B1G/NCAA basketball

[Paul L]

Hack would complain during a three-way with Jessica Beil and Jessica Alba, claiming their tits are too small.

M is the best team in the country; need to prove it from here on out. Four (at least) future NBA players, and can go ten-deep without an issue (assuming Morgan is healthy).

No letdowns; no overconfidence. Still don't understand how they lost to that f'ing mediocre team from shitown.

Had to get it out of their system, I guess.

[The Oracle]

Ha! While pretty funny.....you're a ball of fucking sunshine yourself.

[lineygoblue]

gentlemen ...

[WM Wolverine]

Good post play causes defenses to double down on the post player, which opens up the 3-pt shot; M's biggest strength offensively and they have a lot of strengths offensively. Post play is great at forcing a defense to rotate, which creates both open 3-pt looks or pass out to a guy to penetrate...

re: Izzo vs JB... JB has a long way to go to reach Izzo status but going forward, my money is all-in on JB being more successful. Izzo can still be very successful as the B10 region has a ton of basketball talent but JB is that good of a coach, terrific at 'scouting' for talent before others recognize it and if M sustains the current success; doors will open to M/JB for the very elite talent too...

As for M, a lot of the toughest games on the schedule are in the next couple/few weeks. Those games will tell me exactly how good this team really is. We know they are really good (top 7-8), but are they a serious national title contender? Games against IU, MSU, Wisky, OSU all in a row to start February will tell us that.

[hack]

Hack would complain during a three-way with Jessica Beil and Jessica Alba, claiming their tits are too small.

That's ridiculous. I would indeed complain, but only until I solved the problem by coming up with a nickname for one of them.

[iam416]

Couple comments:

1. The stats these days, as with most sports, are great. It begins and ends with kenpom, IMO. Whether you agree or disagree with his ratings, the wealth of information he provides is absolutely gold to any numbers CBB fan.

2. No team has a significantly better chance to win the tourney than M. I like a few teams a little better, but I firmly believe any of roughly 12-15 teams could win it, and I wouldn't be surprised.

3. Beilein's approach is, if you will, a "regular season" approach. Over the course of 30 games, the team will win more games playing as it does. The post game and defense, for the host of reasons already mentioned, are akin to "playoff" hoops. It's baseball -- a great hitting lineup will win a ton of games, but what happens when you face, e.g., a team with Schilling and Johnson at the front of the rotation. Or a great goalie in hockey.

4. I honestly think only M fans, and maybe a smattering of others, actually think Beilein will outperform Izzo. It's taken him 6 seasons to finally have a team that is actually better than MSU. During the preceeding 5 seasons, Izzo has been to 2 FFs and 2 other S16s and Beilein hasn't even been to a S16. Zero. Objectively, it's a leap of faith to say that Beilein will consistently best Izzo going forward.

[hack]

Cringe re #3 and can you please stop posting about my deepest darkest fears?

One thing I do like about this Michigan team is that it doesn't double down on the stereotype by being unable to respond to a physical challenge. There is plenty of grit. It's not the type of offense-first team that gets flustered and goes into a shell, although it's Hardaway who is the cool customer. Burke gets flustered and start chucking. Nor is it the type of offense-first team that just doesn't really care about defense -- they generally play hard, and Beilein obviously spends time in practice on defense, given that they can throw 3 zone options out there at any time. Beilein just has no one on the perimeter all that good at staying in front of a guy. It'll be interesting to see how he responds.

It will also be interesting to see what happens going forward in the post. Horford is more rehearsed down there and McGary has potential. Even Beilfeldt looks like he's got a few plugger type moves -- he missed the shot but he had a great slo-mo pivot foot move against Illinois that showed the kid has some good footwork and patience. Michigan attempted to feed the post against Illinois quite a bit, in part because Illinois had their big on Burke for periods. Michigan had mixed success feeding the post, and that's putting it kindly. The kids don't look like they've gotten much drilling in how to feed the post. Sorry to Dan, but I hope that feeding the post is a point of emphasis this week. Especially if Morgan is going to be out for a few games, now's the time. Again, nothing against Morgan -- he's a solid interior plugger, and you need those guys in the B10. He's a reasonable finisher but he's just not a guy who can initiate his own offense after establishing position. The other three can. I'm interested to see whether Illinois was an outlier and they were feeding the post b/c Egwu was up top and they had mismatches down low, or perhaps because Beilein doesn't see Morgan as capable.

