THE ESSENTIALS

LFG!

THE US

Seth's graphic:

No rest for the trident-bearers: Michigan returns from two top-ten opponents in the Bahamas and gets the new #1 team in the country, in both the polls and Kenpom, on the road. Louisville did play Friday; they did not also play Wednesday and Thursday. Nor did they leave the country.

The opponent, the venue, and the rest circumstances would normally add up to a Not In The Face game, but Michigan's increasingly comfortable with their new systems and has found out they've got a lot more quality depth than they thought they did entering the season. Could be a thing.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview.]

THE THEM

click for big

Louisville is a bit of an odd duck to be #1 in early December. The Cardinals are coming off a decent 2018-19 in which they went 20-14, 10-8 in the ACC, made the tourney, and got bounced by Minnesota in a 7-10 game. They returned everyone except a couple of eminently replaceable role players, but it seems like a leap to go from Rick Pitino ending your season to #1 when the only power-conference team you've played is Miami (That Miami). Louisville didn't add any game-changing new players, either. Their most important new contributors are a couple of decent bench players.

But the funny thing is that the advanced stats are all about Louisville too. Louisville just ascended to the top spot on Kenpom; they're second on Torvik. They have not been in a semblance of a competitive game this year unless Akron—a fringe top 100 team, not a pushover—being down 10 with 2 minutes left counts. They have annihilated their cupcakes so emphatically that everyone guesses they're the best team in the country. That guess gets its first real test tonight.

PERSONNEL

Jordan Nwora is the star. He's a 6'7" wing with reasonable three-level scoring ability and a quick trigger finger. He's not as ball-dominant as you might expect a 32% usage guy to be, instead preferring to come off screens in situations where he can get downhill and firing any half-decent look at a jumper he gets. Last year his efficiency was mediocre thanks largely to middling production at the rim (62%) and a fairly high TO rate for a guy who's not making plays for his teammates. He did hit 37% from three on high volume, and while he's not firing up a lot of unassisted ones Nwora gets off tons of contested shots resulting from basic perimeter passes on which his defender falls asleep for a fraction of a second. He is a tough shot maker who gets forced into taking tough shots.

Nwora went through the draft process so we've got a lot of detailed scouting reports on him:

The 6’7.5, 220-pound forward was one of the best shooting wings in the class, averaging 1.28 points per possession on 138 shots. He ranked similarly (1.24 points per possession) when contested on his jumpers, a very good sign as he will be facing more length on a consistent basis at the next level. His wingspan measured 6’10.5’ at the combine, which would only help his draft stock, one would think.

Nwora struggled relative to other wings in his class in transition and isolation plays, ranking well in the back half of the expected draft class in both areas. It’s important to keep in mind that he’s still really young at 20 years old, at this stage shooting off of the catch is by far his best attribute.

A knock on Nwora would be that he is, again, not the most athletic of players. He’s sort of slow and methodical in his inside attacks as a collegiate player, and genuinely was more efficient the further away he was from the basket.

Nwora's assist rate was stuck in the single digits last year and remains there this year so it seems obvious that Livers or Wagner should be up in his shirt at all times. This might be a good matchup for Wagner, actually: Nwora would be bothered by his crazy Gumby arms without exposing Wagner to too much driving. With passes included Nwora was a 30th percentile isolation player and an 18th percentile PNR ballhandler last year.

High level teams defended Nwora very well, which helps explain why the NBA didn't seem too interested. Against top 100 foes last year (24 games) Nwora shot 47/34 en route to a 97 ORTG; against top 50 foes (17 games) that was 43/34 and had a 92 ORTG.

The two other guys to get the lion's share of Louisville minutes are their shooting guard and small forward. SG Ryan McMahon is an extreme Just A Shooter who had 5 times as many threes as twos last year. He hit 35% from deep while hitting 95% of a surprisingly hefty number of FTs—I can only assume these were mostly late-game intentional fouls since the guy took a total of 31 twos. This year he's close to exactly the same guy in more minutes per game. He is off to a super-hot start, hitting 54% of his threes against the junior varsity portion of the schedule.

McMahon did have a decent assist rate the last two years; recipe there is to force him off the line and offer zero help unless it's truly dire. He's listed at 6-foot-even, which seems optimistic.

Burlywing Dwayne Sutton is also off to a white-hot start. He currently leads the nation in eFG thanks to 83/53 shooting. Last year he was far more mortal, shooting 52/35 on shots about evenly split between twos and threes. He does a lot of his work on the offensive boards, particularly early this year. So far this year a third of his twos are putbacks; without those his already rock-bottom usage (13%) would be in Vogrich territory. Aside from the putbacks he's got five unassisted buckets this season.

This is a weird step back for a guy who had decent usage a season ago. It also neatly explains his surge in efficiency since he's dunking off assist or dunking off putbacks or going 8/15 from three in the early going. Michigan's main priority will bet to keep him off the offensive boards.

Enoch can go toe to toe with Teske physically

Center will be a platoon of two high-level, veteran defenders. Senior Steven Enoch is the second banana when he's on the court. He's a strapping back-to-the-basket post who gets pushed out to hook range a lot. Despite having close to zero spot-ups on the season, almost half of Enoch's shots were midrange twos last year. He hit them at a 45% clip; he shot 36% on just over one three-pointer per game. While Enoch isn't exactly a stretch 5, Louisville goes five out a ton to clear driving lanes for Nwora.

