Dead Dove Do Not Get In Close Game
3/5/2023 – Michigan 73, Indiana 75 (OT) – 17-14, 11-9 Big Ten
There's a special agony in losing a close basketball game that outstrips any other close loss in other sports, because the margins in basketball are so razor thin. Close losses in other sports often aren't that close. Losing by a goal in sports like hockey or soccer is often losing by a fairly wide margin. You can lose a football game by a field goal and Bill Connelly will hop on twitter the next day and tell you that your team had a 22% win expectation.
In basketball, losing by a point—or in overtime—is losing by a point. It summons up a huge litany of coulda-shoulda moments. A 24% three point shooter draining one. Three or four buckets by the opposition that bounced around the rim for days on end before dropping. Two blatantly wrong out of bounds calls. Missed free throws—always missed free throws. A series of obvious charges that resulted in an and-one instead of an offensive foul. Remembering any one of these will set teeth on edge; remembering them all is a special form of self-waterboarding.
What this year's Michigan basketball team asks is… what if we made the whole plane out of agonizing moments?
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If you are like me or anyone on Twitter yesterday, you eventually loathed watching this team play. Not just because of the close losses but because of how Michigan got there. It's telling that in Michigan's do-or-die road games to make the tournament they got wrecked by glue guys. Even if you ignore the three Race Thompson made, he was 6/9 from the floor with three offensive rebounds and four steals. In Michigan's previous overtime loss, freshman Ty Rodgers was also 6/9 from the floor with five offensive rebounds, a block, and a steal.
Neither of these guys initiates offense, or posts up, or is a quality shooter. They live off the scraps their teammates give them. Correction: the scraps their teammates and the opposition gives them, and Michigan is excellent at ceding scraps.
Meanwhile Michigan's nominal glue guy, Terrance Williams, lost his starting job to Will Tschetter. Tschetter has not attempted a two-pointer in his last four starts. He's a massive defensive liability who offers virtually nothing on the offensive end of the floor, and Michigan played him 19 minutes in a do-or-die game for a bid. The usual reason insiders offer when asked "why is this person playing" is that he tries hard in practice. This is where the program is at: playing a guy who does not look like a high-major player in an attempt to send a message to the rest of the team that you should give a shit.
Combine that with an incredible stretch of tight games lost and you get the least watchable Michigan team since at least the Tommy Amaker era. There have been worse teams, and equally cursed teams, but watching Spike Albrecht try to figure out how to be a starting Big Ten point guard is sort of fun. Watching a team with a junior Hunter Dickinson and two guys who are candidates to go in the first round of the NBA draft fail to make the NCAA tournament is an entirely different level of Clockwork Orange basketball.
There are reasons for this: Terrance Shannon couldn't transfer enough credits. Jaelin Llewellyn tore his ACL. Frankie Collins transferred because having all of four guards on a roster spooked him. They're 310th in D-1 experience. The way this season played out, any nudge in a positive direction and Michigan is talking about seeding. If they managed anything that made them one bucket better per game this team is 22-9 and in sole possession of second place in the league. As disaster seasons go, ranking in the top 40 on Kenpom is not exactly Eddie Jordan Rutgers. This team is not good… but it's not bad. It's just there, ranking 330th in "luck" on Kenpom.
If drinking bleach and driving a thousand miles an hour into the ocean was a basketball team, this would be it. It is virtually impossible to maintain any semblance of detached smart-guy business at this point. And the worst part is that they might do this again next year, because the NBA doesn't care that Jett Howard is a stunningly one-dimensional player and has cottoned on to Kobe Bufkin being pretty good. The treadmill Michigan finds itself on where their players are mediocre in college and also of interest to the pros is one we must get off immediately, before this fanbase self-immolates.
Because they really did it. They ended the Pax Beilein:
— Michigan Wolverines Discord (@MichiganDiscord) March 30, 2021
In Soviet Michigan, basketball has once again become the donkey sport.
BULLETS
I don't want to do this. But: Torvik says Michigan's not dead yet. Beat Rutgers and Purdue to reach the semifinals of the BTT and Torvik has Michigan as the last team in the field. Torvik is an algorithm that does not account for human factors, and one human factor working against Michigan right now is that the committee tends to devalue conference tournament games that occur too close to Selection Sunday. I think a Friday quarterfinal against Purdue is probably far enough away for it to count fully. But also it will be really easy to leave Michigan out: they have no nonconference wins of note and a boat anchor loss to CMU.
