2/14/2021 – Michigan 67, Wisconsin 59 – 14-1, 9-1 Big Ten

A few days ago I posted about Hoop Lens on/off splits and rather marveled at Eli Brooks's defensive impact everywhere other than opponent three-point shooting. This stuck in my head, especially after noting that Purdue's Sasha Stefanovich also seemed to have an impact that far outstripped his usage, and I proposed that the next time we do Big Ten awards that there should be an "Isaiah Livers All Star Team" dedicated to players who don't have huge counting numbers but do have a massive impact on their teams.

Livers popped into my head as the namesake because of last year's team, which was elite when Livers was available and went 3-6 in Big Ten play during the stretch where he was out. His career has been one of efficient shot absorption and plus defense. At no point would you have called him a star. He's just the guy who pushes you over the top when someone else runs the show. To borrow a phrase from football's departed defensive coordinator: a guy, not a dude.

Isaiah Livers is no longer an Isaiah Livers All Star, and has never been further from it in this game when they needed it most. Michigan played a disjointed COVID layoff first half. The flowing parade of excellent shots wasn't gone, necessarily. It was severely attenuated. Actions died in the mid-post, smothered by Wisconsin's usual brand of error-free defense. There were a lot of kickouts into difficult late-clock isolation situations. Austin Davis took a 15-foot jump hook. Livers himself got a transition opportunity against a backpedaling Brad Davison and unproductively dumped it off to Brooks. Mike Smith managed to turn a dribble into a sort of mid-range bounce pass to Wisconsin. My brain battled between an id of Tommy Amaker groans and an attempt to rationally place this game in the context of a three week layoff.

Livers post-ups—generally regarded as something to tolerate by my brain—transformed into one of the more viable options in a sea of questionable ones.

Livers fired up threes whenever he got a window, cut into the lane for the opening bucket of the second half, and even rebounded a couple of his misses from two. The only thing he did wrong was miss the front end of a one-on-one en route to his third straight Kenpom MVP performance.

Without Livers playing exactly like he did going into the break, Wisconsin's halftime lead would have been insurmountable.

This has a lot to do with Hunter Dickinson's gravity, of course. Relentless doubling of Dickinson kicked off in the previous Wisconsin game; it is not a coincidence that Livers is 15/29 from behind the line since. But to take advantage of gravity you need guys who can be ruthlessly efficient off the ball. Livers has always been that. In this game he also offered something more:

I don't know if it will last, but the thing about this team is that it doesn't have to. This was previously a team that ran everything through Hunter Dickinson. Everyone doubles him; Livers pops up. Wagner's got a couple of NBA lottery games in him down the stretch. Chaundee Brown is going to pop up and go 3/5 from three a few times. There's going to be a 9 assist Mike Smith game. This is a roster with holes like "you can shoot over the guards a bit" and "the backup center is old-fashioned."

I perused some Wisconsin message boards after the game and the overall feeling was that they'd been beaten by a better, more complete team. If the slavering message boards are admitting it, it's probably true.

[After THE JUMP: "recovering" has been repealed from our description of Brad Davison as "recovering psychopath"]

BULLETS

Yeah you might want to play for this guy. Chaundee Brown's single point got him to 1,000 for his career. He got the game ball:

Yea we were able to get a key road win, however, it’s moments like this that really makes this team winners.

Congrats Chaundee!#GoBlue ??#WolverineCulture#LockedIn pic.twitter.com/9bzVJPYrpw

— Michigan Men's Basketball (@umichbball) February 15, 2021

Balls don't lie. Michigan was +19 after Brad Davison clocked Mike Smith in the face, which somehow drew a technical on Michigan (probably for saying "Elbow to the face are illegal sir!") and nothing else. Davison ended up jumping into Smith, which put his head in the strike zone:

That is not a blatant flagrant but Brad Frickin' Davison doesn't get the benefit of the doubt when he's being checked by Mike Smith all game and feels the need to jump into him like he's some kind of shotblocker. Karma won out here: Davison missed the shot and didn't hit anything the rest of the game.

For his part, Smith immediately got put in a ballscreen and rejected it for an and-one. Howard in the aftermath:

Here's Juwan Howard on the play involving Brad Davison catching Mike Smith with an elbow early in the second half.

At the time, Wisconsin led by 11 with 18:19 remaining. pic.twitter.com/lsHSjUBkWR

— Brendan Quinn (@BFQuinn) February 14, 2021

He did the same thing after a Chaundee Brown tech earlier in the year.

