2019-20 wisconsin

1 hour and 25 minutes

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1. Hoops vs Ohio State

starts at 1:00

Ohio State gets two bank threes: can you remember Michigan's last (competitive) bank shot? Understand now how Purdue felt when they had to take Isaac Haas and Caleb Swanigan off the court. Michigan's trying all kinds of switches. Livers had a terrible week. Castleton hesitated on his corner three attempt. Very matchup-dependent team. Livers discussion: not great in the lane, stay in your role.

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

2/27/2020 – Michigan 74, Wisconsin 81 – 18-10, 9-8 Big Ten

I had a brief panic in the Purdue game when David DeJulius checked in. His new hairstyle made me think he was a Purdue player, so for half a possession I tried to map Michigan players onto people who they were not. It was briefly disorienting. The silver lining was that it prepared me for Michigan's first half against Wisconsin.

The Badgers did to Michigan what Michigan does to opponents. At halftime Michigan had gotten up just three attempts from behind the line. They finished with 10, their lowest number of 3PA since at least 2007-08. On the other end of the court, Michigan's defense was barely recognizable. Wisconsin got buckets of wide open threes and got to the rim at will, often on pure isos.

It's the kind of thing that's hard to process in real time. It was baffling to watch Isaiah Livers get driven by Brad Davison. Even someone who has recently had a dissociative moment watching basketball checks to make sure he has not become a cephalopod after the third Trice/Davison strong take.

Michigan allowed this parade to the rim without any compensations. This was a matchup between the #2 team in the country at shoving opponent usage into the midrange and the #348 team at getting to the rim. (Tied with Elon, to be specific.) Wisconsin tore it up at the basket and got their usual number of threes off:

I got off the "play Eli Brooks less" train almost two months ago but let me reiterate: that was a bad take. Even if there was a point deep into the season when Brooks was shooting 0% from three against decent teams, that was a bad take. I've seen Eli Brooks stupefy Cassius Winston. Nobody on this Wisconsin team is driving Eli Brooks.

That was problem #1. Problem #2 was Michigan having no idea what to do with Micah Potter until about 10 minutes left when Michigan went with a smallball lineup featuring Johns at the 4. There were a couple moments when Austin Davis was tasked with checking Potter on pick and pops, and the inevitable happened: Davis sagged off a 45% three point shooter because he's a low-post banger with limited athleticism. Teske, too, got caught in no-man's land:

That's a whole different problem when it's Potter instead of Teske.

Problem #3 was Michigan trying to implement a switching regime that's a departure for them. That put guys who aren't switchable on islands and resulted in a lot of confusion and bad positioning. The big lineup was particularly susceptible to missed assignments, probably because Michigan hasn't played it all season:

Add it up and you get Michigan's worst defensive performance in a long time. Not only did Wisconsin score a bunch of points the way they got those points were point blank looks at the basket and threes that probably should have gone down at the rate they did.

This has been a trend in Juwan Howard's first year. Michigan's first outing against a lot of teams has been rough, often in ways that seem like coaching points. Iowa and MSU running off makes, Illinois pounding Michigan on the offensive boards, etc. Return games against these teams have seen Michigan adapt to their previous programs; game two losses to Iowa and Illinois weren't due to systems or the execution thereof. The former was a spectacular refshow, the latter Michigan bricking a bunch of free throws down the stretch.

If Michigan gets a Wisconsin rematch in the Big Ten tourney it won't look much like this game.

[After THE JUMP: even with all that]

Juwan Howard learned from his first encounter with Wisconsin, just not quite fast enough for Michigan to pull off a double-digit comeback as the Wolverines fell, 81-74, in their lone regular-season meeting with the Badgers.

Michigan went into the game shorthanded; Eli Brooks sat out with the broken nose suffered in Saturday's win at Purdue, Wisconsin held a ten-point halftime lead as point guard D'Mitrik Trice (13 first-half points on 5/7 FG) and backup center Micah Potter (11, 4/6) exploited Michigan's big men with their pick-and-pop offense. On the other end, the Badgers stuck tight to shooters, limiting M to three attempts from beyond the arc. That forced Zavier Simpson to be the primary scoring threat; he entered the break with 18 points and no assists—no other Wolverine had more than five points. Adrien Nunez played a stint that went as you'd expect.

you can see Howard thinking "never again" [Campredon]

The approach to Wisconsin's swing offense, no-help defense, and lineups all had to change. To Howard's great credit, he made the proper adjustments. Michigan used more off-ball motion, leading to a Jon Teske layup, an Isaiah Livers three-pointer, a Franz Wagner layup, and three quick assists for Simpson. Instead of playing drop pick-and-roll coverage or switching as they did in the first half, Michigan hedged hard against the pick-and-roll. They cut the deficit to two points.

The Badgers countered with a 14-2 run sparked by Potter taking advantage of Austin Davis's limited defensive mobility. Teske returned to the court but picked up his third foul not long thereafter. Instead of going back to Davis, Howard fielded a wings-and-X lineup with Brandon Johns at center and had the team switch on every screen on defense. This slowed the Wisconsin attack while Simpson continued picking apart their defense. The margin dwindled to three.

all six of Simpson's assists came in the second half [Campredon]

It wasn't quite enough. Simpson was masterful, posting a career-high 32 points, shooting 14/22 from the field, pulling down five rebounds, and dishing out six assists to one turnover; unfortunately, he went 3/7 at the free-throw line, missing the front end of a one-and-one and another FT in the game's waning moments. After Brandon Johns rebounded that second miss, he too missed the front end with Michigan still in the single bonus, and his wayward three-pointer with 12 seconds to play effectively ended the game. Grotesquely, Brad Davison got to hit the final free throws and grab the last, meaningless rebound.

Trice also missed a couple critical free throws down the stretch to keep the door ajar, but his ice cold three over Wagner with 2:30 to play gave some needed cushion. Trice finished with 28 points on 19 shooting possessions, while Potter and Aleem Ford added 18 apiece.

While Michigan found a secondary scorer in the second half in Franz Wagner, who poured in 15 of his 17 points after the break, a third option never emerged. Livers scraped to nine points on 11 shooting possessions. Teske had seven on 3/5 shooting but only played 23 minutes because of the success of the smaller lineup. Johns, DeJulius, Nunez, and Davis went a combined 4/14 from the field.

dagger [Campredon]

While the loss won't hurt Michigan's NCAA Tournament standing too much, it comes close to eliminating their chance at a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament. At 9-8, the Wolverines rank seventh in the conference, and they're two games out of the fourth spot with three games to play and two teams ahead of them (Wisconsin and PSU) that hold head-to-head tiebreakers. In what should be a wildly unpredictable tournament, they'll have to hope for a good draw.

The good news is that, should Michigan see Wisconsin again, Howard appears ready to push the requisite buttons to beat them. As a first-year head coach, he continues to impress, even in defeat.

[Hit THE JUMP for the box score.]