[hack]

Re Izzo vs. Beilein, I think if their schools were reversed it would be different. Even with MSU's history in basketball and UM's recent reemergence, Michigan is the sexier destination and always will be, and that helps narrow the gap between those two coaches strictly in terms of expected success in the future.

That said, we'll see how it goes. For all we know Michigan gets smacked early in the tourney and MSU rounds into form, as it always does, and makes it to the second weekend. That would not be a surprise. Last year's Michigan team peaked way too early.

[iam416]

That's the thing about the NCAA tournament -- it's really hard to win! If they were playing best of 7s, they'd be in great shape.

The B10 demands mental and physical toughness, so M will be well-prepared. Plus, M doesn't necessarily play aggressively physical so their game will translate well to the Tourney where, occasionally, B10 teams rack up gads of fouls because they can't go from B10 whistles (or lack thereof) to a quicker NCAA whistle.

Agree re Burke and Hardaway. TBH, I thought Burke was a little flustered in Columbus this season. I think he knows it was his last chance to win in his hometown, and you could see his frustration when they were down big. Now, he kept playing and largely stayed within his game, but for a small period, he was flustered.

[hack]

Yes exactly. Especially as the PG, Burke has to calm down and trust that the offense will yield a good shot. It's harder now. Last year was simple -- he knew he just had to create; there wasn't a whole of of offense for him to run. This year, he has to hold that decision in his head to shoot or pass during the whole offensive possession, and that's an added degree of difficulty. I hope to see progress during February in this specific department.

[Hannibal]

Hockey is a little different because the refs actually call the game differently in the playoffs. And post-lockout, when they finally started to open the game back up, the "defense and goaltending first" rule went away for about five years. I'm not sure that the "defense first" applies as strongly in college basketball. FTR, Black Shoe Diaries had a graph showing where everyone ranks in offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency, and Michigan was off the charts on OE and actually above the mean on DE. Slightly above MSU, actually, but below IU, OSU, and Wisky. I don't know that Beilien is sacrificing the defense as much as adopting the philosophy of "don't foul and don't allow second chance points". This is leading to some stretches where teams get hot shooting threes against us (e.g. Minny making 8 out of their first 10).

[hack]

Well nobody ever at any time wants to foul a 3-point shooter, but it's a good idea to guard the three-point line. It's a valuable weapon, the 3, and lots of teams live and die off it. If you take it away from Michigan, Michigan suffers. So it's a good idea for Michigan to try and take it away from others.

I dunno about defense-first not applying to college basketball. Look at M-OSU this year. Right now M has five likely NBA players on its roster, and one of them a Naismith candidate. Who won? Who controlled the game? How?

[iam416]

The other side of that coin -- the passive defense coin -- is that M is pretty bad in forcing turnovers. They do a good job of not allowing 2nd chance points and not fouling, but they do a lousy job of ending possessions without a shot.

Moreover, in B10 games, their performance on the defensive boards drops (#4 in the conference). They're still #1 overall in offensive efficiency and #4 in defensive efficiency. But, e.g., Ohio State has done a better job on the defensive boards in conference play than M.

[Hannibal]

I'd like to see what UM does at home against OSU, MSU, and IU before making a conclusion about how well Beilien's philosophy is working. I too, am a little surprised that we're never seeing two post players out there with the talent that's available. However, last year UM beat OSU at home similar to how OSU beat us this year, but got beaten soundly the other two games.

[hack]

Tourney run this year tells us how immune Beilein's teams can be to the typical traps those types of teams fall in to. He's got as much talent as any contender ever does.