2/22/2020 – Michigan 71, Purdue 63 – 18-9, 9-7 Big Ten

Back in November, Michigan lost a game at Illinois in which they shot 3/18 from three. I surveyed Michigan's available roster, which was a bunch six-foot guards, a beanpole freshman, a guy Juwan Howard describes as a "big guard" playing the four, and Jon Teske, and decided that this was not a team that was going to overcome that kind of brickfest:

3/18 from three, the end

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) December 12, 2019

It is late February and Michigan has won consecutive road games against teams close to the NCAA cutline. They shot 6/23 from three in one, 6/25 in the other. In this one Zavier Simpson was 0/10 from the floor. Michigan shot 24% from three; their star point guard didn't score until Eat Your Liver Time; Michigan led by about 15 points most of the second half. The Aristocrats!

Avid Torvik slicers are all over the internet telling anyone who will listen that Michigan is college basketball's best team in the month of February. It's true.

2-3 Minnesota is in there on the back of a blowout of Northwestern, so grain of salt and all that. But Michigan's vaunted defense has returned after a troubling midseason lull. That rebound allows Michigan to go on the road and clank a bunch of shots and win games.

Hit some damn shots and there's nobody in the country save maybe Kansas and Baylor who's coming out unscathed.

The turnaround in four numbers. Michigan from behind the line in January:

• OFFENSE: 26.8%, #329 nationally
• DEFENSE: 40.2%, #341 nationally

In February:

• OFFENSE: 35.6%, #94 nationally
• DEFENSE: 25.8%, #19 nationally

On the season Michigan is #105 on O and #44 on D. The January numbers were ludicrously unlucky; the February numbers are probably a little kind but are much closer to Michigan's season-long performance levels. Having Livers for big chunks of February helps, and further points towards this being the Real Michigan.

[After THE JUMP: T-Minus some number for Franz liftoff.]

[Campredon]

Franz is on the tarmac. The only good part about Eat Your Liver Time, discussed just below, was the opportunity to get Franz Wagner a transition dunk and a new career high that was richly deserved. Leaving aside the freebie Franz had 20 points on 13 shot equivalents, three assists, one turnover—in EYLT—and his usual level of defensive disruption.

Wagner's handle is still a bit loose but he's doing a much better job at recognizing when people are digging down on him on drives and picking up his dribble. When opponents don't manage to make him pick it up his combination of length and change of direction make him extremely difficult to stop. He's a ~200 pound freshman wing and he's shooting 58% from two in conference play.

Let's try to put this in perspective. Torvik doesn't have an easy way to just look at conference games on his player stat page but if you limit it to top 200 teams (ie, no dregs but Nebraska and Northwestern count) most of the guys in front of him with reasonable usage (>15) are bigs. Limit it to 6'9" or lower to chop out most of the bigs but keep Wagner and the only guys in front of him are Kyle Young, a big who mostly puts it back and dunks off assists, and—bizarrely—two guys from Nebraska:

That may be an artifact of Nebraska's nonconference schedule being heavy on teams from 100 to 200; Cheathem's at about 50% in league play. (Still impressive given the context, though.)

Meanwhile Wagner is a major part of a defense that's #1 in the country over the last seven games. His combination of length and enough lateral agility makes him a switchable, disruptive piece. Wagner was able to check Cassius Winston on switches ably; in this game he got a one on one post matchup against Trevion Williams and managed to induce a miss. Even if that's not going to be a consistent feature of his play, the ability to not be a bug on a windshield is impressive.

Wagner looked like he was putting it together earlier in the season and then went back into a lull. Brendan Quinn interviewed Wagner and found out there was a good reason for that:

Then, rather quietly, Wagner caught a nasty flu bug around the holidays. He played only 17 minutes in back-to-back games. He was, in fact, very sick. Having worked his way up from 205-pound arrival weight on his 6-9 frame to the 210-to-212 range, Wagner lost it all and dipped to 202 pounds.

