12/3/2019 – Michigan 43, Louisville 58 – 7-1

The John Beilein era was not exactly thick with offensive debacles, so everyone was probably thinking of the same two games as Louisville constricted Michigan's offense last night. One was last year's Sweet 16 game against Texas Tech. That ended Michigan's season, after which three guys and the coach left. Also that was a historically great and very weird defense. So there's no data on how Michigan recovered from that.

The other, though, was Michigan doing this at South Carolina three years ago:

points, twos, threes

This, too, came after Michigan had just lodged a couple of encouraging wins in a tournament. They'd hammered Marquette and SMU in New York. The trip to Columbia was Michigan's first road game of the season. Like Louisville, South Carolina had played no one of note, winning a couple of games against fringe top 100 foes and mixing in some cupcakes. Any spare prep time they'd had all season got applied to Michigan since it was the first real test on the schedule. And Michigan got blitzed.

The good news is that result had close to no bearing on the rest of the season. This was the Maverick Morgan year. Until mid-January Michigan's defense did a fair job of obscuring what would end up the #4 offense on Kenpom. The South Carolina game (and a Texas game a couple weeks later Michigan actually won) were so far out of trend that they look like a different team took the court for a couple nonconference games. Torvik's chart of adjusted offensive efficiency that year:

red: ncaa average efficiency, thick yellow: moving average, thin yellow: linear trend line, dotted: 5 game moving average

I don't have to tell you which one is South Carolina. For their part, they had an elite defense all year, finishing third, and went on a Final Four run after landing a seven-seed. Louisville is going to have an elite defense as well.

It'll be fine. If you'd offered me three of four against Iowa State, UNC, Gonzaga, and Louisville—with none of them at home—you'd lose your arm because I shook it so fast. Eating a schedule loss at the end of that sequence is hard to watch but less indicative of what's going to happen down the road than Atlantis.

[After THE JUMP: Phil Martelli on fjords]

this did not lead to the shot I wanted it to lead to [Campredon]

Aaargh. Probably the worst bit of the first half were the moments when it looked like Michigan was actually going to get a good look at the basket only for Louisville to swallow it. They had an excellent passing sequence that ended in Brandon Johns cutting to the basket, but as soon as Johns caught the pass a help defender raked it out. This dump-down on a back screen should have converted but Simpson didn't see it quite fast enough and Livers didn't adjust his approach once he had to slow down:

Here is the full clip of possession pictured below

Livers nearly comes to a complete stop before receiving the pass from Z

In that split second, Sutton recovers and a guaranteed layup turns into a blocked shot.

A lack of Timely decisions really killed Michigan last night https://t.co/yDHtGWeWg4 pic.twitter.com/mhktucSVmQ

— LAbound (@LAbound2) December 4, 2019

Louisville provided zero margin for error, zero transition opportunities, and seemed to have no hesitation about what to do on any of Michigan's sets. They held Michigan to 46 points and I don't think I saw a single person complain about officiating. Not only was there nothing to complain about but there was nothing that even looked like something to complain about to a person incensed their team was scoring half a point per possession. A tip your hat situation.

what you get [Campredon]

The defense though? Every Louisville bucket felt like it was worth 50 points given what was going down on the other end of the floor. Squint through that and you'll find that Michigan allowed Louisville 0.88 PPP. That's better than they did against UNC and Gonzaga and in any relatively normal game would be enough to win instead of lose by, uh, 15 points.

Michigan successfully harassed UL three-point shooters into a miserable outing. They did not harass the two bigs; the bigs went 2/7 between them. The rest of the team was 2/12. Jordan Nwora had 22 points but took 25 shot equivalents to get there, checking in with approximately the same ORTG (93) he averaged against top 50 teams last year (92). Without a couple of Isaiah Livers blocks going directly to him for fluke buckets that ORTG was going to be in the 80s.

The general shape of Michigan's approach held fast in trying circumstances. A full 47% of Louisville's shots were midrange. They shot 36% there. Louisville (0 dunks) failed to crest the E-Line. If Michigan continues getting these results on D they're going to win a lot of games.

A nomenclature note. I've used about six different things to refer to twos away from the rim; going forward I'm going to stick with "midrange," with potential distinctions made between close midrange shots—Simpson/Teske hooks, floaters, etc—and far midrange shots, which are X-foot jumpers where X is more than ~eight.

Phil Martelli's seen some things. I like to imagine what Martelli's telling Saddi Washington here:

he's seen it [Campredon]

"You think this is bad? We went to Worchester Polytechnical in 1972 and the rims were sideways. Final score: 7-4. This is a Swedish massage. East Haverford, 1978: refereed by seals who had escaped from the local circus. Trained to blow whistles for fish. Incensed there was no fish. Everyone fouled out in the first 15 minutes. Had to sit there. No one on the court. Hoping a stray breeze would blow the ball into the basket. Haverford rescued a bellows from the local forge, hit one of the seals with it. I had to take the technical free throws. Final score: 1-0. This is a comforting blanket in front of the fire on a cold winter's night.

"St Francis of Assisi—the one in Pennsylvania, not the one in New Jersey or the one in Vermont or the one in New Hampshire—1982: refused to play because they said one of our center's feet was too big. Had a point. Amputated three of his toes. No anesthetic. Weeping. Small forward wretched on the court. Janitorial strike. Had to play in it. Bandages came off. Blood mixing in. More wretching. Game is played on a bloody vomit slip-and-slide. Final score 15-8. This is a goddamn fjord on a perfect summer day when the angle of the light is just right to fill the sea cliffs with an eerie radiance I will never forget."

"Phil…"

"Yeah?"

"If everyone fouled out wouldn't there have been dozens of free throws for each team?"

"Shut up, Saddi."

A silver lining. Michigan did indeed stick Franz Wagner on Nwora for significant chunks of this game and it more or less worked. Wagner did give up a few drives over the course of his 30 minutes; his length also bothered Nwora. Synergy had 12 FGA on which he was the primary defender. Only four of those went down. 

Wagner's obviously a bit of a mess on the offensive end right now but at least he's a massive defensive upgrade on Nunez.

Michigan's going to have to let some guys work through things. One of the weirder twitter battles during the game last night was people talking past each other about which one of Wagner or Johns was unplayable. Neither was good; each had a moment or two; Michigan's alternatives are Nunez and Bajema or the three guard lineup. The rest of the team, save Teske, looked equally unplayable for large chunks of the game. I suppose you don't have to field five guys. That seems less than recommended unless you're playing Minnesota.

you are still confident plz [Campredon]

Take the shot! It was a bad sign early when Eli Brooks passed up a three that opened up after a pump fake induced a flyby. Brooks turned it down and dribbled into the tough floater that he rarely makes. That was a flash of last year's Brooks and continued for much of the rest of the game. Brooks was 0-fer from the floor and only one of those was an attempt from three.

It wouldn't have mattered. When Michigan did get a number of open looks in the second half all but one missed, many badly. By the time they made some adjustments to find shots their legs were too dead to make them. Schedule L.

Some comic relief. Foster Loyer versus Duke was only going to go one way:

Tre Jones broke his ankles then landed on him pic.twitter.com/eXAmtD0Wbn

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 4, 2019

If he could just mail his Mr. Basketball trophy to 1000 South State Street that would be great.