Sitting Wagner in 2nd Half
I am trying to figure out the game strategy there, last night in particular. He was a disaster defensively against Ok. St. and that was an up and down shoot out where Wagner was a little bit of a fish out of water in that game. I was on board there. He also clearly has a lot of learning to do with regard to the team defensive principles, positioning, etc.
However, I did not particularly understand it last night. He wasn't shooting well but he was at least making Oregon have to contend with a "big person" in the lane, if nothing else, and he was finishing when they found him near the rim. Robinson also did not play well against Louisville and had jacked a couple of ill-advised shots in the first half last night. He could not contain dribble drive at all, either.
I understand that this will possibly bring quite a bit of Beilein venom out, and equally as much "he has been coaching for 30 years I think I will go with his idea," but aside from those scorching takes, what was the reasoning there? It would really be unfortunate if Wagner decided to go ahead and take his talents somewhere where dollars are paid next year, and I don't know if that was ideal timing for whatever clever idea lead to the decision to sit him for that stretch. Perhaps there was something that I was missing that factored into it?
March 24th, 2017 at 12:56 PM ^
Not only was Wagners shot way off, but he had some miserable, lazy passes last night as well. More than one turned into a turnover, if I recall correctly. The noteable one that didn't turnover was the outlet he threw at someone's back.
He was just generally off his game.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:24 AM ^
Maybe the talk of his vastly improved NBA prospects, went to his head.
March 24th, 2017 at 12:45 PM ^
texted me asking if Wagner had been on a 3-day bender since all the Louisville attention. He played like it.
March 24th, 2017 at 11:55 AM ^
wagner wasn't even finishing around the rim last night to warrant giving him the ball in the post more
I thought Moe looked pretty awful yesterday.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:01 AM ^
He was just bad. He was missing baskets and lay-ins like it was an eight-foot hoop. Just a terrible night.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:01 AM ^
Something was clearly off. His post moves were almost like slow motion. When he got iso opportunities, he did that arm shrug, rolled very slow to the rim and bricked.
And his three-ball wasn't even close.
But, the whole team was off. Honestly, Michigan was lucky Oregon didn't play much better or it could have been ugly early.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:03 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 10:04 AM ^
Mo was terrible yesterday, but we needed him in there at the end of the game to grab those boards. It's the little things that win championships and Michigan didn't do them yesterday.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:15 AM ^
would seem that, at a minimum, Donnal should have been inserted when the foul was called. Donnal is certainly not a beast on the boards, but it is never a good thing to have Duncan Robinson on either of the low blocks for a one and one.
I think the "little things" is a good way to put it. They just didn't look engaged from the very beginning and were making really odd mistakes. DJ Wilson "faking" the no-defenders-in-sight in the lane when he was wide open for a dunk was a perfect example. They kind of played like they were waiting for an inevitable bad thing to happen. The exact opposite of how they have been playing for three weeks. Just an odd showing last night.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:28 AM ^
They played like a white collar team last night. 31 three pointers, two offensive rebounds, 8 turnovers in the first half, not boxing out in the last minute of a sweet 16 game TWICE, etc.
It was a good run, but this team reverted back to it's identity in November. I had a feeling this would happen because Oregon is not nearly as physical as Louisville and Michigan has a tendendcy for their toughness on a given night to mirror their opponenet. MAAR and Wagner should not have even gotten off the bus. Complete no shows.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:32 AM ^
did not play like a "white collar" team nor did they "revert back" to anything. They lost to the PAC 12 champions by one point in the Sweet 16. Your first post was spot on, your second post was flame bait rubbish.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:37 AM ^
The "Pac 12 champs" without their best player. When you jack up 30 three balls, don't box out at the end of game repeatedly, and only grab 2 offensive rebounds all night, sorry that's white collar. You disagree, fine. But they played bad basketball last night.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:45 AM ^
agree with you that the played bad basketball last night. I think it is ridiculous of you to use some lame quote from Maverick Morgan from two months ago to try to retroactively validate your opinion of the team, an opinion they annihilated over the last month in spectacular fashion.
March 24th, 2017 at 11:09 AM ^
That distinction goes to Dillion Brooks. Don't get me wrong Boucher is good and they have and will miss him. But he is not their best player. He was a very very good 6th man, but Dillion Brooks is their best player.
Then why was Brooks Pac-12 PotY? Why was Bell Pac-12 Defensive PotY? Why is Dorsey averaging 20 ppg in the tournament? Boucher is a good player, a significant loss, but he was nowhere near being their best player.
