Emphasis on defense = tired legs?
I am so very proud of this team, but watching our Wolverines struggle to hit open shots was frustrating. I have been shocked at how much our shooting regressed during the tournament. The first weekend seemed like it could have been nerves, but after seeing how beat our guys looked at times it made me wonder if much of the poor shooting could have been due to dead legs.
Sanderson has been highly praised for the conditioning the team achieves - and it seems like the ability to outlast their foes has been an advantage for Michigan in recent years (case in point - back to back B10 tournament championships) - but during the last two games our guys looked exhausted by 10 minutes in after fast starts.
My theory is that putting so much more effort into sufficating defense is wearing Michigan out and affecting the offense - shooting in particular. If this is the case then I wonder if a deeper rotation with more limited minutes across the board might not be an effective counter. I seem to remember Shaka Smart relying on heavy bench minutes to keep his Havoc defense fresh.
Anyways, I am proud of and amazed by this team and what it accomplished. Beilein uber alles and Go Blue!
Well, in the last 10 minutes of their game against Loyola Michigan scored 27 points while holding the Ramblers to 12, shooting 43% from 3 and 64% overall. So somehow, Michigan's tired legs got rested up in the last 10 minutes of a game and were both super-active on defense and efficient on offense.
So no, I don't think it's particularly relevant the ideo these guys had tired legs. Especially since this NCAA tournament, like all games, is more a series of long commercials broken up with moments of basketball. It's hard to imagine they didn't get sufficient rest.
I don't think you quite get what a hypothesis or cherry-pick means. Especially since the "hypothesis" was based on a "feeling" without any additional information or data.
It seems like the theory was baked up because we finished the season with three poor shooting efforts (despite those efforts immediately following one of our most impressive shooting performances of the year.
One could also argue that an emphasis on defense all year would have you better conditioned and able to keep up when the intensity ratchets up in the tourney.
These are young kids that are in excellent condition. Physical fatigue was almost certainly not a factor (mental fatigue from the pressure and the stage may have had an impact though).
One could test it on a larger dataset I suppose. I believe the question would be "do good defensive teams experience declines in 3 pt shooting over the course of a season?"
In the BTT we were all over the place.
Iowa - 3-19 (15.8%)
Nebraska - 11-23 (47.8%) (5-5 for MAAR, 6-18 for the rest of the team)
MSU - 9-25 (36.0%)
Purdue - 8-23 (34.8%)
Overall it was a bit better than in the tournament (34.4%) but not exceptional. Then you look at the tournament:
Montana - 5-16 (31.3%)
Houston - 8-30 (26.7%)
Texas A&M - 14-24 (58.3%)
FSU - 4-22 (18.2%)
Loyola - 7-28 (25.0%)
Villanova - 3-23 (13.0%)
We hit 40% twice in our last 10 games. This wasn't a good shooting team in March/April. Whether there was a general downward trend from month to month all season, I haven't checked.
Wow!
My Maize n Blue goggles work better than most -
but 2 (so far) have negged Lake for saying Nova was the better team, and played up to their level!
While 3 (so far) have upvoted OP saying our tough play on D gave us dead legs?!!!
People - this is sparty level denial! Cumong - we're better than this!
But not better than Nova. Which is cool because they proved themselves worthy of being National Champions. Michigan has nothing to hang their heads over. This team was close & hopefully learned a lot in the last month that will carry over to next season.
Go Blue!
I'd agree with that assessment. Hopefully we won't have to be so reliant on individual players like we were at times this year w/ Rahkman, Moe, and something Matthews.. Spreading out the minutes would be a good solution and I think next year we'll have even better talent coming off the bench to give our starters a breather.
Edit: just want to clarify, i mean "relying on individual players" at times to generate most of our offense (e.g. Wagner vs. Loyola). This team was one of the best "teams" that truly played together, an effect cleary seen in our defense.
I wonder how much of this was a function of the long layoff between the B1G and the NCAA tournaments. They came out of MSG looking red hot, then aside from A&M, never quite looked the same across this tournament, even as they kept winning.
In other words, thanks, Jim Delany.
So the team was too tired to shoot but not too tired to play lockdown D?
He also designed the Death Star. Twice.
Once. He just copy-pasted the second one! No wonder it took little time to destroy it the second time around.
Even worse, the second time around, he left Rutgers to defend the shield generator. No wonder they were eventually overtaken by a combination of Alliance troops and Ewoks.
"I know what'll get our conference on TV screens in the Atlantic markets--let's build 'em another Death Star!"
That doesn't explain M's in-game scoring droughts. I would love to sit down and analyze whether M had longer more frequent scoring droughts vis-a-vis rest of the field.
There isn't always a reason. Michigan shots lights out against Texas A&M. Is it really reasonable to think that they were much fresher for that one particular game?
Villanova's defense is nearly as good as Michigan's, and they didn't run any deeper than Michigan did. They didn't seem fatigued.
I saw one or two shots that could have been explained by tired legs -- shots that were exactly on line but hit the front rim and fell short. The rest were a combination of good Villanova defense and dumb luck.
Villanova only goes like 7 deep and still has a top 15 efficiency defense. Playing hard on defense takes a lot out of you but I also think the reality was that this was a somewhat limited team that in the end got beat by a better team.
