2-3 zone to man

2/27/2021 – Michigan 73, Indiana 57 – 18-1, 13-1 Big Ten

John Beilein's first team at Michigan was not one for the ages. Zack and Stu had not arrived. Ron Coleman and Kelvin Grady started. They took a ton of threes despite finishing 314th behind the line. But I had banged the table for Beilein's hire and spent much of that year looking for whatever molecules of hope oozed out of the morass. I doubled down on wanting Michigan's basketball team to be good by investing Professional Reputation in the new head coach, with inevitable results. I had not been and probably will not again be so invested in a team that was so bad.

Being invested in a bad team is waiting for the run. Your team will scrap out of the gate, hang tight against superior opposition (or, uh, Central Michigan), and provide a flicker of promise. This will feel sort of nice. It will also feel like an anvil is suspended over your head. Inevitably there will come a point where your team is possessed by the spirit of the Washington Generals. The basketball game will devolve into a cartoon fight, all limbs and people groaning "oof".

When the dust clears the opposition is up double digits and ain't nobody climbing that staircase. This is what rooting for a 10-22 team is.

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

Even good teams eat runs. Basketball is proverbially a game of them. They're so integral to the idea of the sport that the gold standard of numbers about basketball, Kenpom, has a win probability page which calls them out:

The pictured run is Wisconsin separating from Michigan at the end of the first half of Michigan's first game post-COVID layoff. That first half stands out in my memory as a visit from a different basketball team, one far less polished and precise. I spent that first half trying to remain calm, trying to remember the other, beautiful basketball team. Then they became it again and have not stopped.

Michigan does not eat runs. The above is one of just four runs for the opposition called out by Kenpom in 14 Big Ten games. One of those absolutely does not count because it was Wisconsin punching back 12-2 after Michigan spent 15 minutes battering them 43-6. The others came in the Minnesota loss and in Michigan's Big Ten opener against Penn State. Michigan has faced a run of consequence not explained by a 22 day layoff once since December 13th.

Even John Beilein's best teams had holes you could poke a finger through, first on defense and then on offense. This isn't an attempt to dump on Beilein, he said unnecessarily, it is merely a bare fact that when you've got the #35 offense (as the 2017-18 Final Four team did) or the #37 defense (as the 2013-14 Final Four team did) sometimes things are going to get away from you for long stretches. Not often, but often enough that the disorienting feeling that nothing has ever gone right or will again go right is a semi-regular part of your basketball experience.

This does not happen in 2021. Michigan's defense is relentless. Its offense is a machine designed to create buckets of good shots. The sheer number of coinflips weighted in Michigan's favor that it would require for the opposition to have ten more points than Michigan in a short window of time is too daunting for math, except once against Minnesota of all teams.

This is what it's like to root for an 18-1 team. This is what it's like to root for what may be the best team in the country: like everyone you run across has separate buttons for their thighs and calves.

[After THE JUMP: Franz stays in his spot because it's working]