WBB vs Purdue: Way too close for comfort
Opponent: Purdue (12-17, 5-13 B1G, 12th place)
Result: Win, 64-60
Record: 18-12, 9-9 B1G, 6th place
Date: 3/3, Home
Starters: Laila Phelia, Lauren Hansen, Jordan Hobbs, Cam Williams, Elissa Brett
Injuries/inactives:
- Macy Brown dressed, but did not play
- Taylor Williams was not dressed, but did not have a limp or any visible injury. She has not played in the last five games since 2/10 against Rutgers, so maybe she is done for the year?
1st quarter:
- Cam Williams scored the first bucket when she squared up with her back to the basket, turned, and hit a hook shot
- She made the second shot of the game in an almost identical way
- Early on, Purdue was getting some open shots, but not hitting them
- Jeanae Terry got her second foul threw minutes in defending Phelia and sat until the third quarter
- Purdue made their first bucket 5 minutes in on a transition layup
- Purdue was pressing and almost jumped a pass, but Phelia recovered and got it to Hobbs who passed to Brett in the corner for 3
- A Purdue player tried to back down Stuck, but she stayed vertical and got a block
- Cam ended up with three fouls and had to sit. The second was pretty light contact, and she committed a charge for her third
- Michigan shot 5-14 in the quarter, with no points the last three and a half minutes of the quarter
2nd quarter:
- Hobbs got into the paint, received a quick touch pass from Woodson, and hit a jumper on Michigan’s first possession
- 1-2-2 press with Woodson at the point caused a turnover by trapping at the half, but Phelia missed a driving layup
- Purdue took the lead on a lob to an open post player. On the next possession, Evans got the ball, turned, and put it in through contact, then made the free throw to take back the lead
- Phelia drove the length of the court under a minute and made a basket to give Michigan an extra possession, but Hansen missed the shot on the last possession of the half
3rd quarter:
- Purdue hit a three on their first possession to cut lead to 2, but Brett answered by banking in a three of her own
- Evans ducked under a defender, finished through contact again, and made the free throw
- Hansen hit a three to make lead six and a foul from Purdue on Brett during the shot gave Michigan the ball back. Hansen missed another three on the second possession
- Up 4, Brett stripped the ball from a Purdue post player, then Hansen found Cam for an easy bucket down low
- Evans spun through two defenders and hit an off balance shot
- Cam hit two shots in a row on feeds from Phelia and Hobbs to finish the quarter up 5
4th quarter:
- Purdue came out in a high press, but Michigan got the ball to Woodson two on one. She drove at the defender and dumped it to Cam for an easy bucket
- Purdue’s press intensified, but Michigan continued to pass through it effectively
- After Ellis hit another three, Phelia drove hard and banked it in off the glass to make it a three point lead with two minutes left
- Cam hit another down low to make it 5, but Purdue got a long bounce off a miss from three and hit the second attempt
- With Michigan up two, Purdue intercepted a pass and called timeout. On the ensuing possession, Purdue traveled and gave the ball back to Michigan with 17 seconds left
- Purdue had a foul to give, but Phelia got the ball twice, Purdue fouled twice, and Phelia hit both free throws
- Purdue missed two attempts from three, but Brett fouled and gave them the ball back. They threw away the inbounds and Hansen retrieved it for the win
Notable stats:
- Cam Williams had 18 points on 9-13 shooting (69%)
- Brett pulled in 11 rebounds, but only scored 6 points on 2-4 shooting from deep
- Phelia was second in scoring with 15 points on 6-13 shooting and 3-4 from the free throw line. She missed all three of her attempts from deep
- Abby Ellis from Purdue hit 5-8 three point attempts and scored 23 total
- Most team statistics were pretty even as the teams tied at 35 rebounds and turnovers were 14 for Michigan and 12 for Purdue
Overall:
- Despite leading for all but a couple minutes of game time, Michigan looked ready to let Purdue crush their postseason chances. Instead, Cam Williams and Laila Phelia turned in clutch performances and Michigan pulled out a four point win. In order to make March Madness, they probably need one more win in the Big Ten Tournament against a Minnesota team they lost to at home in January.
Miscellaneous:
- Senior day honorees: Brett, Stuck, Hansen, Sollom, Cam Williams
- Taylor Williams is also a senior, but has one more year of eligibility because of COVID, so this suggests she may be back
- Stuck, Sollom, and Cam Williams also have their COVID year available
Up next:
- Big Ten Tournament:
- Michigan finished in 6th place, so they will face the winner of the Minnesota-Rutgers game that will happen on Wednesday. That game will start around 9pm on Big Ten Network.
- If they win, they would face Indiana on Friday.
Most recent bracketology:
- ESPN has Michigan as a 10 seed and one of the “last four byes” (updated 3/1)
- 8 B1G teams in the field
- Her Hoop Stats has Michigan as one of the “last four in” and an 11 seed (2/29)
- 8 B1G teams in field
- College Sports Madness has Michigan as an 11 seed (2/26)
- 8 B1G teams in field
I ended up watching the second half since it was on FS1 and the eye test backed up a lot of the numbers we've seen -- this is a good team, not a great team, with a bunch of smart, experienced players but a few glaring weaknesses. There is a definitely lack of shooting -- by comparison Abby Ellis pretty much singlehandedly kept bringing Purdue back every time M would open up a six or eight point lead. The ball handling is shaky, though it was mostly good enough to deal with the Purdue press. The athleticism is below average, they can definitely be out-athleted pretty easily at multiple positions.
