2/5/2019 – Michigan 77, Rutgers 65 – 21-2, 10-2 Big Ten

There are worse things than being unable to pull away from a stubborn lower-tier Big Ten team. There's a bullet below all about that. Some other ones first:

Rutgers doesn't suck. This leapt off the screen. They're not good, obviously. But previous games against Rutgers were either comical blowouts or really frustrating games where the opponent makes a bunch of garbage to stay in contact. Rutgers made very little garbage—only Doorson's early line-drive bank shot stands out as an eye-roller—and was nonetheless nipping at Michigan's heels for much of the game. Michigan shut off Geo Baker, who was 1/9 from the floor, and Rutgers did not fall into a hole and die.

Omoruyi can play; Baker can play even if he got a dual-barreled blast from Matthews and Simpson; they're put together defensively in a way that prevented Michigan's pick and roll game from really getting going. If they had two guys who could be Just Shooters they'd be a tournament team. But they cannot shoot, at all. The end.

FWIW, it felt like the main reason this didn't push out to a 20 point game was non-Baker players going 4/6 on threes. Only a couple of those looks were wide open (the Omoruyi ones) and their shooting is such that you'd expect maybe two of those to fall.

A flash. Charles Matthews had a swooping layup early on which the big got pulled out of the lane; Baker tried to fill for the charge and Matthews just leapt around him and went up for a layup. I immediately regretted my assertion in the previous basketbullets that Matthews's surrounding cast didn't have an impact on his reduced efficiency. The pure 5-out offense Michigan fielded last year provided Matthews many more opportunities to make such plays.

Matthews then hit a bad idea fadeaway jumper after nearly losing his pivot foot.

Even though this shot was plainly a bad idea on the replay it seemed like everyone on the team knew it was going up. Simpson was not even giving Matthews the option to kick it back out.

In related news…

Letting it come to them. Both Matthews and Poole were much more reserved on the offensive end. One turnover each, and I think Matthews's might have been the steal he nearly brought in but stepped out of bounds on. Other than the aforementioned bad-idea jumper from Matthews neither guy pressed like they had been for big chunks of the year. Their shots were good ideas in the context of the offense.

Simpson is now in the driver's seat, with 12, 7, and 7 assists over the last three games and an offense that works best when Simpson's doing something on the pick and roll. Michigan put up 1.2 PPP against a top 50 defense on the road, and the usage was Stauskas-era balanced: nobody had more than 22%, all of the starters had at least 16%.

[After the JUMP: a pick and roll variant and good vibes from Champaign]

1-4 pick and roll. Michigan's most effective gambit in this game was pick and roll between Brazdeikis and Simpson, which was the cause of a bunch of wide open pick-and-pop looks for Iggy and one swooping Simpson layup after a glance towards the pop sent the hedging Omoruyi flying towards Brazdeikis.

stay for the next M bucket

Omoruyi is 240 pounds and therefore more of a traditional PF than you often see these days, so that might not be generally applicable. There are a number of teams coming up that seem vulnerable to a reprise, including the next opponent: Wisconsin put Ethan Happ on Brazdeikis in the Trohl Center. Jalen Smith, Kenny Goins, and Jordan Murphy might also struggle to hedge and recover to Brazdeiks pops. Smith might be able to hack it since he's 6'10, 215, and extremely long. Goins and Murphy are going to have to close out hard and fast to bother an Iggy 3, and Iggy attacking closeouts is a Good Thing.

Rutgers had Michigan's Teske pick and roll pretty much down, but that variant caught them off guard. Future opponents will probably be better prepped, but that'll open up other stuff.

Hook of the year. Zavier Simpson's turned some guys inside out before sky-hooking them to death but for my money this late-clock doozy shoots to the top of the leaderboard:

The hook remains undefeated against announcers' ability to keep their composure.

We're going to talk about this very quietly. Uh… Zavier Simpson is 11/12 from the free throw line in the last four games. Since that's almost 30% of his attempts on the season that streak has his season percentage up to 63%. Meanwhile, Charles Matthews is also at 63%.

Simpson also hit his lone three in this game, and that one was so open that I thought "well he's got to take that" even though I wasn't hopeful it would go in.

Baker blasted. Man, it is not good when you have just one perimeter threat and Michigan can alternate putting Matthews and Simpson on you. Geo Baker was 1/9 from the floor and his attempts were almost all heavily contested stepbacks. That's kind of his jam but Michigan was able to make those even more uncomfortable than they usually are.

Hopefully that's a preview of a Langford-free MSU. If Michigan can hide Matthews or Simpson on McQuaid or Ahrens from time to time and then give Winston a relatively rested defensive ace 100% of the time that's promising.

Gotta take the shot. Michigan ran a pick and pop for Teske at the end of the first half that Teske passed on, drawing Beilein's ire:

Beilein, after Teske passes on that pick and pop 3:

“Jon what do you think we run that play for!”

— Manuel Excel (@colintj) February 6, 2019

Similarly, Eli Brooks had an open look he passed up on. Brooks is only at 29% from deep on the year but you can't play for Beilein if you're going to pass up open threes.

Thanks, Illinois! 24 MSU turnovers and Michigan's unexpectedly alone in first place in the Big Ten. Have to feel good for long-suffering Illini fans. Recommend this from IlliniBoard:

We all knew the Michigan State comeback was coming, and when they pushed out to a three point lead, we all thought it was over. Then, four plays I will remember for a long, long time. (When is the last time we had plays you'll remember?) In order:

1. Andres Feliz makes a layup and gets fouled. Hits the free throw to complete the three point play and tie the game.
2. On the other end, Michigan State is lining up for one of their patented dagger three pointers but Aaron Jordan blocks it.
3. Giorgi grabs the rebound, we go the other way, and after a nifty feed from Trent, Ayo nails a three.
4. Then Ayo gets the steal, we come back down to our end, the crowd is on it's feet, the shot clock is waning, and Ayo hits a second three to push us to a six point lead with 1:54 remaining.

