn much cooler.
They could run a play off that action. The players on the other teams clearly have scouted the hook shot--you can tell how hard one or two guys go after him to try to block it. Any Michigan wing could walk right down the open lane for a little slip dish and dunk.
my god, i love it when izzo goes all pouty.
what a turd.
i don't understand how he recruits, either. it's got to be solely on reputation at this point, right? miles bridges, jeron jackson, nick ward - they go to east lansing, develop not one single bit of their game and leave with worse reps than when they showed up. i don't get it.
who was the last sparty who left east lansing significantly better than when they arrived? draymond, i guess? valentine? who else?
Ben Carter
Probably Valentine, he is the only Izzo recruit outside the top 100 that I can recall who turned into a first round NBA draft pick.
Meanwhile JB plucks a kid from outside the top 200 and turns him into a first round draft pick and does so with kids outside the top 100 on the regular.
Draymond was a top 100 guy, but not drafted until the second round. His improvement seemed to happen more once he got to the league and is really in the perfect system for the way he plays. Not sure he would be an all-star caliber player on most other teams.
Scott Skiles
Well, Scott played for a helluva high school coach-he knew how to play the game very well long before he got to MSU. Skiles led Plymouth to a state championship when Indiana was still a single class state. Pymouth was a smaller school in a medium-sized school athletic conference-though that conference did (also) produce the likes of Rick Fox and Shawn Kemp. It was a pleasure watching those kids grow up-some tremendous, fundamentally sound basketball.
It's a bit silly to say no one gets better under Izzo. Cassius Winston obviously got better. Draymond was POY caliber, Valentine obviously great as well. McQuaid has become a really good role players. Freaking Goins is good now. Both of those developments drive me crazy. Izzo is an annoying turd and isn't great at utilizing elite talent, but he definitely develops them in their later years.
well...i think valentine and dray were both top-100 recruits out of high school...i guess if we want to give izzo credit for helping them get to the nba i won't argue. and sure, goins and mcquaid have turned into serviceable players, and i didn't think that would happen.
still. i see jeron jackson, and miles bridges, and gary harris, and...heck, travis walton. kalin lucas, keith appling...in my head, they all left exactly the way they arrived. i'm sure my memory is bad on some of those guys, but none of them scared the crap out of me as seniors the way i thought they would as freshmen.
Is that picture of X's terrifying face at the top just a different angle of the same one in Noah Neidlinger's right picture? Or does he just always make that face?
Rewound many times yesterday on Z's 2 hooks in the first half where the 2 old dudes behind the basket just shake their heads and/or throw their hands in the air.
Izzo is losing it
"This was already a rapidly dying concept in the era of the Bad Boys"
Isaiah Thomas, John Stockton, Dennis Johnson, Magic Johnson, Mark Price, Mo Cheeks, Nate Archibald and Sidney Moncrief say hello. And thats just off the top of my head. Man Brian how old were you during the Bad Boys Era?
Magic Johnson?!
I think you're pretty much proving his point. These guys were efficient scorers -- both Isiah and Magic averaged > 25 points per 100 possessions. (Also, you spelled Isiah's name wrong). Stockton scored 21; Price, 26; DJ, 20.5. Cheeks is a good example -- 16.8 points, 10.2 assists per 100. Tiny Archibald retired after the '84 season, and was still more of a scorer than you'd think (22.4 points / 9.6 assists per 100). And Moncrief was a shooting guard -- 5.8 assists per 100 possessions.
I'd look at somebody like Mark Jackson -- 16.3 points per 100, compared to 13.5 assists. But, honestly, I'm not sure there really was an era of the traditional pass-first point guard -- or, at least, those weren't the stars. If you look at top point guards in the 70s, for example, you get players like Walt Frazier -- 6.8 assists and 22.7 points per 100.
For comparison, BTW, Steph is at 33.5 points & 9.5 assists; CP3 is 27.5 points and 14.4 assists; Westbrook is 33.5 points and 12.2 assists. So, I'd argue that the modern point guard is just an extension of the trends that were started a long time ago.
Ace, while I'm all for mocking Tim Brando for referencing old timey basketballers, the correct old-timey verbiage is "cagers."
I'm not gonna be down on Brooks as everyone else is, because I remember a time he was better than Simpson..... his shot confidence is rock bottom and it shows... if he sticks to layups until he gets some confidence again, it'll be good, because we will need him in the tourney, as DDJ isn't ready yet, and I don't understand why everyone thinks he is.... I'd rather play Brooks right now, sans the shooting. Even Nunez. If we are gonna go 0-8 when X is out, why not play Nunez for the same stretch, and see if we can get our three point game going.
Simpson is clear and away our best and most important player...I don't think I have seen him miss a hook shot yet... I used to love seeing Kareem make hook shots and was disappointed nobody takes them anymore, until now.... and he has a few traits that the Piston's Isiah Thomas had.... now, lets hope next year they redo his three point form and shoot it above his head, because that is all that is missing from his game at the next level.