About late game luck. I am in the camp where I believe that the first 38 minutes of a basketball game and the last two minutes are similar enough to believe that close game out comes are pretty close to random. There are factors that can make teams better or worse, but in general when you're dealing with an outlier as extreme as Michigan this year you're talking about luck.
Now, Michigan's problem is that they were in an absurd number of close games. 16 of Michigan's games were within six points at the end of regulation. Very good teams don't play 16 close games. But I fundamentally believe that Michigan is about as good as the teams around them in Kenpom, virtually all of which are headed to the tournament. YMMV. I dunno.
Details, details. I could drill down into the hows and whys of why Michigan lost this game but the fundamental answer to why they are less than the sum of their parts is that the only have four reasonably good basketball players. Dickinson, McDaniel, Bufkin, and Howard scored all but four of Michigan's points. They are 310th in bench minutes and probably worse than that in bench production. Having a complete zero at one spot on the floor for a full season—like, not even a stand-in-the-corner-and-shoot guy—is a large reason Dickinson's production has suffered.
Anyway, time to drink bleach and drive into the ocean. Lake. Whatever.
I like Michigan’s draw in the BTT. I think they drew a 2 win and in scenario and that they can get those 2. I know I am setting myself up for brutal heartbreak, but I am going to go all in on a really shaky hand.
And THEN I will stop drinking. I promise, promise, promise.
First paragraph gets my downvote. Last line gets my upvote.
I just don’t have any team that I fear in the conference or any defeat that can gut me anymore as a fan than I already have.
Win the whole damn thing. Got nothing to lose.
Great point. As things stand now, we don't expect great things so we won't be disappointed AND, if wonder of wonders, we win and win and . . . then we'll be delirious.
Same same - I realized a few months ago I don't really enjoy watching this team play basketball (I mean compare this slog to the teams that made the Finals - where's the damn FUN people?!).
That being said, I can see them beating any team in the B10, so making the dance isn't out of reach. And if they don't, well I have no hopes or expectations for this team anyway.
The bigger issue, as the article points out, is having lottery picks that aren't good enough to make the tournament. And the 1&dones from last year, so-so basketball players who don't really make your team much better but have "skill sets" that project, so they leave & do their developing on the NBA's dime - if they ever do develop.
As a Warriors fan I've gotten to watch Jordan Poole play far more games as a pro than he did for Michigan, and he's not really better than he was then in any significant way. He shot like 5 of 15 including 3 of 12 from 3 vs the Lakers yesterday. Turns the ball over constantly. Meh
And I sure don't know the answer to this quandary 🤷♂️
It's always more fun when you're winning, regardless of style of play. Go back to the threads for those teams after losses and you'll see all the same bitching about coaching decisions, player execution or effort, etc. That 2019 team didn't have a closer either. It won with defense but the offense was pretty mediocre. We thought Poole was selfish (ditto Iggy) and complained about Simpson and Teske not being polished enough.
And go back to any of the threads this year after big wins and it's the same euphoria. Winning cures all.
This team is frustrating to watch because the pieces don't fit all that well (mostly, we don't have a 4 so we're throwing things at the wall and it turns out a two center lineup is probably our best), and we have usually at least two players on the floor who simply can't focus / don't put in a lot of effort on the defensive end. I won't name names.
The shining light this year is I personally think Bufkin is one of the most enjoyable players to watch that we've ever had. He's so smooth and I don't think we've had a player that can score on all three levels like he can since Trey Burke and Bufkin is a better finisher than Burke, not nearly the assassin from deep and doesn't have the ice-water in his veins in end of game situations yet (Stauskas also had this swagger). But Kobe is also a much better defender.
And Dickinson is so good on offense that it's entertaining to watch.
While you are absolutely correct that we don't have a 4, I'd argue that we don't really have a 3 either. Because "you are who you can guard" means that outside of Terrance when he's healthy AND engaged we don't have anyone on the team to guard guys 6'6" to 6'9" who do anything aside from stand in the corner.