This place (including some dude pacing near the top) went insane. The sound in here when Michigan State took that timeout was a time machine back to the glory days. If I was directing this movie, I'd insert 35 flashbacks in five seconds as our main character tossed and turned and tried to regain consciousness. Dee sitting on the floor against Wake Forest, the Battle dunk against Georgia Tech, even the Arias Davis three against Michigan State in 1998. For a moment, we were back there.

Ugly foul-fest but Illinois's pressure defense discombobulated MSU to the point where Winston had 9 TOs by himself. The Illini have wins over #4, #20, and #27 in Kenpom in their last four outings—Michigan's win on the road is now an A-tier game. Could be coming together for Brad Underwood.

NET stuff. Matt Norlander interviews one of the committee members about the NET rankings, gets a cringe-inducing reference to "machine learning"…

CBS Sports: Coaches have spoken about their awareness of scoring margin with the NET. Buzz Williams most recently on Monday night. Are they misguided in thinking that winning or losing a game by seven or eight points vs. 11 or 12 points makes any real difference in how their team lands in the NET and can affect seeding or selection?

Muir: Since there's a lot of machine learning and nuances to the metrics I should leave up to the experts, what I would say is — based on your question — I'd be heard-pressed to think whether you win by 11 or you win by eight, whether that makes a big difference in our process. What we're going to now acknowledge is the team who's won the game, the team that lost the game, where that game was played and what happened in that game. That's what's most important.

There's thousands of possessions during the course of a season, and so to just boil down to one possession as to where you're going to be on the seed line or whether you're going to be selected or not, I think you're looking at something miniscule. It's much broader than that. If a really good team wins at another place and played well and won by 20, well we take note of that. Does it make a difference if it's 20 or 18? Probably not.

…but does chisel out a couple of answers to questions coaches are asking. Richard Pitino was complaining just yesterday about trying to reach a ten-point margin and how he didn't like doing that when in the past he'd put in young players or walk-ons. But there's no magic 10-point bonus. There is a MOV segment of NET that's capped at ten points, and there is an efficiency component that uses margins by default.

Those aren't worth gaming in the last minute. The tiny wobbles that happen in the last couple minutes of an already-decided game are not going to move the needle, especially because the committee is still using teamsheets as their main method of selecting and seeding the field. The margin stuff isn't worth getting exercised over.

Meanwhile, the list of outliers seems like a good one to me:

Helped by the NET

• NC State: 93 spots higher (121 in RPI, 35 in NET)
• Nebraska: 71 spots higher (104 in RPI, 33 in NET)
• Liberty: 73 spots higher (127 in RPI, 54 in NET)
• Florida: 38 spots higher (80 in RPI, 42 in NET)
• Saint Mary's: 25 spots higher (71 in RPI, 46 in NET)
• Lipscomb: 24 spots higher (56 in RPI, 32 in NET) 
• Virginia Tech: 19 (29 in RPI, 10 in NET)
• Baylor: 18 (49 in RPI, 31 in NET)

Frankly, if the NET wasn't around, NC State (16-7) and Nebraska (13-9) would not be thought of as reasonable NCAA Tournament teams.  …

Hurt by the NET

• VCU: 21 spots lower (28 in RPI, 49 in NET)
• Kansas State: 17 spots lower (13 in RPI, 30 in NET)
• Kansas: 16 spots lower (1 in RPI, 17 in NET)
• TCU: 14 spots lower (23 in RPI, 37 in NET)
• Belmont: 15 spots lower (48 in RPI, 63 in NET)
• Oklahoma: 13 spots (25 in RPI, 38 in NET)

The Big 12 gets dinged plenty in this NET-conscious environment, interestingly enough.

Ironically, after people complained that the NET rankings didn't track Kenpom closely enough all of these outliers could have been ripped from its pages: Kenpom #27 Nebraska, #41 NC State, #61 Liberty, #36 Florida, #38 St Mary's, #34 Lipscomb, #9 VT, and #26 Baylor are all within spitting distance of their NET rankings. Ditto the relative losers.

This isn't a huge surprise. When Bart Torvik put together a NET facsimile the component of that facsimile that correlated the best with the actual ranking was a version of his efficiency margin minus preseason inputs. I might argue that NET is actually too willing to ignore You Play To Win The Game, but if its main use is as a way to judge the quality of wins and losses on teamsheets that's… exactly what you want.

Weird MEAC team of the week! Friends, I occasionally rile up Ace by asserting that Tommy Amaker is a better coach than Shaka Smart. This case has gotten harder to make over the last few years because Amaker's streak of tourney appearances (four straight! two wins!) came to an end. Harvard's still been good-ish, but there's been a step back.

Anyway don't look at this:

Ye gods, that turnover rate. It makes me twitch just to look at it. Amaker did manage to stick in the top 200 for five of six years before this recent run starting in 2015-16. And then… that. God bless John Beilein.

(Meanwhile Amaker has the same number of tourney victories over the past seven years as Shaka, who hasn't been past round two since the Final Four run in 2011.)

Elon DUNKDATE. The Fightin' Musks are still 0/1 on the season on dunks. They're 132nd in effective height! They are a team that is actually fairly large across college basketball, let alone the Colonial Athletic Association! WILL ELON DUNK? JUST ONCE?