THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#4 Michigan (11-0, 6-0 B1G) vs #34 Minnesota (10-4, 3-4)	what the hell is this
WHERE	Williams Arena Minneapolis, MN
WHEN	2 PM Eastern Saturday, Jan. 16th
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -4 Torvik: M –4.8
TELEVISION	ESPN2 PBP: Jason Benetti Analyst: Dan Dakich

THE OVERVIEW

Various challenges keep appearing to be dispatched. This one is Michigan's first return game of the season, a matchup against a Minnesota team that suffered a 39-8 run coming out of halftime in the first outing. Michigan gave up 0.74 points per possession until the Kenpom Kids hit the floor; no Gopher starter cracked a 100 ORTG; Hunter Dickinson went 12/15 from the floor.

As a result anything other than a similarly dominant win won't feel particularly good even though Michigan is switching home for road. The passionless computers at Analytics Are Ruining The Game Inc think it'll be close, though, and this will be a test to see if Michigan has some flaws to get after once a team licks its wounds.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

We added badges to Dickinson and Livers; Austin Davis is no longer an injury question mark.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

We have bowed to reality and given Gabe Kalscheur his brick, giving Minnesota an unprecedented 4 in their rotation. We've also removed Carr's crown as a potential AA or Kenpom POY top-ten sort. He's shooting 33/35 in Big Ten play and has dropped off the KPOY list. He still gets his star.

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

THE THEM

previous outing was a dispiriting one for Minnesota [Campredon]

Michigan played the Gophers nine days ago so we'll reference that preview for personnel items. Updates:

• Liam Robbins got clobbered by Hunter Dickinson (28 points on 12/15 shooting) and Luka Garza (33 on 12/18 from two and 1/2 from three). Robbins was largely a non-factor on offense, scoring 5 and 10 (on 13 shot equivalents) in these games. He seems to be a guy who is excellent at defending and scoring against MVC-sized front lines—of which there are more than a few in the Big Ten—but top end bigs have stuffed him in a trash can.
• Marcus Carr also scuffled badly in both games after preview #1. He went 5/15 from two and 5/18 from three across the two games, and only got to the line once. He's also got 6 assists vs four TOs. Very tough for Minnesota to win if that continues.
• Gabe Kalscheur's nightmare shooting year continues. He is now down to 23% on the year after going 2/11 in the last two.
• Jamal Mashburn Jr is now in the running for Disaster Factory POY. He's shooting 35/19 in Big Ten play with qualifying (22%) usage. And many of his shots are the hilarious no-hopers critical to this award's style component.
• On the other hand, Both Gach wore one purple shoe and one pink/yellow shoe against Iowa. There are limited situations where I'm on Stephen Bardo's side of the Old Man Divide. This is one of them.

Some of these offensive numbers against Iowa seem incredibly grim but it should be noted that the Iowa D is on a bit of an upswing. They've moved up to 71st nationally from ~100th and are 7th—top half!—in conference play.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Conference numbers are out of 14. Left is offense, right is defense.

Four Factors explanation

Ah, yup, there's your problem. The Gophers have the worst 2P% offense in the league; they have the worst 3P% offense in the league. They're shooting more threes than anyone else in conference play and are making a hair under 30% of them. Everything else is good or better. They just can't shoot.

On defense they have a major shot volume problem with a league-worst DREB rate and very few turnovers generated. They do a good job of running opponents off the line, FWIW.

THE KEYS

Carr ballscreen defense. Michigan had a brief issue in the first game and fixed it with unpredictable, intermittent hedging from a foul-free Hunter Dickinson in the second half. Minnesota will be more prepared for that and if Dickinson picks up a couple early fouls, hedging is going to be very intermittent or off the table.

Carr's struggles inside the line the last two games have officially elevated his two-point shooting to a Problem, and not a good one from Minnesota's perspective. He's at 33% from two in league play. Michigan can probably start by having Brooks chase over ball screens and adjust from there if that's not enough. Minnesota was clever during that first-half push by screening way out; presumably Michigan can adjust to that.

did this go in? once if it wasn't against Iowa [Campredon]

Can anyone on Minnesota hit a shot? Usually these bullets are about things in Michigan's (at least hypothetical) control but the Festival of Bricks above calls for an exception. The Gophers' supporting cast is absolutely killing them. B10 3P% from guys other than the two high-usage stars: Kalscheur 25%, Gach 27%, Mashburn 19%, Ihnen 6%. The lone exception with more than a handful of attempts is Brandon Johnson (43%), but he hit 8/9 against Iowa and is 1/12 otherwise. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota's best performance of the year was in the game Johnson hit 8/9. That's a Basketball Trend™ right there.

These attempts are mostly good looks as defenses focus a lot of energy on Carr and Robbins. They just do not go down. The Gophers cannot keep pace with the elite teams in the league with two guys who are good but not superstars unless they get reasonably efficient secondary scoring.

The prognosis here is not good. Only Kalscheur has much of a track record as a shooter, and he's now 75 threes deep in what looks like a Sophomore Tim Hardaway Jr season where he inexplicably can't hit anything. But unless someone or a couple someones gets off the mat it's hard to see the Gophers in a game here.

"gaaaarblewhaaaarble" –Robbins, probably [Campredon]

Getting back that mojo. Dickinson had a relatively subdued game against the Badgers—12 points on 11 shot equivalents, 3 OREBs, 0A/0TO, 3 blocks—and now meets an opposing big who's probably spent the last few days in a Rocky montage punching various sandbags, sparring partners, and balloons with pictures of Dickinson's face taped on them.

Robbins may have done that prior to the Luka Garza matchup. It didn't matter because Luka Garza is inevitable. This is an opportunity to establish the inevitability of Hunter Dickinson.

Turnovers (or close enough). This year's Big Ten standings are a bit of a referendum on how heavily you should prioritize turnover generation on defense. The top five Ds in the league so far are all in the bottom half in TO generation; the top three (Michigan, Illinois, and OSU) are 10th or worse. Michigan's TO generation is not a problem.

But! Michigan has also had boosts in the last two games because they were able to force open-court TOs that they converted into fast-break buckets. Wagner had two and Smith one against Wisconsin; Livers had two and Brooks one against Minnesota. They've also converted various blocked shots into transition opportunities. The last two games they've turned over two teams that really take care of the ball more than you'd expect; they're out of the 300s on Torvik if you look at his schedule-adjusted Four Factors.

Keeping their TO rate in the range they have the last few games gets them that extra notch they might need to be considered on par with Baylor and Gonzaga.

On the other side of the ball, Michigan has the second best offense in the league and the second-worst TO rate. This is a much lower-hanging fruit for M since a lot of the turnovers are coming from Mike Smith, a guy who was in the Ivy League a year ago and could get the hang of things a bit better down the stretch.

Michigan has little to improve. Meaningful improvement on either end here would get them that much closer to elite.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 4.