THE ESSENTIALS

THE US

Welp, that was frustrating. Michigan comes off their first loss of the season with the easiest game left on the schedule, per the advanced stats people: a home game against the Gophers. Michigan will seek to expunge the taste of a trip to the Trohl Center from their mouths.

Ignas Brazdeikis, in particular, will want to put up some points after getting a goose egg.

THE LINEUP CARD

Click for big.

Projected starters are in bold. Hover over headers for stat explanations. The "Should I Be Mad If He Hits A Three" methodology: we're mad if a guy who's not good at shooting somehow hits one. Yes, you're still allowed to be unhappy if a proven shooter is left open. It's a free country.

Pos.	#	Name	Yr.	Ht./Wt.	%Min	%Poss	ORtg	SIBMIHHAT
G	0	Dupree McBrayer	Sr.	6'5, 195	73	18	105	Sort of
Not Just A Shooter who splits usage about 50/50 between two and three with A and TO rates of 17 each. Hitting 33% from deep, has improved dismal shooting inside the line.
G	34	Gabe Kalscheur	Fr.	6'4, 200	69	16	119	No
Composite #198 FR is Just A Shooter hitting 38% from deep.
F	21	Amir Coffey	Jr.	6'8, 210	83	24	106	Sort of
Wiry swingman being forced into a lot of tough shots, shooting 49/30, gets to the line a lot.
F	35	Jordan Murphy	Sr.	6'6 250	75	27	109	Yes
Bull of a PF grabs all the rebounds but can't really shoot and lack of size makes him meh (59%) at rim. A rate has doubled in final year.
C	22	Daniel Oturu	Fr.	6'10, 225	58	22	108	Yes
Composite #50 FR is already an excellent defensive C. 15% OREB rate, 8% block rate, almost all his shots at the rim. Black hole you can and should double.
G	23	Isaiah Washington	So.	6'1 195	43	22	90	God Yes
You probably remember this bricklayer going 10/14 last year on off the dribble 18-footers. Giant assist rate, 19 TO rate, shooting 34/19. Hits 27%(!!!) at rim. A miracle.
F	1	Eric Curry	Jr.	6'9, 240	48*	16	99	Yes
Returned from knee injury 6 games ago. Generic Backup C profile.
G	2	Brock Stull	So.	6'4, 210	22	10	105	No
UWM grad transfer hit 37/38% last year. Just 24 shots so far for Gophers.
C	15	Matz Stockman	Sr.	7'0, 245	13	25	106	Yes
Louisville transfer was getting 10-15 MPG through early December but has disappeared. Defensive force in a couple games I saw.

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

THE THEM

Certain teams have statistical profiles that tell you everything you need to know about how they play. You will be unsurprised to learn that Minnesota is one of these teams. They're yet another mid-to-bottom-tier Big Ten team without a point guard, so you get things like "four different guys with near-identical A rates and TO rates, all of which are in the high teens."

Northwestern looked liked this, down to the surplus of 6-4-to-6-8 guys and one random overwhelmed guy on the bench who could be considered a PG if you squint. There is one guy in the starting lineup who isn't a 2, 3, or 4.

That's freshman center Daniel Oturu, the #50 recruit in last year's class. Oturu is living up to his billing with a massive OREB rate of 15%, a top 100 block rate, and decent offensive efficiency. Oturu does all his work around the rim but usually as a finisher and garbage man instead of a post-up threat; a quarter of his shots at the rim come on putbacks.

Oturu is already a plus defender, which is obvious when you watch the Gophers. It's also in the stats: his presence depresses opponent 2PT% by six points and Minnesota cedes about a third fewer free throws when he's on the court. He is a paint-bound, C, though, and opponents get more threes off than they do when Jordan Murphy is playing C.

Speaking of Jordan Murphy, hey that guy is still around somehow. Minnesota has given him the senior inch and now lists him at 6'7", but he's still the same undersized but beefy power forward he's always been. Murphy is a poor shooter at all levels but gets a bunch of shots up at the rim, which is absolutely critical for the Gophers. They crawl in a hole and die when he's not on the floor:

Some three point luck in there but I don't think it's a coincidence that Minnesota takes awful awful threes when he's off the court. Those are the shots Murphy isn't getting up.

Murphy can post and has some ability to drive so he'll be a challenge for Brazdeikis. Brazdeikis is pretty beefy for a freshman but he's going to be giving up 30-40 pounds. Teske can probably box Oturu out and cut off some of the offensive rebounds that Minnesota absolutely needs to keep their creaky offense afloat. Murphy is a much tougher ask.

FWIW, Murphy has been sliding to the 5 when Oturu leaves for much of the year but with Eric Curry returning from injury he's no longer being asked to play C.

Amir Coffey is a stringy 6'8" small forward who usually does two things a game that make you think he's an NBA player, and then by the end of the game his numbers are meh. He's a walking ball of Fairly Good. Until this year he shot fairly well: 50/34 as a freshman, 52/37 as a sophomore. He has a solid assist rate and a not-great TO rate. He defends well without fouling.

