Izzowl

In lieu of a half-baked post about the Big Ten championship

Coaching your way to victory

I've been as critical--if not more so--of the Michigan basketball team as anyone in the M blogosphere. I've written about this before, but my philosophy about basketball aligns pretty closely with that of the now defunct FreeDarko.com. One of the primary reasons for this tendency is because before approximately 2002, my interest in basketball could be pretty easily summarized: none. FreeDarko became a formative basketball tome for me, which means I favor highly athletic, fast, improvisational basketball, the likes of which John Beilein comprehensively squashes.

There's been enough statistical analysis to support my favored brand of hoops, at least insofar as talent is concerned. In basketball, more than in any other sport, sheer talent level trumps just about everything. Sleepers, the likes of which you find a lot in football, don't really exist in any sustainable quantity in basketball. In fact, once you get to a pro level, they're basically non-existant (though Jeremy Lin is doing his best to disprove this idea). As such, the construction of the current Wolverine basketball squad is not really my style: a bunch of under the radar shooters that, frankly, are living up to their diminutive recruiting hype, and a few players with clear potential (Hardaway, Burke, Morris previously, etc).

Beilein, however, is a mastermind. As most Michigan fans will tell you, Beilein is often cited as one of the best, if not the best, coach in college basketball. What he's been able to craft out of the motley collection of players Michigan runs out on any given night is nothing short of brilliance. Given the injuries that have plagued the team's depth for the last four years and the early defections of Manny Harris and Darius Morris, to be challenging for a Big Ten title this late in this season is a level of coaching that few of Beilein's contemporaries could even imagine.

On Saturday, Michigan played a team that is objectively better than them at just about every position. And they've done that on a few occasions this season. Michigan is routinely outsized, out muscled, and out skilled. But somehow, the team keeps winning. This isn't a Tebow situation either, where the team is outplayed the whole game only to pull it out at the end. Michigan never trailed against Ohio State, one of the country's best teams, and a team that is, with Jared Sullinger, uniquely equipped to punish Michigan's greatest weakness.

At one point during the second half, Sullinger went on a dominating streak of easy buckets in the paint. The Buckeyes ran down the floor, Sullinger got position on the block, and after an easy entry pass, Sullinger would quickly and easily finish at the basket. I Tweeted at the time that Michigan should change their defensive front to a zone defense in order to limit Sullinger's touches inside and force the Buckeyes to shoot more three pointers, the likes of which they struggled to hit the whole game. Beilein called a timeout with 8:46 left in the game and subsequently came out of the huddle in man defense again. I was displeased, but from that point on, Sullinger made only two free throws (earned after an offensive rebound) and a layup. He didn't even attempt another shot until the frantic final seconds of the game.

Beilein nullified arguably the best player in the country during the final stretch of a tight game by.... I don't know, working on his players' footwork? Obviously the team didn't sell out on Sullinger, opening easier shots for the rest of the Buckeyes. So I don't know what was said, but the entire scenario was sublimely Beilein. With a team in serious foul trouble (Ohio State was in the bonus at the 12-minute mark of the second half) and a group of big men that would struggle to compete with Sullinger in any situation, Beilein stuck to his base defense and coached the team to a win. This is the epitome of a coach putting his team in the position to win.

Bullets

• Those stepback jumpers by Stu Douglass and Zack Novak late in the game were beautiful. Terrifying, then beautiful.
• Trey Burke was the difference in this game. His 5/3 assist/turnover ratio is indicative of why Michigan won this game. He effectively nullified the defense of Aaron Craft by taking care of the ball and not giving the Buckeyes anything easy in transition.
• What a great game for Tim Hardaway Jr. to show up. 13 points on 4/5 shooting? Yes please. However, I could've sworn those back-to-back free throw misses were going to lose Michigan the game. They didn't, of course, and Hardaway turned in probably his best game of the year.
• Jordan Morgan was once again spectacular guarding Sullinger. He was great at fronting Sullinger and denying passes into the post. The one complaint about Morgan's defense in the game was allowing Sullinger to spin into the lane late in the game. Early on, Morgan was overplaying Sullinger to the inside, forcing him to spin baseline where help defense was coming. He stopped doing that during the aforementioned Sullinger run in the second half and I'm not sure why. Might've been a coaching decision.
• Michigan is going to need to run layup lines for the next month. This team missed a lot of easy looks at the basket. That's how you lose basketball games.

To close the season, Michigan needs to win four games in which they'll be favored in order to have a shot at winning a Big Ten regular season title. It would be amazing if the team could get even a share of the title, but more importantly, it's clear that this team is set up to challenge for the title every year. Beilein Uber Alles, amirite?

A note on Tim Hardaway Jr.

Chris Ryba | The Michigan Daily

I've drawn much ire for my criticism of Tim Hardaway Jr. in the wake of the Michigan State game. Because I don't like being wrong, and more importantly, because I want to affirm that what I'm seeing and thinking are not totally crazy, I figured I'd jot down some thoughts about Michigan's most enigmatic scorer.