Gradually, he has since worked his way back, all over again.

And the thing about Wagner is that he's got a ton more runway. He is two days younger than Caris LeVert was at the same point in their careers. LeVert was a 93 ORTG backup on the 2013 Final Four team; the next year he was an 112 ORTG mainstay on the #3 offense in the country. Wagner had the advantage of some higher-level competition before he arrived at Michigan but has also lost development time to injury and illness. A full offseason in Ann Arbor…

Because he arrived on campus so late, he missed the vast majority of offseason workouts. Yes, he worked on his game, but it was by playing internationally, not grinding in the gym with his teammates, getting bigger and stronger. (“It kills me, what we could’ve done,” U-M strength and conditioning coach Jon Sanderson said.)

…and he is going to blow up. Just getting his shot to decent (35%) makes him an All Big Ten player. Add 15 pounds and get incrementally better at your stuff? Well… that would be good. There's probably no surer breakout bet in college basketball.

Irritating stat distortions brought about by Eat Your Liver Time. Matt Painter went full Izzo in this one—this is the only time I will ever compare Painter to Izzo—by starting to foul with two-and-a-half minutes left and never relenting. A game that was 57-45 when that started ended 71-63. Purdue fouled to put Michigan on the line with six seconds left. In that period you had:

• Livers going 8/8 at the line and Simpson going 4/7. DeJulius went 0/1; he and Simpson missed front ends.
• A Wagner turnover and a dunk.
• Williams going 3/4 on shots Michigan wasn't contesting much because they didn't want to give up and-ones.
• Various other rushed Purdue shots and desperate boards-cramming that took them from 45 points to 63 over the course of 11 possessions.

That's 1.63 points per possession in garbage time and 0.80 before it. The stats do not do Michigan's defense justice.

The main pillar of said defense. Trevion Williams was 5/16 from two before garbage time and tacked on a couple of turnovers. Robbie Hummel pointed out that Williams always wants to go over his left shoulder, a tendency Michigan had scouted to death this time around. Both Teske and Austin Davis sat on it, forcing Williams to not only finish over them but positioning themselves so that most of the time Williams had to finish through them. This time around Williams's circus shots were not only off balance but physically contested.

Michigan was in general much more aggressive about Williams in the post. They did double a little—one DDJ dig-down early seemed to force a rushed hook well away from the paint—but mostly this was sink or swim for the posts and they swam. Davis picked up four fouls in 14 minutes, but that's what backup bigs are for.

I am Davide DeHoolius [Campredon]

DON'T CHANGE YOUR HAIR MIDSEASON. DeJulius checked in. I did not recognize him, assumed he was a Purdue player, spent the next 15 seconds thinking Michigan was Purdue and vice versa, and then I had to sit down.

BUT OTHERWISE WE'RE COOL. The next section is going to be about Michigan locking Purdue down from beyond the arc, particularly Sasha Stefanovich. David DeJulius was the primary driver of that shutdown, particularly after Eli Brooks got blasted out of the game after an inadvertent clash of heads. Hummel kept marveling about how dogged DeJulius was chasing over screens, and he was right. At no point did Purdue's rocket action get them anything after the first look.

DDJ also chipped in 3 assists and a couple OREBs, the second of which was the dagger putback late. His assist rate in Big Ten play is 19; his TO rate is 9. Point guard stuff. Like big chunks of the team his shooting continues to frustrate. He's emerging into a bonafide PG.

Scattered showers. The broadcast noted that Purdue was a different basketball team at home and a shockingly large part of this gap was because they shot threes at home at damn near 50%. So Sasha Stefanovich getting an open three off a curl screen before the first break was a bit of an ominous start.

Stefanovich, Purdue's designated gunner, didn't get another three off for the next 26 minutes of game time. When he did it was off a bit of a broken play where Williams dribbled in from the perimeter. DeJulius either flopped or was obliterated by a nuclear bomb, depending on your fandom, leaving Austin Davis to try and contest. Weird play.

