Emphasis on defense = tired legs?
I am so very proud of this team, but watching our Wolverines struggle to hit open shots was frustrating. I have been shocked at how much our shooting regressed during the tournament. The first weekend seemed like it could have been nerves, but after seeing how beat our guys looked at times it made me wonder if much of the poor shooting could have been due to dead legs.
Sanderson has been highly praised for the conditioning the team achieves - and it seems like the ability to outlast their foes has been an advantage for Michigan in recent years (case in point - back to back B10 tournament championships) - but during the last two games our guys looked exhausted by 10 minutes in after fast starts.
My theory is that putting so much more effort into sufficating defense is wearing Michigan out and affecting the offense - shooting in particular. If this is the case then I wonder if a deeper rotation with more limited minutes across the board might not be an effective counter. I seem to remember Shaka Smart relying on heavy bench minutes to keep his Havoc defense fresh.
Anyways, I am proud of and amazed by this team and what it accomplished. Beilein uber alles and Go Blue!
The difference in pace between a team like UNC and a team like Michigan is not that much, just a few extra possessions per game.
Neither is the difference between a team that plays D like Michigan and one that plays D like Villanova.
Fatigue certainly alters shots, however this team was not an "elite" shooting team the entire year regardless. The guys on the WTKA roundtable (Sam Webb, Craig Ross, Ed "I have a Stanford Ph.D" Feng, Brian, etc...) have pointed this out all year. The defense has been far better than any other team in Beilein's tenure but the shooting was probably well below average.
Z obviously can't shoot like Walton could, which is a big deal in this offensive system with so many pick and rolls. My fear for next season if Mo leaves is Teske's ability to spread the defense out. I hear he actually has a decent jump shot, I just haven't seen it used. Also, we will need to find another bench contributor (in place of Duncan) that can be a three point specialist. Look out for one of the freshman to try and fill some of that void. Poole will obviously be a starter.
the problem is not the big. We do not have very good jump shoot center before Moe anyway. The issue is the PG, simpson is nowhere near the typical PG in Coahc B's system. He cannot shot 2 pt after pick and roll. Without that, the switcing will work effectively. Because the defense know you can only dribble. I think Someone else will take over the PG job next year (whoever can take high percentage mid range jumper). the effeicent jump shot after pick and roll can open up a lot more of different optionsy and make the pick and roll much harder to guard. I think the best to counter the swith is to jump shoot behind the screener. We cannot do that this year and struggle. I think Teske can handle this as well as many of our bigs in the past. He may not be the star, but he will be a force on both ends of the floor. We need to find at least one PG can do jump shot and drive to the basket with low TO/Ass ratio. I think we will eventually find someone in our roster now. I highly doubt that it's Simpson, he has too much ground to make up. That said, he's quite good in transition, distributing the ball very well, though.
It's tiresome, riding the #3 kenpom defense to the natty game. Downright exhausting.
until "natty"
:)
...but not from Monday, it was from scrapping so hard Saturday night to come back. Nova got a big lead and despite not playing more subs (top 6 played 28+ minutes in a blowout win), they cruised to the win.
BUT...our shooting was either hot or cold this year and it's a testament to Yaklich that we ever got this far with a below average shooting team.
Imagine last year's offense with this year's defense. Wow. We might see that next year.
in the sense of guys who can reliably put up big points game after game. Lots of players can have a hot night putting up 20+, but doing it repeatedly in pressure situations is a different thing entirely.
Glen Rice putting up a still-NCAA record of 31 ppg in tournament play and Michigan winning the NC weren't coincidental to each other. We needed somebody to have that kind of game last night, but it would have been a bit of a tall order for a team whose two highest scorers averaged 14.6 and 13 respectively during the season.
Actually remarkable how far we got with our shooting. Robinson is a terrific distance shooter, of course, but he's a catch-and-shoot guy that needs to be put in position to make shots. Matthews shoots 30%. MAAR is pretty good, but not deadly. Moe hits open 3s, but he doesn't create them himself; like Robinson, he needs to be open.
We don't have guys that can brutally punish switching. MAAR could drive, but he's only good at it, not great at it. Z can drive but teams know they don't have to worry about pullup jump shots, so his only offensive option is the circus layup. Moe can draw a double, but if he passes it outside defenses can rotate to leave open Matthews or Z on the perimeter, and those guys aren't the ones that will automatically punish the overcorrection.
Michigan has, in the past, had guys that can create their own 3-pointers. Walton just last year, for example. Burke. Stauskas. Etc. This team doesn't have a single player that, if they were to come down the court with the ball and pull up from 25 feet, you weren't mad at it.
The other effect of this is that the team could get skittish when playing hard defenses, because they were facing quick closeouts. So they dribbled, or passed, or thought about the shot, instead of just taking it. There was a first-half ball rotation where the ball went through Poole on the wing to Matthews in the corner. There was a guy closing on Poole, so Poole passed to Matthews, who (as a 30% shooter is wont to do) missed his 3 poorly.
Poole is the guy I wanted rising and taking the shot. He should have. But the fear of the closeout and the philosophy of the offense dictated a pass, and the guy receiving the pass had confidence but not the most skill at it.
Next year I think Poole takes that shot and drills it.
It's not really fair to ask someone to be Glen Rice. His record for points in a single NCAA tournament has stood for almost 30 years now for a reason. What he did over those 6 games was unbelievable. He basically was Divicenzo 6 games in a row.
Mo same % as last year..MAAR 37.4% this year,37,8 last year..Duncan 3 % points lower this year....Matthews & Z are poor jump shooters at this stage of their careers..Bottom line this years team was not a good jump shooting team.Defense,low # of turn overs got this team as far as it did.A fantastic example of over achieving & top shelf coaching.
when a 6th man shootg 30 points was hard to stop. can not say anything bad about a great season. now a couple of years of rebuilding.