Castleton is gonna be a star as an upperclassman, and will be better than Teske, I predict... but needs another 30 lbs.
Am looking forward to Livers playing TE.
Brooks is not a B1G caliber player and the sooner people accept this the better, especially Beilein. He's 5/27 from the field in 2019 and gone scoreless 12 times. He needs to stop getting minutes.
as DDJ isn't ready yet, and I don't understand why everyone thinks he is....
Because most casual fans focus mainly on offensive skill set.
He’s better defensively than he is offensively though, so that isn’t it
I never understand coaches throwing their teams under the bus. How is that remotely productive?
I assume they think of it as negative reinforcement. A lot of people confuse cause and effect w.r.t. negative and positive reinforcement and regression to the mean. If you yell and scream at a player after a bad game, and he goes out and has a better game... was it because you yelled and screamed at him? Or was it because he had an abnormally bad game, and he was likely* to have a better game afterwards due to regression to the mean? Similarly, if you heap praise on a player after a good game, and he goes out and plays more poorly in the next game, is that a sign that he got an inflated ego? Or was he just likely* to have a poorer game?
* This is not to suggest that a player should be expected to have a much better than average game after a much worse than average game -- the statistics have no memory. However, if a player or team had a really bad game -- say, a 2% likelihood event, like when Michigan shot 3/22 from the three-point line in the first Minnesota game -- their next game is really, really likely to be better, Like, 98 times out of 100, better, in this particular example. :). The mean is always the most likely outcome for the next trial, so if you were well below the mean, expect improvement, and if you were well above the mean, expect regression.
Works for Brian Kelly.
X reminded me of this wonderful "skyhooking" song and tribute video
Even in today's age of the internet and everyone having the ability to be "tuned in" I'm willing to bet that recruits just don't know about Izzo's comments after losses. MSU recruits the way it does because the recruits don't watch these post game conferences and aren't made aware of them by opposing coaches. It makes me think there is little to no negative recruiting in the Big Ten.
These kids aren't on the internet doing research about the 30-50 schools that are recruiting them. They're in the gym putting up 3's, going to high school parties, studying, etc.
Long day at work.
Among the many things I didn’t appreciate about Z last year to this year, one which stands out is his relentless pursuit of accountability for each teammate.
It’s evident throughout the games his constant encouragement and fierce determination to see guys do their job.
It is a joy to watch and quite frankly, something I never anticipated watching him early on.
He is an incredible young man and JB knows how to pick em.
Somebody with skills should photoshop Z on a picture of Captain Hook holding a basketball.
It would make a great t shirt
The angle of the hook shots is amazing - he puts the ball so high off the board.
Reminds me of back in the day, when rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people ... so we tied an onion to our belt which was the style at the time ... nickels had bumblebees on them ... "give me five bees for a quarter" .... it was kinda quiet until Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong ... Zavier Simpsons was hooking the ball high off the backboards and the look on the opposing benches when he would arc that ball high off the glass ... we called it glass then even though it was actually a laminate of glass and plastic and some type of clear glue ... Coach Beilein got ejected from a game ... he was mad as a wet hen ... good times...
It would be good for the boys to work a look off of Z's hook drive. Maybe a slip pass to someone cutting the lane for a flush, while the big is committed to Z, hoping to knock the hook satellite out of orbit.
Simpson's now-trademarked (no one else does it these days) and now nation-famous shot looks sort of like a hook shot but it isn't. Hook shots are made by guys at least 6-5 tall and usually directly in front of or very near the basket, frequently through the basket without using the backboard. He has invented a new shot that shorter guys can use away from the basket and at any angle, and always at an angle -- in fact, it must have an angle and use a corner of the backboard to qualify as a "Simpson shot." So, let's come up with a new name for it -- a "Z shot" a "Z/X shot" or what?
How does he do that, especially consistently???
When I used to play rec basketball I regularly played against an older normal sized guy who had a running hook shot that he often banked in just like Simpson. It was unguardable. If he was hitting it, you couldn't stop it. All you could do is try to push him farther away from the basket and make it harder to hit. The guy was slower than crap and couldn't dribble past a tree, but if he was hitting his hook, there was very little you could do to stop him other than just prevent him from getting anywhere near the basket. You can't get to the shot without fouling, and the guy was strong enough to usually bull his way into range.
Tom Izzo is Woody Hayes 40 years later. And it is going to end in exactly the same fashion. He is going to lose it 1 day and do something that forces MSU to fire him.
If I were the guy in charge of hiring for the Harlem Globetrotters, I'd be figuring out how the heck I could coax Z into joining them. Think he could get to the point where he could make it from three point range consistently (knowing he had the shot unchallenged)? I do.
Meadowlark Lemon made a career out of the half court hook. And pulling down opponents' shorts, playing up how hard he was fouled, then a free throw with an elastic cord, but I digress. It would be even better from a 5 ft. whatever guy. There are worse jobs than playing the Washington Generals or Boston Shamrocks every night...just sayin'.
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