Yeah we missed a lot of threes in this game but how many of them were truly good looks? All of Robinsons three point attempts were extremely difficult and contested, Matthews and Simpson just aren't great shooters that you can count on consistently to hit shots. Livers and Rahk missed a couple of open threes they hit during our peak run but neither has proven to be a truly consistent three point threat. Our offense peaked when Rahkman peaked because he was the only guy on this team who could shoot off the dribble. When teams could switch we didn't have players that could make them pay with iso one on one play, Nova did even after we took away their top two options.
It wasn't all that "career crazy".
He had 31 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 turnover, and 2 blocks.
Earlier this year he had a game of:
30 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 turnovers, 1 block, and 2 steals
We can, nevertheless, call that an outlier performance for a guy averaging 13 ppg on the season.
The flipside is that the rest of their team shot 5-20 from deep, which probably wouldn't happen most nights.
It's a bit of an outlier - but the dude averaged almost 20pts/40 minutes for the season.
M just shot very poorly from 3 (and even from 2 pt. attempts).
Not becasue of too much effort on D. Just a team that had certain limitation on offense this year. Not a terrible offense. Not great either. But they had a bad night. It happens.
But by that point in the tourney all teams have hit some sort of level of exhaustion. I'm more impressed with how well Wagner played after his Sweatin' to the Drip Boys game against Loyola. Neither does this team nor does this fanbase have anything to make excuses for or anything to hang their heads about.
This team was one of the greats, maybe not in pure talent, but in the aspect of what makes a TEAM; and if there's one thing I know about Michigan it's the TEAM, the TEAM, the TEAM!
Great season!
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Villanova gave 7 guys non-garbage-time minutes -- their five starters, DiVincenzo (who played the most of anybody, with 37 minutes), and Gillespie. Neither Booth -- the fifth starter, who battled foul trouble -- nor Gillespie were involved in the offense at all.
Villanova is many things -- the best team in the country, and also the champions -- but deep is not one of them.
Michigan was able to do this at times, but less frequently than Villanova with a generally younger lineup. My point was imagine when this group grows older into Beilein’s / Yacklich’s system and I think they’ll be on the same path as what Nova has done this year.
OK, well, I'm factoring the Big House seating capacity into Michigan's average height.
Your original statement makes no sense whatsoever, and neither does your explanation. "Depth" does not mean "multiple good players on the floor at the same time," nor does it mean "experience."
If you want to say that Villanova's performance was due to their experience, fine; per KenPom, Michigan actually has more. Villanova does have more minutes continuity, which is probably more to your point, but they're not exceptional in that stat by any means.
Wagner was visibly gassed, maybe more of a function that he played 35+ minutes on Saturday and was not typically accustomed to such a workload. But, yeah, the team probably expended more energy playing defense this year. It won them a lot of games down the stretch, so I'm not complaining about those energy expenditures.
Depending on who comes back, I could easily see a regular 10 man rotation next year. Our roster should be loaded.
The one player visibly exhausted last night was Mo. He completely carried the team on Saturday, and I think that supreme effort took a lot out of him. He came out last night on fire, but just didn't have the stamina. It really showed up on the boards, where he didn't seem to have the quickness and power to block out, or the explosion to win the jump balls.
It seemed Matthews was a bit slow-footed out there too - if I'm not mistaken, Di Vincenzo blew past him a couple of times. He might have been a bit gassed from Saturday as well.
Conversely, both MAAR and Simpson had plenty of energy. I thought they did a fine defensive job - it's pretty hard to stop someone bombing from 4 feet outside the arc. MAAR was super active on offense, and had plenty in the tank.
Another factor is adrenaline. I think all those missed 3's kind of sapped our energy. Basketball is a game of momentum, and Michigan's players this year in particular seemed to feed off each other's success.
We've struggled against teams that switched aggressively all season. I think we just didn't quite have the offensive firepower. Yeah, they could have been more consistent, but the players that are shooting these threes aren't usually guys who are lights-out.
Also, Nova played good, aggressive defense. Michigan had a hard time. And Nova shot fine.
Some of it may have been fatique but at that point both teams have played a lot of games. I'd say more of facing a good defense and not looking entirely confident in their shot was the difference.
We got beat by a better team but more intense defense does equal less effective shooting if a player's minutes stay constant. At least this was the case for me playing in high school. The cure is less minutes for starters if you have a bench that can keep up and Michigan just didn't have the horses last night. Re-inforcements are on the way with the incoming recruiting class which on paper is the second best John B has put together. I actually think it's the best when you consider fit of player to John B's preferred style of play.
I was wondering this the other day as well. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between the defensive renaissance and the offensive regression. Whether that's coincidence or because more emphasis was placed on defense, I don't know. I won't at all question where Beilein placed his team focus this season because that focus got us all the way to the title game.
But it seems like you can't have your cake and eat it too. You get a tantalizing offense that needs to outscore everyone, or a suffocating defense with an offense that needs to score just enough to win. Or of course somewhere in between. But you can't seem to have all of both.
I mean, look at Villanova's defense last night. Yes it was good and I give them their due props. But they didn't suffocate Michigan's offense. There were plenty of open looks and chances for Michigan to get back in the game. But they couldn't hit their shots. Simple as that.
I do think the scoring will get better next year, and there will be more pure talent on the team. Doesn't mean we're going back to the Final Four, but there are some real studs getting to campus this summer. Brazdeikis could be our next Stauskas. And Poole, Livers, Matthews and Teske should only get better with another offseason at Camp Sanderson.