Still, they played as a team, moved the ball well and got a lot of good looks at the basket. Cam Williams played well and I thought Jordan Hobbs was a difference maker.
I assume they'll be on TV for the BTT and NCAAT (if they get in), looking forward to watching.
Yeah this team doesn't look destined for great things.
But 18-12 is a winning team, whereas some people actually chose to watch the men lose by 23 to OSU.
Michigan's games in the Big Ten Tournament will be on Big Ten Network unless they make it to the championship, which will be broadcast on CBS. The first two games on Wednesday are on Peacock for some reason. The rest are on BTN until the championship.
Gonna have to disagree on the lack of shooting part. Purdue was 30% from 3 (2-15 outside Abby Ellis), and Michigan was 26% from deep, so while that's not good last night, it wasn't a major difference last night either.
On the season Michigan is 34.6% from deep (52nd in the country), and is the best they've shot from deep since 2017-18 season where they were 40%, (33.9 , 30.6, 30.5, 32.8, 32.9 are the other five seasons prior to 2017-18). They aren't killers from three, but I don't think it's fair to say there's a lack of shooting when you have Hansen (36.5%), Hobbs (38.2%), and Elissa (35.1%) all on good volume of 100+ attempts. For reference, Maddie Nolan was a career 36.5% shooter from three and nobody thought she was a poor shooter. Even more impressive when you can think they're getting more focus on the perimeter without Naz or Emily being the huge presence down low that they've had in past years.
35% is "good enough". I don't mean that as an insult or a backhanded compliment, just cold-blooded math.
It's an oversimplification that ignores rebounds, turnovers, etc., but consider a decently efficient inside presence shoots about 50% from 2. That's 1.0 PPA, to keep the math simple.
To get to 1.0 PPA from 3, you need to shoot 33-34%. So, 35% is fine, right? Not quite. Drives are far more likely to get you FTs, so 50% from 2 is actually higher than 1.0. Meaning, at 35% the perimeter is still less dangerous than getting in the paint, albeit not by much. Break out of the oversimplification bubble and things get fuzzy.
(Case in point: the book on Naz was you could collapse on her because 30-33% wasn't good enough to dissuade defenses from taking their chances outside.)
Long story short, 35% is barely good enough to put defenses in conflict between paint and perimeter. So, you can do things with 35%. But the closer you can get your 3-shooters to 40%, the more they go from "being there" to creating matchup problems.
The reality though is, that to shoot 40% from three as an individual makes you a 92nd percentile shooter in women's college basketball according to her hoop stats. We have Hobbs (87th percentile), Hansen (81st), and Brett (74th), and as a team are in the 86th percentile. There's three teams in America who shoot 40% as a team, and only ten shoot it above 38% as a team. What is the threshold number to put teams in conflict? I just think there's not many people who shoot at the level at which you think is required. Especially when the volume at which the three shoot are in the 78th, 92nd, and 86th percentile in attempts, so not many are shooting more than these girls.
Well the thing about reality is that it doesn't care what you or I think. 0.5 x 2 = 0.333(etc) x 3. Factor in free throws and the "=" becomes a ">".
Also, please don't shove words in my mouth with stuff like "what you think is required". Like I said, 35% is "good enough". (I said it twice.) You can do things with it. There isn't a hard threshold because again, outside the oversimplification bubble things get fuzzy. It could well be that defenses in WBB are overplaying the perimeter, but to know for sure, someone would have to break down the 2P/3P PPA splits (including FTA results) to find the break-even point. I don't have that data, so I used back-of-a-napkin numbers.
Anyway I don't think it's a hot take to say that you want your outside shooters to be as good as possible. Yeah, if you've got 40% shooters you're in a very nice place. Water is wet.
I'm glad they finished the drill- Cam Williams was really cooking in the first quarter before some questionable officiating led to her sitting for a long time- third foul was legit, but the first two, man... woof.
Agreed. I thought the first one was even worse than the second. They had no answer for her, and it really hurt to have to staple her to the bench.
It's interesting how they seem to use her and Evans differently in the same spots. It was pretty clear they wanted the work the ball to the middle of the floor all night; they were constantly getting the ball to the mid post.
While Cam would generally make a strong move to the basket, Evans' first, second, and sometimes third looks when she got the ball in that spot were always to pass. It makes me wonder if she has been coached to pass first out of that spot for some particular reason. She has pretty good footwork as well and, while she doesn't have the baby hook that Cam has when her back is to the basket, she has good enough footwork to often get a good look. I'm wondering if that's just a player difference or if they're being coached to handle their looks in the paint differently.
Next game: Thur 07 March, 9pm ET BTN vs Minn/Rut winner
Hail to the Victors.