EDIT: Chris beat me by 6 hours. Oh well...
March 24th, 2017 at 10:58 AM ^
- The rebound on the free throw was given up by Wilson, so subing Duncan for Wagner or Donnal wouldn't have mattered. Wilson still is the one who got beat.
- Even if you subbed Donnal in, then you lose a ball handler once Oregon pressures (which being down they would have). Don't get me wrong Robinson is not a great ball handler, but I would much rather him take the ball down the court in that scenario then Donnal.
I'm actually also not sure what the rule is for substituting before a 1 and 1. I know when there are 2 free throws awarded, teams are not allowed to sub before the 1st free throw.
It's easy for people to sit back and 2nd guess after the fact. But If Donnal comes in and misses a box out or turns the ball over then the same people will be complaining that he was in.
a 75 percent FT shooter was on the line. You don't subsitute for the 25 percent chance he misses just to give yourself a tiny, marginally higher percent chance of getting the rebound because then you're left with Donnal or an offensive lineup you don't want which hurts you more than the tiny increase in your chance of rebounding a miss vs. not.
DJ faking wasn't the worst thing. Wagner got what looked like would be a wide open layup blocked in the first half because he went up weakly without looking. Bell is a really good rim protector. And DJ still had a wide open layup after the shot fake. The fact he still missed it was bad thing, but that was a crazy 1 in 50 chance that you just have to shrug about. Bell missed a dunk in the first half that he probably makes 99 of 100 times. Those were both incredibly fluky and not worth over-analyzing.
EDIT: didn't see the post above which I agree with 100 percent obvioulsy.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:12 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 10:13 AM ^
Unfortunately this is what happens to someone who is not quite ready to be a first round pick when you give a team 4 days to gameplan on you. Early on Oregon gave hime some different looks and it totally got in his head. Add on that he was pretty much the most talked about player in the country after that Louisville game, and you have a recipe for a poor game. Throwing up complete bricks, going weak to the hoop, these are signs he mentally he just did not have it last night, I had no problem with Bielein keeping him out. The spotlight just got a touch bright after Louisiville, and he will learn from this experience. Selfishly, I'm a little glad he got this "learning experience" because it gives him more motivation to stick around and prove he's the top 20 talent he displayed Sunday.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:16 AM ^
We ended up only turning the ball over 8 times. That's a little better than our average. The problem was, Oregon only turned the ball over 5 times, 6.5 below their average. Is that because our defense wasn't overly aggressive, or was it because Oregon came in completely focussed and played a great game? Gotta give credit to Oregon on this one.
There was a whole thread last night about the auto-bench. Moe and DJ each only had 2 PFs. Each only played <28 minutes. This was like the reverse Purdue game. Beilein forced Painter to go small. Somehow, Oregon forced Beilein to go small.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:18 AM ^
with the exception of a five minute stretch at the outset of the second half, I thought they played pretty poorly as well. It will certainly not go down as a classic Sweet 16 basketball game by any stretch of the imagination.
When the color commentator makes the general statement "what in the world is going on on the court right now" and you completely understand what he is saying, neither team was giving a good showing.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:58 AM ^
I thought Oregon looked like a very average basketball team last night. I believe they will get throttled by Kansas. The entire night just looked sluggish. MAAR passed up on a couple open lanes where he had been killing the opposition of late. He is one of the only guards that get to the rim and when he opted against it we became awfully predictable (especially with Mo's issues). He also had some very uncharacteristic lazy turnovers in the first half. Mo needs to watch some film and mature this offseason. He expends a lot of energy complaining about every foul call that he has against him.
Pretty annoyed with our post defense last night. We are always playing the straight up card but it takes very basic footwork to get around our guys as they stand frozen in one place while an easy layup is made.
Walton is a warrior. Wanted that shot to go down becasue he earned it. He played out of his mind for the last 2 months. Hope some NBA exec gives him a shot to prove himself at the next level. Just an anticlimactic way for such a fun run to end.
March 24th, 2017 at 11:26 AM ^
but the point remains, they only committed 5 turnovers. That, combined with the rebounding edge they had gave them 8 extra possessions. Being able to outrebound a team when you are missing your starting center is impressive (or you can be a Debbie Downer and blame DJ and Moe for not being better rebounders.) It's hard to beat a good team when they are getting 8 extra possessions. Oddly, both teams attempted 58 shots. The difference was the FT line, where they had 9 more attempts. Considering how poorly they shot FTs and the fact that DJ and Moe ended up with 2 each, maybe we should have challenged them more at the rim and made them make their points at the line.