Hardaway came out of high school as a middling three-star recruit (Scout listed him as the #36 shooting guard in the country; he wasn't ranked on Rivals). After a successful freshman year, people were crowning him as one of the league's best scorers, which he might well be, but in a way that should make more people skeptical of his production. Hardaway is a high-volume shooter (he averaged 13.9 PPG on 10.8 shots/game last year; 15.4 PPG on 12.5 shots/game this season), which is odd given his predilection to disappear for large periods of time. Unfortunately, this equates to a player who is not particularly efficient on the offensive end.

Many people look to KenPom for college basketball stats, but my stat guru is ESPN's John Hollinger. About two years ago, Hollinger introduced his NBA Player Efficiency Rating (PER) to the college game. I'll let him explain:

For those of you unfamiliar with PER, it stands for player efficiency rating. This is the catch-all metric I developed to sum up what you see in the box score -- a method I developed to provide apples-to-apples comparisons of NBA players who are playing under different circumstances.

It doesn't see everything because not everything is counted -- for instance, the box score doesn't have good defensive stats besides blocks and steals. But it's adjusted for the pace of the game and calculated on a per-minute basis, so it's a great way to get a statistical snapshot of a player's efficiency and effectiveness.

PER is, in my opinion, the best metric for judging players. When the initial college rankings came out a week or so ago, I wanted to see where Hardaway landed. Given his production and widespread praise, I sort of assumed that he'd end up in the good-not-great region of players nationally. But a glance at the top 100 players nationally in PER returns no Wolverines. Fortunately, Hollinger also has a conference-by-conference breakdown of players. Hardaway? 36th... in the Big Ten.

Hardaway's PER is a middling 18.53 (per Hollinger, league average is 15.00). Both Evan Smotrycz (20.15, 25th) and Trey Burke (19.71, 27th) rank higher than Hardaway. For perspective, Jared Sullinger is currently leading the Big Ten in PER with 33.18. PER is a metric that can swing a few tenths of a point after a single game, but after tracking Hardaway since the rankings have been up, he's been consistently in the high teens, and has not surpassed Smotrycz or Burke.

Less objectively, Hardaway seems to be a player that gets praised for good timing and image. Hardaway has come up big late in games, and he may very well be one of those clutch scorers that just happens to put it together at the end, but that's not the kind of top scorer you can successfully build your team around. There's a reason Hardaway doesn't get to the line or the bucket: he can't, really. His first step is slow, his lateral quickness is lacking (just look at his defense, about which more later), and he doesn't have the strength to muscle up inside. He does, however, have incredibly long strides that make him an excellent transition scorer and afford good straight-line speed.

But Hardaway is not a bad player. Hardaway is a great player to have as a second or third option, which he ostensibly is given the success of Burke and Darius Morris last year. The problem is that Michigan's second option offensively is a defensive sieve. Hardaway's PER benefits from the lack of defensive metrics because, as most can agree, he's either a lackadaisical defender (not rotating to help, getting lost in coverage, taking possessions off) or outright subpar. I think it's a combination of the two: his lateral quickness hinders his ability to guard athletic shooting guards and small forwards, and he fails to make up for it with Zack Novak effort.

I do really like Hardaway. He seems like a good kid with the raw talent to be a special player, but I also think he gets too much praise for his actual output. You'll think I'm crazy or a prick for writing this, but you probably thought that already. At least now I know I'm not crazy.

The Arrival

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

There are some moments that feel bigger than they actually are in the grand scheme of things: your first kiss, getting your first job, acing a particular test. Each has some cultural significance that tells you This Is Important despite the fact that these moments are likely to happen far more frequently in the future than they have in the past. The worst case scenario for most of these is a missed opportunity, but there are some instances that don't necessarily have to happen; when Target rejected my application as a 16 year old, it felt deflating, but chances were that I'd spend most of my life working in some capacity.

When Darius Morris' floater clanged off the rim against Duke to end the Wolverines' season last year, everyone was disappointed. Michigan had missed its opportunity to make a truly profound statement: not only had Beilein begun to turn around a moribund program, but the evolution was complete; Michigan can compete with anyone, on any stage, at any time. Instead it felt like another close loss, the likes of which the team has seemed to suffer on a regular basis over the last three years. Sports are zero sum events--there are no moral victories--so despite Michigan's fate last night hinging on a similar shot that could have just as easily gone the other way, the results are profoundly different.

It's a reach to say that Michigan has a better basketball program than Michigan State now. They don't. Tom Izzo's win total and the Final Four appearances and the recruiting rankings and the championship banners hanging in the Breslin Center are enough proof of that. But Michigan is a better team than Michigan State, which is something that can't be said that frequently in the history (certainly the more recent history) of Michigan basketball.

Most importantly, though, Michigan has finally arrived. When they were ranked #15 in the preseason poll heading into the 2009-2010 season, most fans were skeptical. The team still had noticeable blemishes and the wins that put them on the map the previous year felt more like feel-good stories than the actual emergence of a contender. But with the program's third straight win over their in-state rival--and a team with annual national title aspirations and potential, to boot--the Wolverines have finally fulfilled the promise that they've been inching toward since Beilein set foot in Ann Arbor.