1. The unusually long stretch before the first commercial break
2. Duncan getting the early foul trouble and getting autobenched
3. The group of touch fouls late in the first half.
4. The 2 3's by Nova at the end of the first half
5. Getting behind by double digits early in the 2nd half
6. Every time Michigan attempted any kind of run, Nova responded with a 3.
All that just was too much for Michigan in this game.
As I learned from a Poli Sci prof at UM back in the 80's: "Nothing that matters happens for one reason alone."
Our guys were gassed. Wagner was asking for the bench about 5 minutes in. Could some of this have to do with Loyola having pushed us in the semi final?? Some of the press articles mentioned that the guys were exhausted after the Loyola game, Matthews in particular said "man, I'm really tired."
Nova on the other hand has a deeper bench and also the luxury of playing more guys b/c they were blowing everybody out. So, in addition to the reality that they were better and also playing better, they just had fresher legs. We started out great on D but could not sustain it b/c our guys were just plain tired...
Problem will eventually be solved with better depth. I really don't want to see them get away from playing great defense, it keeps them in games when their shots aren't falling.
Nova was no deeper than us - less so, if anything. They had basically a seven-man rotation.
However that doesn't explain the wild variance from game-to-game in terms of our 3 point shooting...Our achilles heal throughout the tournament came back to bite us.
The good news is we got so much better at defense and were torching teams inside the paint during the BTT. Much like in '13 and '14 when Morgan and co. were running pick and rolls and backdoor cuts to perfection.
If we take this and build on it, and everybody works and getting more consistency with their shot, we can take another leap forward next year at least in terms of performance overall.
I'm not sure how much more energy is spent by playing 'tough def' as opposed to 'typical JB def." I think less practice time on offensive skills factors in as well.Bottom line this team had only 4 shooters and all 4 were inconsistent:Mo-Maar-Duncan-Poole,rest of squad were brick layers.
I was thinking the same thing.
The lock down defense definitely requires more energy on our part.
I just don't know how else to explain our miserable shooting in the tournament.
3/23 in the final game? It's hard to be that bad.
And we got plenty of good looks...
Beilein's plan was spot on. The team just didn't execute. Start by getting Wagner going inside. Check. This did a couple things. One, it kept Nova from pulling out to a monster lead if they were hot early. So it kept the team in it mentally. Two, it opened up the perimiter to get the guys clear looks at 3s. If those shots fall, the first half is an entirely different game. Plain and simple.
The ticky-tack fouls midway through the first half sucked any momentum and any hope of getting into a grove outside the arc. From there, it was too much ginger.
Great game, all the pieces were in the right places. They just couldn't execute. And in looking at this team, they'll be disappointed, but there's a lot to be proud of.
I think the defensive approach may make the players more tired. But we also suffered from a lack of consistent shooting. Just look at the abysmal free throw stats. Hopefully as our shooting improves through an upgrade in talent, the defense becomes less exhausting (because we're not constantly in close games).
FT shooting basically tells us what we need to know about the team's shooting, doesn't it? Our best FT shooter was Duncan, but he rarely got to the line, because he's not an offensive force that draws fouls. MAAR was good but not lights-out. Z and Matthews were liabilities. Moe made it to the line a lot and made a good percentage of his shots for a big man. But only he and MAAR really got to the line and made shots.
That sounds like a microcosm of the team's offensive ability as a whole.
The reality is, this team shot well for about 40% of a season. They shot poorly until just into Big Ten play, then shot well right through the end of the BTT, then reverted to shooting poorly again except for the A&M game.
It's unfortunate, but they were never a consistenly good shooting team. And when they were off, they were really off. Last night they were REALLY off, and Villanova was not a team they were going to beat with defense and layups.
MIchigan shot 41-143 from 3 during the tournament. Only 29%
Michigan shot 74-110 from free throw line during the tournament. Only 67%
Then why did we start so many games ice cold from 3? Three of our starters are below average shooters-Z,Livers,Matthews...Good topic for discussion though, OP.
Livers shot 36.2% from 3 this year. Prior to his ankle injury he was above 40%. I'm not sure he was ever quite the same player after that.
We’re a team that needs a lot of threes to winConsidering that we won 33 games this year and reached the national title game, I'd question that conclusion. We needed to hit our threes yesterday, but overall we muddled through most of the season despite putting up a lot of bricks.
I think mental and physical fatigue did catch up to this team just on the eye test from everything to Wagner's defensive breakdowns to Simpson's offense disappearing. It was apparent in most of our tournament wins as well as yesterday. Curious also how our FT % looked by player.
Some of this was the shear number of games in both tournaments and the extensive travel involved.
Yesterday, talent and mental toughness were not enough against a very deserving opponent to overcome these mistakes.
The good news is that we have plenty of experience for our returning players and coaches to be even better prepared for next year's run.
Not to be crictical but this post is labeled poorly
Emphasis on defense == tired legs
I remember in high school I had to wrestle a guy two weight classes above me. I bet him something like 17-15, but I was so exhausted by the end of the match I starting walking to the wrong bench. Gave the gym a good laugh. I could have just as easily lost that match. Point is. You give all you got till there is no more. Let’s just be happy they were good enough to make it all the way till it was only two standing and be proud. I’ll step of the soapbox now
In a one-off game, it's hard to measure the contribution of something like "tired legs." It seemed to me more that Villanova overwhelmed what was a very good defensive effort by one guy getting explosively hot. If Wagner had not been obvioulsy gassed or someone else would have taken up the mantle, that may have been one thing. But yesterday Michigan's bench gave them no lift at all and Villanova's turned the tide of the game entirely.