Beilein's Time

Note: This post has needed a direction for about a week, and the Syracuse win finally afforded it that.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Michigan fans know well the horrors of single-elimination postseason tournaments. The various heartbreaking hockey losses make these most explicit, but even the ups and downs of recent NCAA basketball tournaments have provided their fair share of disappointment. In the end though, those losses offer the denouement of the season's story and usually a fitting end that had been building until the final buzzer. Shawn Hunwick could only hold back the flood waters for so long without support before the team crumbled. 2011's NCAA heartbreaker against Duke showed that, though Michigan's basketball team wasn't at the mountaintop yet, it was on its way with a firm foothold.

I've never been good with historical context, so what happens when your team just keeps winning? The Fab Five comparison is embarrassingly easy to the point of being fiction--even Jalen Rose is calling for the end of this comparison now. The Fab Five won largely on talent alone: that many players with that much talent will win no matter what. Coaching becomes secondary in 90% of your games and only becomes important in those crucial moments when the heat is really on, say, when you're down two points in the NCAA championship game and you don't have any timeouts left. John Beilein remains widely heralded by his contemporaries as one of the best coaches in college basketball. His teams frequently exceed expectations, both during the season and in the NCAA tournament. Steve Fisher believes his team was just beaten by Florida State.

On a seven-point Likert scale, most readers would list my pessimism about this Michigan team well on the higher end. I've criticized the team's athleticism, Trey Burke, and Nik Stauskas, but the one thing I've maintained complete faith in this season is John Beilein. A few years ago, I complained that Beilein wasn't able to bring in the athletes that would allow Michigan to compete on a national level because at the time, Laval Lucas-Perry was Michigan's idea of a savior. Things were not going well. A few years later, Beilein is surrounding by his players and being crowned with a recently cut-down net before sheepishly taking it off and bestowing the honor to Tim Hardaway Jr.

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Syracuse has been smothering teams during this tournament and it was up to John Beilein to figure out how to get Michigan quality looks on offense. Though it started defensively--rebounding the ball and getting buckets in transition--it became quickly clear that Beilein had a few offensive sets that were designed to beat the 2-3 zone. The most impactful was a 1-4 offensive set with the ball at the top of the key and four Michigan players lined up in the middle of the Syracuse zone.

Though not a great screenshot of exactly how this offense was working, it displays how Michigan was able to dominate Syracuse's zone. Trey Burke enters the ball into the high post for Mitch McGary. When that happens, the two wings players sink to the corners and the other high post player (GR3) dives to the basket.

The defender in the middle of the 2-3 zone has to stay high on McGary, forcing the back to defenders to guard three Michigan players: two corner three point shooters or a layup inside. It's football's smash concept run against a 2-3 zone, and one of the more spectacular schematic deployments I've seen in basketball recently (I might be biased). How else do you think Mitch McGary led the team with 6 assists? How did he get those wide open elbow jumpers (if the middle defender in the zone sinks with the inside dive, McGary was wide open)? How do you think Caris Levert got wide-open corner threes when Syracuse has the ability to close out like this?

Michigan ran this set over and over again in the first half and there was nothing Syracuse could do to stop it. The Orange had a scheme and stuck to it. Beilein had adjustments that broke Syracuse's only solution.


Michigan now goes up against a storyline in Kevin Ware and Louisville, but this feels like John Beilein's time. He embarrassed the "Havoc" defense and solved Syracuse's dominant 2-3 zone. And late in games, when lesser coaches would be wont to stick with their hot hand in Mitch McGary, twice now, Beilein has gone offense-for-defense allowing Jordan Morgan to make defensive plays to help seal Michigan wins.

Louisville's defense presents one final challenge for Beilein: breaking a trap, something that Michigan has done successfully all year under the guiding hand of Trey Burke. Beilein will be there to right the ship if things go awry, but against Louisville, he'll act more like the terrified parent giving the car keys to his recently licensed 16-year-old: I've given you the tools and the preparation not to steer this into a ditch; do me proud.

Regardless of storylines, Louisville and Michigan present an interesting matchup, but at this point, can anyone bet against John Beilein?

The Official BWS Bracket

Click to enlarge

Acceleration and Michigan's personnel

One of the major trends that's taken over NBA basketball is SportVU, a series of cameras placed in the rafters of NBA stadiums that captures location and movement data. The early adopters of the system are the powerhouses of the NBA, most famously the San Antonio Spurs who first utilized the data to restructure its offense around the corner-3. The rise of people like Kirk Goldsberry is grounded in similar spatial analytics. At the recent Sloan Sports Conference, Goldsberry, among others, gave presentations relating to spatial analytics in the NBA as well as a host of other topics on various sports. The following is a Grantland production of Philip Maymin's presentation regarding acceleration in the NBA.


