Actual betting lines at most places are Purdue -3.5 (this afternoon it was anyways).  Dunno if that is just home teams playing out of their minds in a couple recent games, but Purdue -3.5 or even Purdue ML (-160 to 170 various places) is pretty good value IMO.

I hear you, but it bears repeating: Playing on the road is tough. Purdue’s scoring margin in its 6 B1G road games is +5.8. And that’s against six opponents whose average Kenpom rank (57.3) is worse than Michigan’s (47).

i watched purdue a lot. they are a much worse team on the road. a few of their guys are nite and day with their 3 point shooting depending on if they are home.

I LOVE EATING CROW! You are welcome fans! Ill post like a jackass every big game going forward.

Also, my system has it on ESPN, not Fox.

Also, my system has it on ESPN, not Fox.

Thought for sure I was losing my mind, then I got an alert from the UofM App about the game. The game is tonight on ESPN at 9PM.

I vote for Purdue showing up on Saturday. 

I'm not an expert, but you can't leave *any* of purdue's role players open at 3, and the whole point of the box & 1 is to make other players shoot by leaving them open, so this would be a very bad approach.

One of the reasons that it will be hard to zone Purdue long stretches is that they not only have really good shooters but also have really good size, and boxing out from a zone is difficult.  I don't see much reason not to play Howard tonight and go full court trap the entire game and then fall back into man to man.  Purdue really, really struggled against that down the stretch last Saturday.

Additionally, even if we ignore the fact that the box-and-one has almost never been used in a competitive game, who is the "1" in that situation?  Give me Charles Matthews mano-a-mano and I say give it a try.  Otherwise, I'm not sure telling Brooks to chase him around while the others play zone is much different then you're going to see tonight with our match-up zone anyway.  

Michigan essentially did this for long stretches on Saturday.  They played a zone such that they dedicated three players to Ivey and Edey.  One initially guarding Ivey to absorb the screen, another waiting for him to come off the screen and Hunter waiting in the paint.

The problem with this or a box and 1 is that you leave Purdue's very good three point shooters wide open. On almost three consecutive plays in the first half, this got Gillis two open threes and Ethen Morton an open three.  Luckily they missed all three of them.

I expect to see Michigan do that some more this game because you'll still probably take open threes from Purdues secondary guys over Ivey or Edey in the pick and roll.

But I also thought Michigan did a pretty good job on the pick and roll (at least the first half, I haven't watched the whole second half) with Hunter dropping.  They didn't run any blitz coverage like they did against MSU (and which killed them) and they held up pretty well on it.

Michigan also had Dickinson guarding Gillis quite a bit when Williams and Johns were in the game and Johns played the pick and rolls really well.

I'd like to see Michigan play some more straight up man with drop coverage without resorting to the zone as much, unless they're going to be a lot more aggressive trapping out of the zone to try to force turnovers.  But just having two guys sit back waiting for Ivey to drive while leaving a shooter open is playing with fire.

Fatigue is only going to get worse for us with another game Saturday.  Fortunately Purdue just had to play Illinois the same night we played PSU so they aren't any different.  Hopefully this is a trap game for them coming off that beat down as well.  

I think Moussa and Houstan have just hit the freshman wall with how mentally overwhelmed they are and how physical these last 22 games have been compared to what they experienced last year with a shortened high school season.  I also think both of them need a serious off-season in the weight room to get in actual basketball shape.  With Moussa specifically he needs to work on his explosiveness.  He's quick and wiry, but finishing around the hoop and going up strong have been a struggle lately.  I want to see him go up for dunks and blocks, not layups and mild contests.  

If I could partner each of our freshmen with a past UM player this summer and tell them to learn everything they can on the court it would be:

- Collins = SImpson

- Bufkin = Poole

- Houstan = Duncan

- Diabate = McGary (I said ON the court....not what he does off it)

They really are irritating.  Weeknight games shouldn’t start after 8 local time.