I'm not blaming the refs. The block/charge call is a judgment call and it's basically a 50/50 play. The way the refs called the game, it gave an advantage to Oregon. They were the more physical team driving the ball to the basket. I thought they were out of control a few times and should have been called for charges, which would have increased the number of turnovers they committed.
March 24th, 2017 at 12:53 PM ^
I think our defensive aggressiveness was hampered by the early foul calls. Irvin played a big stretch of the 1st half carrying 2 fouls - coach trusted him not to get the 3rd, but that also meant he couldn't be as aggressive. I thought MAAR played more tentatively through that stretch as well, and without those 2 guys at full throttle defensively, no one on this team was going to be.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:26 AM ^
broadcast it was brought up once that the bench was telling Moe to get his head into the game and another time that Donlon was screaming at Moe for a defensive lapse. He wasn't having a good game on either end of the court.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:27 AM ^
we win. Anyway, great run!
If only it were as easy as replacing a 3 with a wide open layup.
March 24th, 2017 at 10:46 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 11:07 AM ^
Duncan had two triples go halfway down and rattle out. One of those goes down and this thread doesn't exist.
March 24th, 2017 at 11:20 AM ^
Happens in every walk of life. If that one dude didn't blow a wide open dunk and then Michigan responded with a bucket right after, Oregon could have won by 15.
Nothing happens in a vacuum.
March 24th, 2017 at 11:35 AM ^
My response was simply a counter-point to the OP's mention of Duncan as a liability in this game ("ill-advised shots, could not contain dribble drive"). Both the shots that rattled out were pure, in-rhythm shots that just didn't go down.
March 24th, 2017 at 12:02 PM ^
The shots, I don't mind him taking those.
But he's spot on with the defense. He couldn't keep a single guy in front of him the entire game.
he got torched. So you might as well keep your offensively competent guy in there. Plus, Benson played a lot of the final minutes so he was a decent matchup for Duncan. Duncan was getting killed a lot worse in the first half when he was checking Dorsey or Brooks or Ennis. We missed our last three attempts. Only needed one of them.
That lineup worked against Purdue in the BTT, it worked against WIsconsin, it worked against Ok St. And it actually worked here...until it didn't. We were down 4 when Wagner came out and lost the game by 1. That's +3 during that stretch.
The coaches pushed all the right buttons. Sometimes randomness doesn't go your way though. Sometimes you play a hand as well as you can and take a bad beat on the river. We had a 77 percent chance to win with two minutes to go and no one in foul trouble. I would take that situation again in a heartbeat.
March 24th, 2017 at 12:12 PM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 11:09 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 11:51 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 11:58 AM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 12:00 PM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 12:16 PM ^
March 24th, 2017 at 12:43 PM ^
As to why people do this argument.
"If either of those go in, we win."
That's just completely untrue. For the 900th time, you cannot do this subjective thinking in sports.
I can point to 10 plays that Oregon could have had. What's if Oregon guy stuffed that dunk that rimmed out? They could have gone on to win by 25.
The point they're making is that the way the coaches played this gave us the best chance to win, and they're correct. We played the percentages correctly but sometimes randomness goes against you. That's it.
March 24th, 2017 at 12:35 PM ^
Seems pretty simple to me - he was having an off offensive night and he brings little in the way of rebounding or defense to the table. Sure, he brings more defensively than Duncan Robinson but if Duncan Robinson's shots are falling (and he was shooting well despite some misses) he should get more minutes than an off-his-game Wagner.
First off, lets give Oregon some credit. They had a game plan that worked almost flawlessly and took Michigan out of their offensive rhythm. Secondly, they had three big guards that created matchup problems for Robinson and smaller guards not named Walton were inaffective or simply became a defensive liability. Third, without Wagner, they outrebounded us down the strech.
I will say, Michigan did a great job hanging in there and should have won the game but did not rebound well in the last couple minutes. The defense they played against us wore us down mentally because many of the plays we run were defended too well. A few of our guys didn't know how to get their own shot. Although there was ample time to get a good shot, the last shot taken was so out of sink and not like Michigan at all
I salute this team for out-performing everyones expectations, and coming within a point of going to the elite 8 when many had them going to the NIT. We got punched in the mouth and we got back up and fought like champions. We were just a good offensive play away from pulling off another big upset.