Also in Davison. Davison shoved Eli Brooks to the floor on a transition opportunity, negating a Smith bucket. Basketball badly needs an advantage concept like soccer has. If there's a foul in the open court just raise your arm without a whistle and then call it after the shot. If there's a bucket, bucket stands and guy gets a personal, no FTs. If there isn't treat it like you would anyway.

Won at the rim, sort of. Michigan again had more makes at the rim (8) than Wisconsin had attempts(7) but that quantity of makes was halved from the first game, and they only got up 9 attempts. Wisconsin nearly slashed Michigan's ability to get to the rack by a factor of three. Have to chalk much of that up to layoff hangover. A lot of the time it felt like there was a pass that was available that did not get made.

Switching wins. Michigan didn't exactly shut off Wisconsin's stretch fives from deep but they combined to go 2/7 on looks that were mostly middling. Instead of trying to have Dickinson and Davis close out to those guys every time, Michigan was content to switch onto Wisconsin pick and roll ball-handlers.

This worked out brilliantly. D'Mitrik Trice, UW's main PNR ballhandler, ended up going 4/9 from two and missed his only two attempts from deep. His makes included some crazy slop in the second half and a couple of X-ish hook shots over a heavy contest from Dickinson. If this is the best they're getting on a C/PG switch, fine.

Dickinson swatted a couple of his attempts and gave up absolutely nothing easy. This late clock sequence was the most eye-opening.

This was an opportunity to ease Dickinson into switching because Trice is notoriously rim-averse. He's not the kind of guy who's going to zip past a center switch and go reverse off the glass; he's limited athletically. He wants to pull up; Dickinson was able to get out on him enough to dissuade threes without letting him get to the rim.

The other end. Dickinson was oddly sped up on offense. He had a couple of good shots he normally makes rim out. In the second half he had a couple of post opportunities that he rushed into bad shots. Maybe he's still working through college-level doubling?

On the other hand, Dickinson had 5 OREBs, most of them critical ones down the stretch. I don't know what the hell Reuvers is doing here—he's, uh, boxing Dickinson in? On a shot that's likely to carom away from him?

M never trailed after that. Dickinson had a putback on the next possession as Brooks provided a Kobe assist.

The swoop. Franz Wagner had an efficient game that featured four different swooping layups, including the highest-leverage bucket of the game:

He also had a steal and a block for the fifth consecutive game and seven time in the last eight.

Shot selection miscalculation. Brooks did fantastic work on Trice, who was harried for most of the shot clock and then delivered to Dickinson with time running down. Buuuuut man on the other end things were rough. Brooks took two sophomore Tim Hardaway Jr long twos with 20+ seconds on the shot clock. Most of his other attempts inside the arc were difficult floaters that he's never been particularly good at; there was a stepback airball long two—at least that one was with a dwindling shot clock.

The relative lack of good shots was a team thing. Michigan was about 15 points under their season average of assists/FGM. Brooks seemed to be the most off relative to pre-layoff performance.

Bench contributions: not really. Chaundee Brown put in his usual shift on defense, hounding Trice into passivity. He did not have much impact offensively. Brandon Johns was a little rough. He was able to salvage a questionable decision when Smith set him up for a great look from three that he passed on by dumping in a short post feed, but his next offensive involvement was an awkward turnover.

The exception: Davis. Wisconsin is not a game for Austin Davis like Purdue is a game for Austin Davis but he coped reasonably well, especially in the second half. His first half defense was questionable—a couple of iffy closeouts one pump-and-go blow-by for Potter that easily could have been an and-one. His second half efforts were surprising. Jonathan Davis hit a tough runner over him on a switch, but otherwise he was able to stick in front of Wisconsin players and deliver at least reasonable contests on threes. When Michigan executed their late C-on-Trice switch Trice gave it up to Reuvers.

Along the way Davis was 3/4 from the floor and had a key offensive rebound.

On the second half. Matt Norlander:

Juwan Howard's team didn't make the committee look bullish for slotting them No. 3 overall. Considering this was a standalone Sunday game, it only enhances the Wolverines' profile overall as well.

Allow me to gush about that second half performance, as the collective defensive showing sliced away at a double-digit Wisconsin lead (the inadvertent elbow with Brad Davison's didn't help Bucky; Michigan turned the game thereafter). Hunter Dickinson, Isaiah Livers, Chaundee Brown, Franz Wagner and Eli Brooks held UW to just under 0.62 points per possession in the second half. Totally turned off Wisconsin's water. The Badgers fell off a cliff in the second half, shooting 25% and scoring a mere 20 points while shooting 1 of 13 from 3-point range.