fran mccaffery

Badly in need of a strong performance to reverse the recent slide in momentum, Michigan Men's Basketball got just what the doctor ordered this afternoon in Carver Hawkeye Arena, a solid 40 minutes for a double digit B1G win against a decent Iowa team. A back-and-forth first half gave way to a 25-5 Michigan run that put them in firm control of the second half, control that was never relinquished. Tarris Reed Jr. played arguably his best game at Michigan, Dug McDaniel overcame a dreadful opening stanza to play a strong second half and Michigan got a comfortable- and much needed- win. 

We came in expecting a high scoring affair between a Michigan team that has struggled mightily on defense this season against an Iowa team that is always porous on that end, but the first half wasn't much of that. The first few minutes were especially ugly offensively, as it took 1:57 for either team to score (a pull-up jumper from Tony Perkins). Patrick McCaffery was the hottest player out of the gate for either team, scoring five of Iowa's first seven and the only player to execute on his shots. Iowa led 9-5, but Michigan finally got one player to come on-line offensively and surprisingly, it was Tarris Reed Jr. Reed got it going fighting for loose balls underneath and finishing up-and-under, but as the perimeter players scuffled, Michigan kept feeding Tarris.

Poor first halves from Dug McDaniel, Nimari Burnett, and Olivier Nkamhoua were mitigated by Reed, as well as Terrance Williams II. TWill hit a pair of threes, including one that put Michigan up 16-13, and Reed continued to be the main source of offense. He had 12 of Michigan's 24 when the Wolverines led 24-21 and Reed added a pair of blocks as well. The defensive effort from Michigan was solid, holding Iowa to 0.94 PPP in the first half, while their offense was mostly doing what it could with only a few players working. McDaniel did not score in the first half and was autobenched after picking up his second foul with 3:14 to go in the first half. Michigan opted to roll with an unusual Burnett, Jackson, Tschetter, Williams, and Nkamhoua lineup when Dug went to the bench. The offense was predictably stagnant with that lineup but a Nimari Burnett swished a couple free throws and after (Sanfordt)'s jumper missed the mark, Michigan led 35-33 at halftime. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Iowa came out of the break and made their first two shots from the floor, layups by Tony Perkins and Ben Krikke to put Iowa ahead 37-35. That's when Michigan's game-changing run came, one extended Wolverine massacre that put the Wolverines in firm control. It started with hot three point shooting, two long guns knocked down by Nimari Burnett a minute apart, followed by an Olivier Nkamhoua triple. On the next Iowa possession Krikke missed a jumper, Dug McDaniel snatched the rebound and ran the fast break, feeding Nkamhoua for an alley-oop. The 11-0 Michigan run put them up 46-37 and Iowa called timeout. 

The timeout did not stop the bleeding. Krikke was fouled and went 1/2 at the line on the possession out of the timeout but a McDaniel running hook went down which was a bad sign for the Hawkeyes: Michigan's leading scorer was alive. That shot represented Dug's first points of the game and once he saw it tickle the twine, the confidence was flowing in his game. His next attempted shot would be a pull-up three to make it 53-40 and the following possession saw Dug set up Reed for an and-one. 56-42 Michigan. 

Iowa's offense was not able to keep up with Michigan during this period of the game. The Hawkeyes remained cold from beyond the arc, while Michigan started to find the perimeter shooting they lacked in that first half. One possession saw Iowa recover three offensive rebounds on the same possession but still come up empty because three after three clanged off the iron.

To make matters worse, Iowa committed offensive fouls on two straight possessions, seeming to set off the temper of coach Fran McCaffery. McCaffery was T'd up once after the second offensive foul, and then he'd be hit with another only a few moments later while Tray Jackson was at the free throw line. McCaffery was thus ejected from the game. The two technicals, plus Iowa offensive fouls and shooting fouls, ended up giving Michigan six free throw attempts in under 10 seconds of game time and the Wolverines went 6/6 to stretch the lead all the way up to 62-42. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

There was 12:25 left on the clock when Michigan built up their 20 point lead and from that point forward, the Maize & Blue were in firm control. The lead was never trimmed to single digits the rest of the way as the two teams traded mini-runs. Iowa cut it to 62-47 with a mini-run, but Olivier Nkamhoua made a bucket to blunt it. Iowa got it back down to 66-52 and began to press, but Dug McDaniel's speed and body control was too much, slicing through the press for an easy layup. Next time down the floor Dug wiggled between two pressuring defenders and pulled up for a long two. Swish. 70-52. 

