100% hilarious futility

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I have informed the guy whose job it is to do the thing I just did. Harbaugh back, hooray, but also this is a pretty weird way to go about informing the world:

I just got off the phone with Coach Harbaugh and Jim shared with me the great news that he is going to remain as the Head Coach of the Michigan Wolverines. That is fantastic news that I have communicated to our Athletic Director Warde Manuel. #GoBlue! pic.twitter.com/3LJzsv4zN9

— Santa Ono (@SantaJOno) January 16, 2023

Ono tweets a lot about the stuff he's doing but as of yet I haven't detected a tendency to self-aggrandize. They're mostly anodyne boilerplate things. The Harbaugh's back tweet stands out, and has caused the conspiracy-minded sections of the internet to wonder if this is fallout from a frosty relationship between Warde Manuel and some combination of Ono and/or Harbaugh. Harbaugh's quote on the matter mentions Ono but not Manuel:

Happy Mission#GoBlue https://t.co/EQ1PksGYBX pic.twitter.com/KNNuYASJWz

— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) January 16, 2023

This kind of thing usually doesn't happen even if there is some tension between the parties. I'd caution against reading too much into it; on the other hand "I have communicated the news to our athletic director" is indicative of a process that the athletic director did not accomplish himself.

1 hour and 25 minutes

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1. The Wisconsin Disaster

starts at 1:00

We started off badly and have some injuries so we're just going to half-ass this terrible segment and try to get it over with as soon as possible. But it wasn't a sad field goal. Hey yo!

[The rest of the writeup and the player after The Jump]

1/22/2020 – Michigan 63, Penn State 72 – 11-7, 2-5 Big Ten

I give up on not being repetitive. The games are repetitive. Make a shot! Shoot the ball into the basket! Jump, and then at or around the apex of your jump release the ball such that it arcs with some nice backspin and goes through the net! It is in these ways that basketball games are won! Theoretically!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being way too fatalist about basketball. In my brain I give a team a certain number of points when a shot goes up, and keep a running total of grievance against the universe when the points in my head add up to something nice and the scoreboard is something nasty. The immediate aftermath of a shot I consider bad going down for the opponent is a scoff or an eyeroll. I hold grudges about Michigan players taking shots I consider bad even if they go down.

A basketball game is not a competition that is ceased at the moment a shot goes up and then given a score by a panel of judges. But in the cold light of dawn five games into the resumption of Big Ten play, I am here to say it damn well should be.

Look, here are other people who are making similar observations. They are somewhere between observant, resigned, and wondering if the universe is a simulation designed to torture them because they did not sufficiently aid the development of a superintelligent AI:

There's just no way to win a game with the type of shooting disparity in Ann Arbor tonight. Michigan desperately needs Livers to get their rotation back in order.

— Matthew Way (@waymatth) January 23, 2020

If anyone of you are NBA fans, this Michigan game could not be more #MOML (make or miss league). This is the kind of offensive game you feared when Livers went out with the groin injury.

Michigan cannot hit open catch & shoot looks.

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) January 23, 2020

If my eye rolls, scoffs and deep sighs were worth points we’d be torching Penn State

— Manuel Excel (@colintj) January 23, 2020

Sometimes it's as simple as one team making a bunch of shots and the other team not making shots

— Orion Sang (@orion_sang) January 23, 2020

The basketball is making me feel deranged so I reach out into the void for people with similar opinions about how basketball becomes much easier if you put the ball into the hoop.

---------------------------------

Michigan has various other problems, of course. But those problems can be the same size and feel vastly less important if Michigan hits a damn shot. Since Livers went out Michigan is hitting 27% from three; opponents are hitting 40%. When Kenpom did a series on what is and is not in a basketball team's control in any particular game Michigan's most prominent current issue ended up almost dead last:

And that leads me to a different way of looking at the control issue. Below are the stats ranked by each side’s absolute control over them.

Offense  Defense
APL      Blk%
3PA%     PPP
PPP      3PA%
A%       Stl%
TO%      TO%
2P%      FTR
NST%     2P%
OR%      APL
Stl%     A%
FTR      NST%
FT%      OR%
Blk%     3P%
3P%      FT%

So while the defense only has 29% control of its opponent’s three-point attempt percentage, in terms of absolute control there are only two things it has more infleunce over – block percentage and points per possession. There is less random variance associated with three-point attempt percentage than any other stat I looked at except for points per possession. And the only thing the defense has less absolute control over than opposing three-point percentage is opposing free-throw percentage.

In the micro there are things Michigan is doing on certain possessions that mean they're more likely to lose basketball games. Eric Shapiro pointed some broken rotations out that led to open looks for PSU:

Michigan not making shots was the primary reason why it lost to Penn State, but uncharacteristic miscommunications and botched switches on defense led to many open looks for Nittany Lion three-point shooters. pic.twitter.com/WTnSj10mPn

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) January 23, 2020

In the macro… I mean… come on.

[After the JUMP: corpse prodded]