Stefanovich's third attempt came with under three minutes left in the game. He made them all; this could have become a problem, except in between these events Stefanovich was 0/2 from two and had three turnovers to one block.

Meanwhile the rest of the Boilermakers made one of their 13 attempts. Maybe half of those looks could be considered good. In the preview I mentioned that this would be a return game against one of the best X and O guys in the conference and open looks would tell the tale. Michigan won that battle decisively.

Michigan screened and cut Purdue into ribbons in the first half [Campredon]

For a half, anyway. Michigan's offense put up 36 points in the first half and it easily could have been more. Michigan got Brandon Johns a couple of wide open looks in the corner that didn't go down; they shot 6/17 from three in the first half and coulda shoulda done better than that given the kind of looks they were getting.

The above shot was perhaps the apex: a drive from the perimeter where Brooks rejected a screen and got a seal from Davis for an uncontested layup. Michigan ended the half on a PNR slip that Purdue was too baffled to cover.

Purdue largely shut it down in the second half. Michigan had just 22 points before EYLT, and unlike many poor scoring stretches this season you couldn't point to a disproportionate number of good shots that didn't go down. It reminded me of the Louisville game, with Michigan in the Louisville role: one team jumps out to a double digit lead while allowing no good shots; other team adjusts but cannot find anything on offense so the second half result is a slowly increasing score in which the equilibrium is never disrupted.

HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! [Campredon]

Phil Martelli on whatever this call was.

MARTELLI: That's a debacle! That's criminal! That's worse than the time we played under an overpass on I-10 and the officials let threes bank in off of passing cars! I have never seen a call like that, and we had to play an entire season in knee-deep water when the entire East Coast was flooded in 1976!

EISLEY: I think I would have heard of that, the time when half the country was knee deep in water for eight months

MARTELLI: shut up Howard, I'm talking

MARTELLI: I once had a guy with NO LEGS called for TRAVELLING and this is WORSE THAN THAT. I had a guy with NO ARMS called for GOALTENDING and that call was INFINITELY MORE REASONABLE THAN WHATEVER IT IS THAT HAS JUST TRANSPIRED ON THIS BASKETBALL COURT

HUNTER: why were you playing a guy with no arms

MARTELLI: he was our best shooter, Chris

MARTELLI: I swear to GOD that your name will be a WATCHWORD for INCOMPETENCE in BOTH LOWER AAAAAND UPPER NORTH PHILADELPHIA, which have never agreed on anything. CHILDREN in Roxborough-Mayanuk will FEAR YOUR NAME because parents will tell them you appear at night to CALL TIE-UPS ON TROUBLED MARRIAGES

HUNTER: those aren't real places

EISLEY: ain't nobody ever been to those places

HUNTER: also you just made this guy sound like a pretty good marriage counsellor

MARTELLI: WELL MAYBE HE'S IN THE WRONG PROFESSION

no call and a bucket here [Campredon]

Isaiah Livers dons pith helmet, explores the interior. Livers was only 1/5 from three but still had a productive game thanks to 1) Eat Your Liver Time and 2) his increasing interest in getting to the rim. Twice he caught his man glancing at the ball and executed what looked like improvised cuts to the basket for easy buckets.

Livers has more twos than threes on the season, and that holds up in Big Ten play. His increased emphasis on getting to the rim has been paired with a two point reduction in TO rate—he's top 50 nationally.

Globetrotter-ass Austin Davis. Out here looking like he just went around the world against the Washington Generals:

[Campredon]

Davis has gone from being on the Generals to whoopin' up on them.

Juwan Howard ref face, a continuing saga. In tough times you can rely on Juwan Howard ref face.

[Campredon]

When institutions fail, Juwan Howard Ref Face is there to provide a baseline to build from.