He's suffered in the PG-light environment Minnesota has this year. His shots at the rim are about half as likely to be assisted this year; unsurprisingly his shooting there has dropped 20 points. He's taking unassisted threes that he's not great at, and his shooting has backslid to 49/30. One thing that has improved: getting to the line and converting once there. Coffey's getting almost seven FTAs a game and converting at a 72% rate.

Matthews should draw Coffey and will again put his NBA defensive specialist credentials on the line.

Dupree McBrayer is another small forward and another "how are you still in college?" All Star on a team loaded with them. He's morphed from a slashing contested two attempter into a guy who takes most of his shots from behind the arc. Threes have gone from about 30% of his attempts two years ago to 54% this year.

McBrayer's never been particularly efficient because of bleah shooting splits and while he's at 50/33 this season that might be about to come down. His ORTG has dropped in outings against the top 100 for his whole career and this year that drop is particularly steep--20 points. Like Coffey he's not great at creating his own shot and there's a hard limit on how much of his usage can be efficient.

The final starter, freshman G Gabe Kalscheur, has 13 attempts at the rim this season vs 98 threes. He's hitting the threes at a 38% rate. He is Just A Shooter.

Richard Pitino has switched up his rotations on the bench as the season has progressed so there are a whopping 11 guys playing more at least six minutes a game. Isaiah Washington and Eric Curry are the only constants.

You no doubt remember Washington from last year's game against Minnesota, because it was one of the most face-clenching opponent performances in recent memory. The ludicrously inefficient Washington had a 145 ORTG because he hit 10/14 two-point jumpers and also sunk a three. Every single one of his makes was unassisted. None were at the rim. All were all off the dribble, most of them barely inside the line. And yet.

Washington has shot into the top ten in assist rate nationwide but his shooting has gone from grim (42/24 last year) to outright sabotage (34/19). If he goes off on 18-foot jumpers again I'm bringing an exorcist next time.

Curry, meanwhile, is your average Generic Backup C. He rebounds a little, he blocks shots a little, he's got low usage, etc. He's only played in six games this year after a knee injury in October but he's getting about 20 MPG. This is mystifying to me since I saw Louisville transfer Matz Stockman play in a few games earlier in the season. Stockman is a seven-footer who doesn't do a ton on offense but completely changed Minnesota's game against Oklahoma State with his rim protection. Richie gonna Richie I guess.

Curry doesn't have the luxury of various possessions against meatballs but why the hell would you play the guy who causes a 12 point drop in 2PT D? And doesn't OREB at all?

Brock Stull, Michael Hurt, and Jarvis Omersa have fallen out of favor lately and don't have enough usage to their name to really say much of anything about them. They are tall. We can say that.

THE TEMPO-FREE

If the word "Minnesota" conjures up Richard Pitino's brand of grindball non-offense, yuuuup. This is the #78 offense in the country per Kenpom, and the way they get there is as ugly as possible:

• Minnesota is one of the most brick-tastic teams in the country, ranking 338th in 3PAs and 282nd in making them. They're slightly better from two but still in the 200s. Also: 271st in FT%. Oh and they get their shots blocked a ton.
• They make up for this by crashing the boards--they get 35% of their misses, which is 24th.
• One side effect of running headlong at people and tossing up whatever is a ton of free throws--they're 7th nationally.
• Bizarrely, they get a ton of assists despite having a PG on the court only about 40% of the time. As mentioned in the Northwestern preview, a ton of assists frequently correlates with difficulty creating good shots for yourself.

The Gopher defense is about as good as their offense and may be a bit unfortunate. There's nothing remarkable about their stats, which are all middling except for a lack of turnovers forced. The unfortunate bit: they're one of the Big Ten's No Threes Ever crew--18th nationally--but opponents are knocking them down at a 36% clip. Maybe they give up an inordinate number of good looks when they do let a shot go up. Probably not.

THE KEYS

Rebound. Minnesota's board-hammering may be an artifact of their nonconference schedule. In their nine games against top-100 competiton, per Torvik, their OREB rate falls five points. That's 71st nationally, and that gap is part of why they fall about 30 spots when you limit the sample size.

But anyway: Minnesota can't shoot and will be hard pressed to score efficiently without second bites at the apple.

Make them shoot over you, from the floor. Minnesota gets a giant number of FTs, and that does hold up against better competition. That's an artifact of their shot distribution, which includes a ton of contested attempts at the rim. The Gophers are 30th in shots at the rim, and 241st at making them. They're going to drive to the basket, fail to beat their man clean, and then hump it up on the rim.

Even Minnesota's poor FT shooting is much more efficient than their usual offense, and Michigan enters this game with a vintage Beilein FT rate allowed--2nd nationally.

This also doubles as an "avoid autobench" bullet. Eli Brooks is scuffling and hasn't gotten much against bigger teams; Teske's ability to contest at the rim without fouling is going to be doubly important for a team that does little but throw up contested shots at the rim.

Related: get them deep into the clock. Minnesota's lack of guys who can generate good shots for themselves is readily apparent once they get in late clock situations. Their eFG in the last five seconds of the clock is 35%.

I swear to God, let Isaiah Washington shoot. Tum-Tum that dude. If he makes them send me to a monastery.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 14.