Enoch's platoon-mate, junior Malik Williams, is working his way back from a broken foot. He got ~18 minutes in Louisville's last two games and will probably split minutes about down the middle with Enoch unless foul trouble intervenes. That doesn't change Michigan's equation much. Williams is a rebounder and shot blocker who is more comfortable on the block than facing up but does have three point range. Barely over half his shots last year were twos. He took 88 threes at a 32% clip. Inside the line he was a hair under 50%.

Like Enoch, Williams is a defensive stalwart unlikely to make much headway against Teske in the post who Louisville will float to the perimeter in the hopes that Teske goes with him. When Teske doesn't these guys are going to shoot, and it'll go in or it won't. FWIW, last year these guys were 11th and 16th percentile on spot-ups, respectively. The only thing that gives pause is decent three-point shooting.

Point guard Darius Perry is one of the few Cardinals not out to a blazing start; he's coming off a year in which he got  about 16 MPG and had a turnover rate six points higher than his assist rate while shooting decently. That TO rate is still stuck at 24 but his assist rate has skyrocketed as he moves into a starting role and the players around him knock down everything they put up.

Aside from Williams, UL's bench is still in flux. They brought in five star wing Samuell Williamson, who's shooting 59/13 in the very early stages of his career; he's got a hefty OREB rate so Michigan will likely play him like he's Sutton and evolve from there if that's necessary. The other main reserve is someone Phil Martelli is well-acquainted with, St Joe's grad transfer Lamarr Kimble. Kimble was a high usage guy with dubious efficiency at St Joe's, shooting 49/29. At UL he's taken a back seat, with most of his usage either assists or turnovers—he's getting up about three shots a game.

Freshman David Johnson's gotten just under ten minutes in UL's last two games and Michigan will likely see him some. Data on him is close to nonexistent; he looked like a chucker against Akron, albeit an effective one. Fun with small sample sizes: Johnson's averaging 14 fouls per 40.

THE RELEVANT NUMBERS

UL's factors:

Four Factors explanation

This is a little hard to credit since UL's current strength of schedule is 308th (Michigan is 85th, FWIW), but there's only one substandard factor, a very low TO rate on defense, and outstanding eFG results on both ends. UL is not overly dependent on threes yet but last year with very similar personnel they were pretty heavy on shots from behind the arc; they were reasonably good at preventing launches a year ago.

UL's shooting splits, keeping in mind that when you shoot a lot of midrange jumpers you get ranked low, not high, by Torvik:

• Rim: 31% percent of their shots (286th), hitting at 72% (15th).
• Midrange: a third of their shots (285th), hitting at 46% (11th).
• 3: 37% of their shots (195th), hitting at 40% (19th).

Bad shot distribution and white-hot shooting. I'd pull up the inverse but the teams UL have played are so bad that I don't think it's indicative of anything. Meanwhile here's Michigan's defensive shooting chart:

red = bad shooting, orange baddish, green goodish, blue good

Michigan's been exceptionally good at shutting down corner threes, exceptionally good at defending the rim, and has pushed a lot of usage into the midrange.

THE KEYS

Sag away. UL has a couple of plausibly stretch-ish bigs. They're unlikely to be stretch enough to change the drop coverage equation. In exchange for open shots from the bigs Michigan can vastly overplay the perimeter knowing they've got backup at the rim. Those shots are not likely to be comfortable for the bigs even if they've hit some threes. On spot ups last year Enoch and Williams combined for 34 points on 53 shots. The number of threes the bigs get off indicates that they're probably not guarded on them and they shouldn't expect to hit more than 32-35% even if left completely alone.

If Michigan can shut off threes from the other guys and get UL into taking jumpers off the dribble they'll be in a good spot. UL averaged 0.72 PPP on those last year with largely the same cast.

Crowd Nwora. A corollary to the first point. Nwora's best attribute is a lightning quick trigger from three. It is uncanny how many shots Nwora hits off of no action whatsoever; someone will dump it to him on the perimeter and the ball goes up against a contest. Michigan has to make those a clearly bad idea. If they exchange those for anything else Nwora does, fine. He's not much of an assist guy.

High level opponents did this just fine last year and Isaiah Livers is a quality perimeter defender who should be able to replicate that success.

Take care of the ball. This is an unusual spot to get healthy with your turnovers, but this isn't your weird uncle's Louisville teams. The Cardinals are in the 300s forcing TOs despite a steady diet of teams that dribble it off their own foot. Michigan's seen open-court turnovers spike 50% in the early days. If that continues Louisville is going to have a number of opportunities to get good open looks they're unlikely to generate in their half-court offense.

Franz activation. You saw the good and the bad in the Bahamas. At some point he's going to activate and look like an NBA player. Probably not this game; he can still get a significant amount better game to game as a true freshman coming off an injury with a ton of potential.

Teske fouls. UL has two big bangers who will be net minuses trying to post Teske but might be able to stuff Castleton in a box. Michigan should be pretty resilient to foul trouble everywhere else; losing Teske for a significant chunk of the game would be a problem.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Louisville by 8.