1989 basketball team

2/21/2019 – Michigan 69, Minnesota 60 – 24-3, 13-3 Big Ten

If you could go back in time six months and give your past self a stupefying Michigan sports update, your #2 option would be "Michigan basketball is 24-3 and it's tough to decide whether Zavier Simpson or Jon Teske is our best player." We will not discuss #1.

The needle swung to Simpson after the Maryland game, when he had 12 points on seven shot equivalents, 8 assists, one turnover, and more or less shut off Anthony Cowan for a half. The pendulum swung back to Teske in this one: 17 points on 11 shot equivalents, two assists, five blocks. Even more stunning: 36 minutes.

Teske sometimes seems to take his foot off the gas a little bit in the post, whether that's marshalling his strength or trying to avoid foul trouble. But every game he does enough to hold whoever he's directly checking to meh numbers (Oturu had 18 points on 18 shot equivalents and a TO) while hedging everyone's ball-screen game into oblivion and coming in for help defense on the regular. There's a point in every game where Teske gets a closeup and my reaction is "my goodness that person is red," but dude just keeps going. Michigan would be dead in the water if he could only play 20 MPG like a lot of guys his size. He is Camp Sanderson's magnum opus.

Anyway:

That's Minnesota for you. It took Minnesota 28 minutes to make a basket outside of the paint. The Gophers had 18 points at halftime. Eight of these were on initial attempts. They were able to claw ten more out off of putbacks, which is a little frustrating since the Gophers haven't been that good at OREBs in league play and Michigan has maintained their DREBs much better than they usually do.

The margins are are pretty thin. Given the number of rebounding opportunities Minnesota had (47!) Michigan would expect to give up 12.5 OREBs; instead they gave up 15. This places it into a category where we're mildly frustrated about bounces.

In part because of the above this was a game in which the Gopher had a huge shot volume edge. They had 7 more OREBs than TOs. Michigan was –4. To hold a team with a shot volume index over one to 0.9 PPP means you are crushing them everywhere except the offensive boards.

wall up! [Ludeman]

Verticality. Part of the trouble the Gophers had was their tendency to run pell-mell at the rim and try to chunk something up. That style is why they lead the league in free throw rate. In this one it mostly led to very tough attempts after taking contact. This was most notable on two missed dunks where Teske walled up vertically and contested.

Doink pic.twitter.com/Y7uILIYeWu

— Noah Neidlinger (@candor_for_sale) February 22, 2019

Amir Coffey's bounced spectacularly outside the three point line; Teske was called for a foul on a near-identical Jordan Murphy play. (Murphy missed both FTs, ball don't lie.)

With the exception of that foul, though, the officials allowed Michigan to contest.

When verticality is called correctly it's such an excellent rule change, rewarding defenses for being in good position without flopping and placing a priority on open shots for the offense all the way to the rim. The best example in this game was not either Teske contest but Amir Coffey getting downhill only for Simpson to show. Simpson was outside the restricted arc (I think) but instead of trying to flop he went up to contest; Coffey bumped him, missed the ensuing tough shot, and Michigan rebounded. That is infinitely superior to a guy standing on the ground and falling over in the hopes of stopping the game with a foul call.

[After THE JUMP: attacking switches, finally]

Paging Marge: Get Your Sewing Machine Out. Wolverine Devotee discovered while watching a Big Ten Elite on 1989 Illinois that the cagers used to have a banner. I found video of that game on Youtube but unfortunately the banner ceremony didn't make it into the tape.

WD then suggested the banner be brought back/expanded to other sports and I am for it. The intended meaning when Al Renfrew's wife Marge and her friend sewed the original was all of the lettermen from various sports coming to support that one. That sentiment is certainly genuine—throw a dart at the outfield bleachers of a Michigan softball game and chances are you'll spear an offensive lineman (MGoBlog does not support the throwing of darts at offensive linemen).

One argument against is it's been the football team's thing for so long, but remember football wore wings on their helmets since the Thirties and didn't start adding them to other sports until Brendan Morrison. When I posed it to Brian he suggested it'd be kind of impractical for e.g. hockey, but as you see in the pic above banners are adaptable to the building and conditions (have a six-foot one they skate under when they come out for warmups).

When Can I Eff this Ess-Aech? Like the rest of you in this winding down the Red Era, I've been having a hard time really looking away even though every so often there's an event that causes you to swear up and down that you're going to look away. For Canadian, it was when the team blatantly deleted all the text in his MGoDiary after painstaking work on pairwise updates and html charting.

Look, we all know that it's not up to the high standards you've come to expect from your weekly This Week in College Hockey diary. In fact you may even be tempted to read Wolverine in Exile's pairwise diary instead because he's been doing some excellent work over there. But then Wisconsin beats Minnesota, and basketball…, and you think maybe there's a spot after all, and Gee Dee it, we're watching hockey again. What I wouldn't do for some sustained good news from a major sport right now.

Baseball?

Is still an improving mid-major team and will be until either the Big Ten secedes from a league run by people too cowardly to live around snow, or that league decides to play baseball when non-silly places aren't covered by the stuff. But you still should start to recognize the name Jackson Glines. Michigan's senior center fielder gets on base three times a game, gets a hit in the majority of his at-bats, and scores a run a game. The other guy to know is lefty leadoff hitter and closer Jacob Cronenworth.

Best of the Board

SOFTBALL!!!!

…yesterday suffered its first two losses since falling 2-1 on opening day to No. 1 Florida in Tampa. The first was to Arizona State before another Florida loss; starting to not like those girls. Until then Michigan climbed up to #3 in the country, with two-game sweeps over top ten powers Florida State and Alabama. The Judi Garmon continues today with #9 Baylor the evening game. They come home a week from tomorrow.

BO IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Bauhlieve has assembled 12 pre-game, half-time, or post-game speeches in the locker room by Bo. Surprisingly few gems but some definite themes: proud of resilience, let's win the Big Ten championship, and the greatest fight song in the world is…. If you watch one, 1971 post-Iowa:

Your Moment of Zen:

USATSI/Fuller/Opie Otterstad

Where does John Beilein rank among Michigan's all-time basketball coaches? This was a board question I began answering there until I realized I had written half a column and not written my Tuesday column. Part I explains my subjective criteria and covers Mather, Oosterbaan, Strack and Orr.

So without further ado..

Ado!

Huh?

Show the candidates chart again.

Candidates:

Chart things:

• Wherever I list a year it means the season that began the fall in the year previous, e.g. 1969 = 1968-'69 seasion
• * Rather than winning % I showed their average record over a 30-game season.
• ** Average number of tournament games his teams would play in. A 1.00 means his team will make the tourney and go out in the 1st round. I took out the play-in rounds.
• † Manny Harris was recruited by Amaker but played his entire career for Beilein. Stauskas, GRIII, LeVert, and McGary at least can be counted as future NBA players. It's too early to say the same for Walton/Irvin but it's not a bad bet either.

Here's Part II. These got longer because now we're into my personal recollection period.

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Maloof is a skateboarding cup.

Bill Frieder (1981-'89)

Career at M: 9 seasons, 189 wins (68%), 2 Big Ten titles

All-Americans: Gary Grant (1988), Glen Rice (1989)

Avg NCAA Tourney: 1.13

Pros he recruited (NBA games): Glen Rice (1,000), Loy Vaught (689), Terry Mills (678), Gary Grant (552), Tim McComick (483), Rumeal Robinson (336), Roy Tarpley (280), Sean Higgins (220), Demetrius Calip (7), and Richard Rellford. [EDIT: Eric Riley (186)] That's 10 11 guys and 4,249 4,435 games.

[Continued after the jump]