Iowa got it down to 72-56 at the under 8 timeout, made a pair of free throws to trim it to 14, but Reed came up big, snatching an OREB off a McDaniel missed three leading to a Nkamhoua second-chance 3 to push the lead back to 17. It was that sort of final 10 minutes, every Iowa push answered by Michigan made shots. By the time Terrance Williams II hit a corner 3 to push the lead to 78-60, the game was just about over. Michigan got to sub their reserves in late and Iowa made a mini-charge in the final minute but their 9-1 run to end the game was only about putting lipstick on the pig. The game was never competitive and the 10 point margin the final score sat at was the closest it ever got after the big run. 

After the Reed/Williams-heavy first half, stronger second halves from the rest of the starters results in a relatively even looking box score. Reed led the way with 19 (+6 boards and 3 blocks), Burnett with 14, Williams 13, Nkamhoua 12, and McDaniel 11. Dug added seven assists, five rebounds, and two steals in a productive showing. Tray Jackson added 8 off the bench, as did Will Tschetter with 10 [note: Jaelin Llewellyn missed the game with "knee soreness"]. Michigan shot 48% from the floor, 37.5% from three, and a very sharp 23/28 (82.1%) from the free throw line. Krikke led Iowa with 24 and Perkins added 19, but 5/20 from three was the story of the game for Iowa. 

Michigan gets a week off before they're back in action next Saturday at home against Eastern Michigan. EMU is 5-4 but ranks 307th out of 362 in KenPom, so Michigan will be heavily favored in that one. That game is scheduled for 2:30 PM EST and slated to be broadcast on BTN. 

[Click the JUMP for the box score]

It's basketball preview season everyone! With the dawn of a new Michigan hoops campaign upon us, we will be counting down the final 8 days before the season opener with the usual content you've come to expect, except with me taking over the role of author. This week we will be scouting the competition in the B1G, which will be done in a power ranking format instead of tiers like past years. Today we'll look at the bottom half (14-8) and tomorrow we'll cover the upper half of the conference (7-1). Our expedition begins with a team that has a chance to be one of the worst teams in the conference in a while: 

14. Minnesota 

Projected lineup:

- G, Payton Willis

- G, EJ Stephens

- F, Jamison Battle

- F, Eric Curry

- C, Treyton Thompson

This is extremely grim. Richard Pitino is gone from Minneapolis and left behind a roster that is the basketball equivalent of a smoldering nuclear bomb crater. Nearly everyone who didn’t graduate opted to transfer somewhere else, leaving only Eric Curry and Isaiah Ihnen as the two returners, a pair of players with <100 ORTGs who played <50% of minutes. Oh and Ihnen is out for the year. Grim.

The reconstructed roster was put together entirely of transfers and recruits by new head coach Ben Johnson, who has never been a head coach before in the NCAA. Freshman big man Treyton Thompson is the only player above 6’9” on the roster, and he is Freshman Caris LeVert skinny. Jamison Battle transferred in from GW and was at least a decent A-10 player, and the same could be said of Payton Willis at Charleston, who has power conference experience in his past amid a tumultuous career path (actually was on Minnesota before, prior to transferring away and now transferring back).

EJ Stephens and Luke Loewe were both good players at small schools, too, but there are real reasons to wonder whether they can adjust to the B1G. The rest of the bench are players who were not even starters at mid-majors (Charlie Daniels), DII players (Daniel Ogele), JUCO players (Abdoulaye Thiam), or America East players who haven’t played in two seasons due to injury (Sean Sutherlin). Grim.

Even if some of these transfers hit, not all will, and all have never played with each other before, nor have they played with this new coach before. It’s going to be immensely painful in Minneapolis and they are the worst B1G by a wide margin. A trip to The Barn may not even be threatening this year.

13. Northwestern

Projected lineup:

- Boo Buie, G

- Ty Berry, G

- Chase Audige, G

- Robbie Beran, F

- Pete Nance, F

A Canadian who doesn’t follow college basketball intensely but has general cognitive knowledge of the subject recently said to me about Northwestern hoops “I remember them from one of those March Madness runs” and I had to note that it was one (1) run and the “run” was one NCAA Tournament win, but the combination of it seeming like the biggest deal in the world and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss going ballistic has resonated with sports fans everywhere and in the process, has bought Chris Collins a lot of time in Evanston. That time may be running out.

Since the 2017 team was bounced from that NCAA tourney, Northwestern is 45-74. Last year’s team seemed good for a few weeks but Eli Brooks dunking on them broke their soul and the ship crashed down to earth. The Wildcats lost 13 straight games before a three-game win streak closed the regular season, which came just before they scored only 46 points in the BTT, mercifully ending the Cats’ season.

