MICHIGAN'S MEN'S BASKETBALL: 2015-2016

[iam416]

I called it. Their basketball team plays probably their best game of the year, against us.

Nah. M's interior "defense" is awful. OSU got tons of good looks. If OSU had played their best game of the year it would have been more like the football shellacking.

[hack]

Michigan plays bad, BAD defense.

[iam416]

Good defense has never been a Beilein hallmark.

I mean, they are playing this season basically without Levert and Albrecht. That doesn't change the interior dynamics one lick, but those are losses.

But, meh....whatever...M is destined for an early NCAA exit and Ohio State is destined for the NIT. Joy.

[Mike]

To say Michigan plays bad defense implies that they play defense.

How bad must the level of play be in D1 for Michigan to be a tourney team? Good grief.

[Hannibal]

Albrecht was still a role player, one who could have been amply replaced.

Michigan has been so resoundingly beaten in their losses that it's hard to see Levert making a difference in any of them, except for perhaps last night's since the 3-point shooting was so shitty. But you would think that 3-point shooting would almost never be a problem on a team where the sole prerequisite for getting a scholarship offer from Beilien is to be able to shoot threes. And that's apparently all that they practice too.

[iam416]

Against Ohio State:

Michigan Interior Hoops Defense >, <, or = Michigan Football Run Defense?

hello

[hack]

They were at full strength last year when they lost back-to-back at home to NJIT and EMU. It's not injuries. They just play bad defense, and don't have a swaggery player like Burke or Stauskas to bail them out, or a heart-and-soul guy like Novak to fire them up.

They don't even need to play GOOD defense. Mediocre most of the time would be sufficient, provided the offense doesn't shit the bed on regular basis. My bet is that more practice time dedicated to defense could cut out 3-4 of those communication miscues a game, and that's significant. I'd love it if they were out there scrapping for loose balls, but that just seems too far out of reach and not really the personality of a Beilein team. But practicing more and eliminating more of those miscues, or the habit of standing in no-man's land that Dakich points out, etc. - that seems doable.

[Hannibal]

I'm totally shocked that a Div III transfer with no Div I offers out of high school isn't tearing up the Big Ten schedule.

[Hannibal]

They don't even need to play GOOD defense. Mediocre most of the time would be sufficient, provided the offense doesn't shit the bed on regular basis.

It has been doing that too a lot lately. If you have a philosophy that completely neglects 2/3 of the game that is one thing. If you can't even be good at the 1/3 that you actually care about that is another thing entirely.

[hack]

I'm totally shocked that a Div III transfer with no Div I offers out of high school isn't tearing up the Big Ten schedule.

Same thing happened to Stauskas freshman year, once conference play was really in full swing.

[hack]

If you can't even be good at the 1/3 that you actually care about that is another thing entirely.

I think often enough this is what the offense looks like by mid-February, when everyone else in the conference knows what's coming and how to take it away.

[hack]

Excuse du jour: lack of depth = everyone's tired. THREE GAMES IN SEVEN DAYS!!! (as if that's not the norm -- they generally play once during the week and once during the weekend)

http://www.umhoops.com/2016/02/17/notebook-lack-depth-takes-toll-3-point-struggles-donnals-resurgence/

Never mind that Beilein likes a short rotation of 7/8 guys and it would be like this anyways, but if the guy is stuck for options he's got only himself to blame. He brought a near-five star recruit here in Chatman. Wagner was looking like a player ready to contribute in December. There's Wilson. Spike may be out, but MAAR's played some point and can slide down there for a few minutes no problem, esp since without LeVert Irvin is probably the team's best facilitator anyways regardless off who is only the floor.

But none of that addresses defensive confusion and miscues. Even if you want to tie effort to fatigue.

[Hannibal]

How can you still be tired after sleeping through three out of the four previous games?

[hack]

Looking at the schedule, it was only OSU's third game in eight days. But not only that, OSU's game on Feb 8 was an 8pm tip, and Michigan's on Feb. 9 was a 9pm tip. So to say that OSU has had an extra day's rest over an 8-day period doesn't really do it justice. Really it was an extra 25 hours of rest.

[CGVT]

Of course. Obviously EVERY team in the country plays their best game against M, even when they lose. It's a very strange phenomenon.

MSU fan, I take it?

The point is that OSU sees Michigan as a real rival. A hated rival at that. They almost always play their best game in any sport against Michigan and Michigan almost always play its best game against OSU. That's how rivalries work.

Not with one team hating the other and the other not really caring.