Bullets

• Everyone knew that Michigan was going to lose that game in the second half. And then they didn't. A big thanks goes to Keith Appling who continues to play faster than his mind can process. Credit obviously goes to Michigan's defense as well, about which more in a moment, but Appling, as he did last year, plays too quickly.
• Jordan Morgan, Zack Novak, and Stu Douglass are the reason Michigan won this game. Despite their middling stat lines, these guys all stepped up throughout the game defensively. Down the stretch, I would've liked to see Douglass covering Appling more frequently, but this is a minor complaint. Morgan denied the post, Novak did his grit thing, and Douglass displayed his usual defensive prowess.
  
  Beilein also deserves credit for the defensive performance. He just pushes the right buttons at the right time, mixing in 2-3 and 1-3-1 zone defenses with the team's typical man coverage. He uses the zone sets sparing, but they almost always seem to work when he deploys them.
• Trey Burke: good.
• I think the Hardaway hype train has finally run out of steam. The two charges that he took on defense were momentum shifting plays, but otherwise, Hardaway continued his unimpressive season. And yet it's hard to argue with his season averages (15.4 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 2.5 APG). Hardaway is a utility superstar (think Joe Johnson): not amazing at anything but pretty good at just about everything with an emphasis on scoring. His defense is still a huge problem and he appears to be a malcontent. Hardaway has to be one of the most humdrum stars in the country.
• It still boggles my mind that a team full of three-point specialists can't hit three pointers. I know that everyone's enduring vision of Novak is of him scrapping for rebounds and bleeding from his forehead, but watching him clanging wide open threes off the rim will be my lasting memory of him, fair or not.
• This is a great NCAA Tournament resume piece. One or two more of these (and taking care of business against the Big Ten's lower-ranked teams) and Michigan could be looking at a 5 or 6 seed in the tournament.

Notes from Michigan vs. Indiana

Now that I've finally had a chance to watch a few Michigan hoops games (including actually attending the Bradley game, my first in-person Michigan hoops game since a 2004 throttling at the hands of Michigan State), I feel like I finally have something to say about the team...

• Yesterday's game was not close. I know the scoreboard says Michigan only lost by 2 points, but that game was totally dominated by the Hoosiers. Michigan allowed Indiana to shoot 55% from the field, including 63% from outside (most of which were completely uncontested). The teams had equal rebounds, Indiana had two more assists and five more blocks, and Michigan only held onto the ball slightly better than the Hoosiers (12 and 15 turnovers respectively). Three more made three pointers by the Wolverines and seven missed free throws by Indiana is the only thing that kept this game close.
• The main reason for the loss: athleticism. Michigan got kind of exposed last night. It will surprise no one that Stu Douglass and Zack Novak are less athletic than some of their counter parts (spot up three-point shooters tend to be), but just how much less athletic was put in stark contrast last night. Sure, not every team has someone as electric as Victor Oladipo, but Michigan simply could not keep up with that team last night. They were faster and stronger at basically every position, which resulted in contested shots for the Wolverines, blow bys on the defensive end, and an inability to get open, both on and off the ball (I've never seen back cuts defended so well without giving up anything on the frontside; Indiana is just that much faster).
• This leads me to my next point of contention which I will be widely derided for: Tim Hardaway Jr. is not very fast. He can jump pretty high and has decent straight-line speed, but his first step is devastatingly slow. There's a reason you can barely give him the ball in isolation situations on the offensive end: he can't beat his man off the dribble. Similarly, this lack of quickness is one of the primary reasons that he's such an abhorrent defender. If you didn't believe it before, you should after last night. And on nights when he's going 0/7 from outside, he's as much a detriment to the team as a benefit (19 points on 19 shots from your star player is not a recipe for success).
• Jordan Morgan did a really good job defending Cody Zeller last night, despite his still positive stat line. Morgan denied passes into the post by fronting Zeller all game and was quick enough to get back into position so as not to allow lob passes or anything inside.
• Evan Smotrycz. Damn, kid can shoot. Can't dribble. Can't pass. Loves fouling. But boy can he shoot.
• Enough has been said about Trey Burke to date, and I'm not sure I have much more to offer. He does have one of the softest shots I've ever seen. I'm not really sure why, or whether or not it's less effective because of it, but his shots flutter in a way that I don't think I've ever seen before. Especially from outside, he seems to heave the ball more than shoot it. I expect his outside shooting to improve dramatically whenever Michigan's coaches really have a chance to mold his form (probably not until the offseason).

As MGoBlog mentioned yesterday, this loss doesn't really hurt Michigan's NCAA Tourny resume, but they're going to need a few of these games against ranked opponents to go the other way. "Good losses" only get you so far. But they're set up well to win a few this season. Besides, Indiana is going to finish the Big Ten either 1st or 2nd (behind OSU), so not all of Michigan's ranked opponents will be Duke or this Indiana team.