Yeah, I agree with that
The only team I fear in the BTT is Michigan.
"The only thing Michigan has to fear is Michigan itself."
-- A very prescient FDR
They have drawn a perfect seed. Win against Rutgers in a strong fashion to get our hopes up and lose to Purdue in quadruple overtime to foot us in the balls. The perfect seed and perfect ending to what this team has done to us all year. Go Blue!
Beat Rutgers
This is a weird team: how can McDaniel and Bufkin get so much better over the course of the season but guys like Tschetter, Baker and Williams get substantially worse?
They need someone from the bench to just go off this week because they need everything they can get. Fuck it - put Barnes and Kayyat out there, anyone who will make a play.
It's amazing they are STILL alive. How many chances can a team get? Go get 'em boys. Might as well!
Baker did not close well but he has definitely gotten better. There is no question that Bufkin and McDaniel have gotten a lot better. And the team itself has gotten a lot better.
I feel like this team is mirroring the struggle of Howard as a young head coach. They have every gear, they just don’t know when to shift yet. Half way through their (ridiculous) second half run yesterday, they needed to downshift, and zig when they feel like they should zag. Having a team off balance with a 7 point lead is sometimes better than a flashy 12 point lead with both teams in a groove.
This team is very very frustrating but they have been memorable. I will give them that.
That is true - the team as a whole has gotten a lot better. And while they still biff these game-ending situations, they're playing much, much harder than they were earlier in the season. If they played with this fire in December and January, they would've come away with a few more wins, making this next week much more comfortable.
They don't have a defensive gear. The team has one middling defender (Bufkin) and a bunch of dudes who can guard no one.
I'll simply say this, with his play, specifically over the last 2-3 games, Joey Baker owes the team a solid this week.....
Yeah, like I said, he picked a bad week to regress. But my man was money in the bank for about 2 weeks before that.
In the last 4 wins, Joey played 100 minutes. In the last 4 losses, he played 40 minutes. Someone owes Joey an explanation.
Joey didn’t shoot well in the losses, but there’s more to the game than individual scoring success. If the opponent fears his outside shot more than they do TWill’s or WillT, that will open up the court more for the other players. I mean, we scored something like 10 points in the first 11 minutes of the last game with Tschetter in there. The offense was abysmal, even with him running around setting screen after screen.
If I'm the opposing coach, I send WillT or TWill's man to double HD every time and live with the consequences of those two jacking up threes. What usually happens is HD passes it to a wide open WillT who fumbles the ball or gets his shot rejected because he has no elevation.
Right. He played a whopping four minutes against IU. In a 45 minute game. That's...surprising.
I think they would love to throw one of those guys out there to see what they can help with on offense, but would be a MAJOR downgrade on knowing what to do on defense.
There is a scenario where a few very minor things go Michigan's way and this article is very different after 2 massive road wins. Kobe's development into an NBA guard! Dug the future at PG! Dickinson playing his butt off over the past 5-6 games!
Instead it's looking at the negatives, which is definitely the 4 spot.
Would also argue that Kobe's contribution this year is very different than Houstan/Moussa last year.
I have enjoyed watching these guys grow together. Bufkin, in particular, has been awesome. Sometimes things just don’t go your way way, these guys are learning some valuable lessons. The look on Kobe’s face at the buzzer yesterday… kid has been through the ringer.
I am behind this team 100%. They are leaving it all out there.
I agree with everything you wrote except "ringer." We're wrung out with a wringer until the bell rings.
First time I have ever tried to spell (w)ringer in that context I think.
Except Jett...
I agree, goblu330. I shake my head at all the people who watch this team and then comment here that they are unwatchable.
The team has definite weak spots and some players can’t or won’t play at a level required.
“Fans” should know this by now and either accept them for what they are or take a break from following them.
How much worse would Baker be at the 4? He can ateast stand in the corner and shoot.
It's really, really tough on your defense when you're playing Jett-HD-Baker on your front line. And it's not like Dug and Kobe are kinda covering any defensive shortcomings. I mean, is it worse than Tschetter, I don't know. But I can see the logic from the bench.