I bring this up because it helps define some of my issues with this Michigan team. After the Ohio State loss, I wrote about Michigan's lack of athleticism, which was met with criticism. And probably rightly so, because shortly after that game, Glenn Robinson III did this:


So sheer athleticism is probably not the problem for this Michigan team. Rather, it's their first step/acceleration that I've seen that I find problematic. Barring Trey Burke, whose hesitation is devastating and changes speeds relentlessly, Michigan's other guards and wing players struggle to keep up with opponents and generate shots for themselves because this acceleration is lacking.

Tim Hardaway Jr struggles mightily with this, in addition to his lack of dribbling skills. He has long strides, which creates high top-end speed and open-court athleticism, but struggles in the half court when you need the ability to quickly get by your defender. Glenn Robinson III also has trouble with a first step, which is one of the reasons why you don't see him making moves to the rim off the dribble much. While posting Robinson in the corner is part of the offense, he's playing out of position (he's naturally a SF, not a PF) and should be able to gain a step or two on larger, hypothetically slower defenders. The same applies to their defensive struggles, where staying in front of opponents is something both players struggle with.

On the other side of the coin is Caris LeVert, who, aside from Trey Burke, has the quickest step on the team. He's quickly becoming the back-up goalie of Michigan basketball: the guy that the fanbase loves because of his occasional flashes of potential. You can see the difference between LeVert and Hardaway when they get into the lane: whereas Hardaway tries to rely on his top-end speed to get to the bucket and often ends up out of control, LeVert uses a stutter and hop steps to generate open looks. This is not to say that LeVert is a better player than Hardaway; he's not--at least not yet--but Hardaway needs to realize his destiny as a set shooter*.

I'm preferable to players who are truly explosive if not the best basketball players--it's the FreeDarko model, which I've discussed here before. But Beilein's system requires the latter and becomes deadly when he recruits the players who who can do both (Burke, possibly GR3 in a year or two, hopefully Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton).

*One of the things I've noticed this season from Hardaway is how much better his balance is on set shots, both compared to the same shots from last year as well as when he shoots of the dribble. I can't remember a player who has such a discrepancy between his set shot success and his success off the dribble. When Hardaway can catch and shoot, you know it's going in, but when he lifts off the dribble, it seems like the ball never drops. If you watch his core while he's shooting, you can see the difference.

A tale of two Burkes

Author's note: You're not allowed to read this post until you've read this. I don't want to deal with your freakouts.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

If you look at his stats, Trey Burke is having one of those seasons that you tell your kids about, as ESPN and BTN announcers have been all-too-happy to point out--Did you know that only Magic Johnson and Trey Burke have averaged 18 PPG and 7 APG during the Big Ten season? But in the last few games, Burke's play has seen a noticeable dip, punctuated by games like Saturday's against IU where he shot just 9 for 24 from the field and had 3 TOs (How lucky are Michigan fans to have a guy where that's a complaint? Have you seen Keith Appling play... ever?).

I was particularly incredulous about his shot selection on Saturday, which was mentioned in the most recent MGoPodcast, motivating me to see whether or not there was anything to my complaints. Burke has fallen in love with his mid-range stepback in recent games and it's significantly affected his efficiency. Against IU, for instance, the average length of Burke's shots was 15.375 feet. He took 12 three pointers; for reference, he's taken only 7 three pointers in a game two other times this season. Burke is trying to stretch his game out a little too far and has ended up settling for a a lot of mid-range jumpers and contested/step-back threes. This is not a recipe for Michigan victories, even if he's scoring 25 points.

But this post is the result of a clear downtick in his performance the last few weeks. So in order to quantify it a bit, I took a look at Burke's numbers from the the non-conference schedule compared to his conference stats and...

	Non-conference play	Big Ten Conference play
Points/game	17.8	18.9
Shots/game	12.92	15.33
FGM/FGA	90-168 (53.57%)	59-138 (42.75%)
3PM/3PA	23-60 (38.33%)	17-44 (38.63%)
Assits/game (total)	7.38 (96)	6.88 (62)
Turnovers/game (total)	1.92 (25)	1.77 (16)
% of team's shots used	22.07%	27.30%
Available minutes	82.00%	88.00%

So the obvious caveat: the Big Ten is the best conference in college basketball and you would expect a noticeable drop off in his performance playing against stiffer competition. Improving aspects like points per game and reducing his turnovers per game are no small feats. However, there are also some disturbing trends during conference play.

Burke is averaging about 2.5 more shots per game during the conference schedule than the non-conference and only scoring 1.1 more points per game. That's an important dip in efficiency that lends credence to his shot selection troubles. To my eyes, Burke has become somewhat isolation heavy in recent games relatively early in the shot clock (10-12 seconds left), and that has resulted in what isos always do: semi-contested mid-range jumpers.