Northwestern enters 2021-22 with Chris Collins fighting for his life. He returns the stellar Pete Nance, a big and long stretch five who is one of the conference’s better players, but the rest of the roster does not look particularly great. Optimism probably has a lot to do with a returning backcourt of Chase Audige and Boo Buie.

Audige is a plus defender but was also a central problem with Northwestern last season: he was the Wildcats’ highest usage piece and he put up a 86.9 ORTG with one of the worst eFG clips in the conference among players who played at least 60% of minutes. Want to know who else ranked in that cellar among eFG%? Boo Buie himself, owner of the best name in the B1G. Buie’s saving grace is that he’s a great distributor of the basketball, but those two guards need to be better on the offensive end.

Robbie Beran returns as an efficient, low usage stretch big who fits the five-out scheme that NW is trying to run. Returners Ty Berry and Ryan Young add depth, as does transfer Elyjah Williams, but this team hinges on what those big pieces, Nance, Audige, and Buie, can do. Last season wasn’t good enough and with rather few new pieces compared to similar B1G teams, it’s a matter of how much improvement Chris Collins can get out of a largely identical roster. Color me skeptical.

[AFTER THE JUMP: your least favorite B1G player returns]

The scores from last week (home team listed second):

• Maryland 63, Michigan 87
• Purdue 67, OSU 65
• PSU 65, Illinois 79
• Northwestern 52, Wisconsin 68
• Indiana 81, Iowa 69
• Rutgers 67, PSU 75
• Michigan 70, Purdue 53
• OSU 74, Wisconsin 62
• Maryland 63, Minnesota 49
• Northwestern 78, PSU 81
• Rutgers 74, Indiana 70

Your big winner of this week was (sigh) Michigan, the only team to play two games and get through unscathed—and they did so with two blowouts, one over a surging Purdue squad. They'll hang onto first place in the conference through the department-wide pause because Iowa's shooters went cold while their defense gave up 1.18 points per possession to Indiana.

The Hoosiers, naturally, turned around and lost at home to Rutgers. Wisconsin, meanwhile, fell another game behind the Wolverines with a home loss to Ohio State. The Buckeyes were nipped at home earlier in the week by the same Purdue team that Michigan hammered a few days later. Maryland got similarly smashed by the Wolverines, then dominated Minnesota on the road.

If you're having a tough time making sense of this conference, you're not alone.

The Standings

I've added NET rankings and records versus quartile 1 and 2 opponents.

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom only includes those that have been rescheduled.

Movement in both the standings and in the advanced rankings is becoming less drastic from week to week as teams settle in and we get more data on them. There's less divergence between KenPom and Torvik in their team and unit rankings. We also had a couple programs on pause because of COVID, which added to the static nature of the week.

Midseason-ish Awards: The Usual Categories

a Bucket™ [Campredon]

With Michigan forced into a pause, this is as good an opportunity as I'll have to hand out some midseason Big Ten awards. While these take into account play over the full course of the season, I'm putting a heavy emphasis on performance in conference games, though given the shape of the schedule this year that was probably gonna happen regardless.

Today, I'll cover the usual award categories. Later this week, I'll have another post with some less traditional fare, like Most Glorious Disaster Factory and Extreme Just A Shooter™, as well as all-conference selections. This one is dominated by the team in first place.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR: LUKA GARZA

Garza is the engine of the league's top offense by some distance. He's averaging 25 points, nine boards, and two assists in Big Ten games. He's by far the leader in the KenPom Player of the Year standings and is expected to clean up the voter-determined national player of the year awards as well.

This isn't ignoring Garza's below-average defense at the most important defensive position on the court, either. His offense is so overwhelming that he's still the easy choice. He bears one of the biggest offensive loads in the country and is still one of its most efficient players.

Unlike a lot of centers, Garza's essentially never in foul trouble, and that's not at all the case for his counterpart—he draws 6.9 fouls per 40 minutes, often swinging games by forcing opponents to defend him with their backup bigs. By avoiding foul trouble himself, Garza is able to play over 80% of the team's minutes in conference games, and that even undersells his availability because of Iowa's frequent blowout wins. His presence also opens up the arc for his sharpshooting teammates, who are making 40% of their three-pointers. He's the toughest player to gameplan against in the country.

Other contenders: Trace Jackson-Davis, Ayo Dosunmu, Trevion Williams, Hunter Dickinson, Kofi Cockburn, but this really wasn't close

[Hit THE JUMP for a lot of Michigan, I swear I wasn't trying to be a homer. Also, new tiers and this week's schedule.]