I wonder if Juwan actually was a great bench coach this year, because the roster just looks like a wreck. The obvious line about two first rounders and Hunter Dickinson misses how flawed these guys are, and there's not much behind them to pick it up. Maybe that's the way things are in the age of the portal, that it's going to be hard to find five guys who should be on the floor, because guy #5 can transfer to some other school where he'll be guy #3 or even guy #2. Just blah.
When every guy who plays at the four comes up snake eyes (perfectly nice people, btw), it's completely natural to say they should have played the other guy. The only problem is, they did. They have. Juwan has done everything but put guys in sideways, chop them up and put one guy's brain with another one's feet. And still, it's like Brian says, maybe worse--it's really a team of three and a half guys, or was yesterday.
Squint your eyes and, given those givens, in a way it's possible to say they have overachieved.
Which is also ridiculous.
Yes, those three are unplayable together on defense, and Will T fits in with that group as well. No one should be playing significant minutes at the four except T will against smaller stretch 4s and Reed as much as possible.
Those guys you suggested getting worse didn't get worse. When was Tschetter better than what he is now? Perhaps earlier in the season when he came in he wasn't being abused so badly because the other team hadn't even prepared for him and then when he started playing more they game-planned around abusing him. But he didn't get worse he's just been exposed (and IMO, unplayable).
Baker has shot more poorly recently but that's just the variance of three point shooting. Same I would argue with Twill and I will maintain that his defense and rebounding has improved significantly. His DREB rate is outstanding.
Dug and Kobe have improved because thats the natural result of young talented teenagers playing a lot of basketball. They usually get better (and the previous three are not nearly as talented so their improvement curve is going to be flatter).
I disagree they need someone from the bench to go off. They have two elite college players. Kobe needs MORE usage. That's the solution. Get your stud three-level scorer up from 22% usage to 28%. Dug needs to be more selective (ie don't shoot from within 10 feet) but there's no reason Kobe and Hunter shouldn't take 20+ shots a game. And then everyone else just spot up and take what comes.
how can McDaniel and Bufkin get so much better over the course of the season but guys like Tschetter, Baker and Williams get substantially worse?
Did they? I don't remember Tschetter ever being very playable, Baker's always been a streaky shooter and Williams' shot has been broken all year.
When I see Baker, who of course transferred from Duke, I always think of one of the best transfers UM ever got, Chaundee Brown. One of my favorites ever. Played with full energy, never afraid to shoot, crashed the boards, played solid D, and was the kind of player every team needs. I always said that the only thing wrong with Chaundee was that we only had him for one year.
With Baker, only having him for one year is the best thing about him.
I was hoping to see someone else step off the bench. Barnes had chances but thought I thought Khayat might be the guy.
“The treadmill Michigan finds itself on where their players are mediocre in college and also of interest to the pros is one we must get off immediately, before this fanbase self-immolates.” One and done, along with the dominance of the 3 point shot, have ruined the game of basketball, both in college and the NBA. Hardly anyone stays in school long enough to become a great college player, and then they hit the NBA with undeveloped skill sets. Endless dribbling, isolations and 3 pointers have ruined the game’s flow and made it boring. The best college teams today couldn’t touch the best teams from 20-30 years ago, simply because the most talented players no longer stick around.
I wonder how good Beilein could've been in an imaginary world where guys had to stay in college 3 or 4 years. He had terrible luck at the end with guys developing well and leaving. I think he would've managed to grab at least one title
Excellent question. No matter how good the coach, there’s a limit to how much they can do to help a player improve when they only have them for 1-2 years.
Things have grown MUCH worse since Beilein left. And he still hated it. It's why he left. And as Oracle notes above, the game has suffered terribly for it. Turn on a random game most nights you see shitty basketball. The women's game is often more coherent, many times higher scoring, too. Juwan, IMO, would be crazy, once he gets his sons through, not to seek a graceful exit. At that point, I will stop watching.
Logged in to second your comment amount the women's game being better. I happen to live in Iowa City where the Hawkeye women just scorched the B1G to win their second consecutive conference tournament championship. Caitlin Clark is truly amazing--dare I say a female Steph Curry?--but watching the whole Hawkeye women's team this season has been a pleasure. They play fundamentally sound ball, they run their sets to perfection (I've never seen so many perfect passes into the post in my 50+ years watching college hoops), they are incredibly poised, and their coach Lisa Bluder has been here 23 years and counting.