The other disturbing trend is Burke's significant drop in field goal percentage despite holding steady at 38% from the three point line. During the non-conference season, Burke averaged 4.61 three-point attempts per game and is averaging 4.88 in the conference schedule, a negligible gain. You can surmise then, that the 11% decline in his overall shooting percentage comes on his two-point attempts. In non-conference games, Burke was shooting a blazing 62% on two-pointers but is only averaging 44% on twos in conference play.

So what's the culprit? Aaron Craft and Victor Oladipo for one. You'd expect Burke to struggle against two of the nation's elite perimeter defenders and his numbers concur (4-13, 4 assists/4 TOs against OSU; 9-24, 8 assists/3 TOs against IU). But Burke's numbers have also seen noticeable drops against Nebraska, Minnesota, Purdue, and Illinois: all games that were close after the first half. In the non-conference, Burke also struggled a bit against Kansas State and Pitt, games that were separated by no more than 5 points at the half. Are the games close because of Burke's struggles or does he press harder against better opponents, leading to worse outcomes? His increased usage rate in those games (28.73%) implies a tendency to overextend against more difficult opponents.

Burke definitely has national player of the year talent but his performances against elite competition this season--even games against average+ competition in which the opponent holds serve with Michigan for a while--have been distressing. With games against IU, OSU, Illinois, and MSU upcoming still, to say nothing of the NCAA tournament, Burke will need to reverse this trend if Michigan wants to make serious waves this season.

MGoEeyore

I majored in English at Michigan during undergrad. I didn't take many creative writing classes because that wasn't really my focus--frankly, I didn't have a focus but I knew it wasn't creative writing. My poetry and short stories were dreck and it's carried over to some of the flashier things I try to do here: I've done my best to write game columns without any sort of narrative because a) I'm bad at that kind of writing and b) I think narrative is tedious, but I digress.

I did, however, take a few creative writing class, and in one in particular--which I unknowingly took with Steve Lorenz of Michigan Tremendous/24x7 fame--we were tasked with writing personal essays and critiquing the writing of others. In order for people to feel comfortable sharing their experiences and opening up with their writing, we began every peer-critiquing class/session with 45 minutes of complements and discussions of what the author did particularly well, followed by 45 minutes of what seemed amis and needed to be changed in subsequent drafts. If you're reading this blog, you probably know what's coming next. I didn't participate much during the first half of the class exercises, opting instead to discuss where the author stumbled.

At the same time, I was writing music reviews for websites like Stylus Magazine and PopMatters, and working at the Michigan Daily in the Arts section. What I found out, albeit slowly, was that I wasn't a very good music critic. There's a certain level of connection and empathy that comes with critiquing music, a fluid, personal expression. I envied some of my contemporaries like Mike Powell and Derek Miller, the likes of whose prose poetically discovered aspects of the music I had never contemplated. My mind was stuck on the chord progressions, cadence, flows, and the complexity of the beats, which is not to say that this isn't a valuable way of addressing music, but to do it well--see: Ian Cohen, Jeff Weiss--you have to be on some next level shit that I wasn't close to. I've since moved on to video games, which are far more calculating, and in this space, sports.

I'm telling you all of this to try and give some context for this blog which has recently become the Self-Hating Jew of Michigan sports sites, culminating in the MGoEeyore designation on MGoBlog that inspired the title.

In that creative writing class, I didn't put my efforts toward critiquing other peoples' writing because I wanted to be the class prick. In my opinion, most people know what they do well. The few times I wrote something that still holds up, it was fairly obvious why. However, my mistakes are far less apparent but more valuable in the long run; you learn more by finding out what you did wrong than being told what you did right. I assume other people find the same value in criticism, which brings us to Michigan sports and this blog.

I like Michigan football. I also like this basketball team, and despite popular belief, think they're quite good. But I'm of the belief that most of my readers know what Michigan sports teams do well. MGoBlog exists and does a fantastic job of detailing how and why, for example, this basketball team has become one of the best in the country. I don't write about those things for the same reasons that I don't write posts about recruiting or random news bits: the mission of this blog has always been to supply content that you can't get elsewhere. During the football season, that means extensive film breakdowns, the likes of which MGoBlog could do but doesn't have the time (or page space) for. But it also means asking questions about why Michigan teams lose close games or individual players' limitations, which exist but often go brushed aside--we're all fans and it sucks admitting our teams are flawed.

I think the frustration from readers arises because regardless of what I write here, it won't improve the team. Michigan teams won't learn from their mistakes because of posts on this site. So when I watch Michigan teams play, I know that Nik Stauskas is a great shooter but I want to see where his limitations lie. The same goes for a player like Trey Burke, who I'll be writing about tomorrow. So I don't pull my punches or hedge my bets: when I see a flaw, I write about it without qualifying, "But yeah, he's a really good guy and does all of these other things well." You know that already.