I haven't watched much men's hoops this year because I find Michigan's men's team to be relatively unwatchable, but overall the women's game is so much more fun. Onto the (women's) NCAAs and hopefully the Final Four. Go Hawks!
I think he had the opposite at the end and that's why they were so good.
Yes, DJ Wilson and Jordan Poole left painfully early but they're the only two that left before mostly realizing their full college potential late in the Beilein era.
In fact, at least as many or more guys left in this fashion earlier in his tenure: Manny Harris, Darius Morris, McGary, GRIII (I don't count Stauskas, Hardaway or Burke because they did realize close to their full college potential before leaving, like I would argue Iggy did as well).
Late Beilein was built on 3 to 4 year players: Walton, Irvin, Simpson, Robinson, Wagner, Teske, Livers, Matthews, MAAR, etc.
Sorry, I can't remember the spelling of his name, but I thought Izdeikis was going to be AMAZING if he stayed another year.
Nah, he wouldn't have been which is also why he didn't make it in the NBA and also why he was smart to leave for the NBA instead of pulling a Hunter and not improving much.
And don't get me wrong, he was really good as a college player for one year and would have been slightly better but he was never going to be AMAZING. Didn't have the talent or athleticism.
Not to be overdramatic, but the off-season stakes this year are the highest of the Juwan era based on roster alone. We have the potential, however slim, to return nearly the entire roster and maybe build a juggernaut. Or we could lose 4 of our top 7 players and cobble together another completely inexperienced roster, except this time without any clear scorers to run the offense through. I can’t remember the last time we were looking at such wildly different roster outcomes.
I think the outcome will be reflective of Howard’s commitment to the job. If he is really all in Hunter and one of Jett/Kobe will come back. With our incoming class and Llew that is a top 15 team right there.
Reed and McDaniel are gonna be nasty. And we have some nice players coming in.
The Hunter decision is probably the biggest one, but getting Kobe back would be huge. Losing Hunter would presumably change the style of offense since neither Reed nor Kante will slot in for all of those lost minutes at C. Otherwise we still have a gaping hole at the 4 despite a stable of burlywings, undersized guards with unproven depth, and no true wing-eraser on D.
I agree that Reed and McDaniel will turn into great players, they can’t carry next years team in the absence of Dickinson, Kobe, and Jett. If we lose those three (and potentially could lose Llewelyn), next years roster looks GRIM.
No if all 3 leave it’s trouble. I would actually argue that Kobe coming back would be bigger than Hunter because I think Reed is a 5. Yeah there is no easy answer at the 4. Frankly Jett would kind of be the answer at the 4 in a GR3 kind of way but it does not look like he is developing that way.
If you only gave me one of Jett/Hunter/Kobe back, I'm taking Kobe and it isn't taking me long to think it over. In the college game you're much better off with the guy who can get his own shot off the dribble and at the rim than you are with the post up big or the dead-eye shooter. If Kobe comes back next year we might see Evan Turner junior year type numbers (20 PPG, 9 RPG, 6 APG, 52/36/75 shooting).
I don't see Hunter leaving. I think during his freshman year he had NBA goals, but after last season, it seems like he realized his future is not in the NBA. He took a NIL deal to come back and does a podcast. He's a starter playing a ton of minutes for a big brand team. He's not gonna go sit in the G league. I expect him to come back for his senior year then go overseas.
I think his lack of "enthusiasm" in the early season, was a reflection of him realizing the NBA was no longer what he wanted.
The Kobe decision is FAR more levered than Hunters decision. Kobe has the potential to be a transcendent POY candidate. A guy that can take the team to the next level. Hunter is what he is: an excellent offensive player but a major defensive liability. And he's mostly at his ceiling, hence his regression this year.
It's possible that through some development of Reed's offensive game, Tarris could avoid being a net step down next year just because he's already a much better defender and could be elite as a defender. His ceiling is higher than Hunters, just depends how quickly he moves up the improvement curve.
But there is no replacement for Kobe. It's either having a legit Naismith candidate at the two or....a freshman again?
We need to direct huge proportions of the NIL pot at Kobe.
It better be a top 15 team.
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