hard hedge

1/6/2021 – Michigan 82, Minnesota 57 – 10-0, 5-0 Big Ten

Lopsided basketball games, like most other uncompetitive sporting events, have a desultory ending period where players go through the motions but aren't giving maximum effort. You get turnovers and runouts on both ends as passing gets lackadaisical. Not much about the last ten minutes of Michigan's blowout of Minnesota was unfamiliar.

One thing was: Chaundee Brown going from vaguely on-screen to full-on Tasmanian Devil. There were two separate incidents. On the first (as Ace detailed), Minnesota tossed the ball into the back court for an over-and-back that both Mike Smith and Marcus Carr couldn't catch up to. Brown came from seemingly nowhere to grab it and shot upcourt for a dunk. This one was precisely calibrated to not quite cross the chin-up-tech line.

Okay, that's one thing. Basketball players like to score. Gimme gimme gimme the ball because I'm gonna dunk it. Etc.

The second one, though. The second one was one of those Kenpom Time turnovers that was about to lead to a Minnesota  transition bucket. Brown tore at this like Tayshaun Prince going after Reggie Miller. He didn't get there—it was a goaltend—but it was literally a 34-point game when he did this.

Getting there is beside the point. The vibe is the point. Chaundee Brown isn't here for desultory. He's had enough of that in his career already. Chaundee Brown is here to feel alive on a basketball court.

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[Campredon]

More quietly, Mike Smith is also busy busting his ass. I've been loathe to mention this for a couple weeks because of its general unlikeliness, but I just saw him stone a Marcus Carr drive late in this game: he is now an acceptable-or-better defender. Much of the discourse here and elsewhere during the early part of the season consisted of worries about defense, and Smith in particular came in for a lot of fretting.

This was because he got blown by regularly. Michigan, in general, was giving up a number of straight-line drives to the basket. They are no longer. Smith also had a tendency to over-help and blow closeouts. That, too, is a receding issue. Michigan is fresh off two dominant defensive performances against top-60 Kenpom offenses, the kind of performances that you can't manage unless everyone is doing most of their job. Smith is doing his job.

Since he's a Micro Machine that means staying in front of guys and living in the breadbasket of three-point shooters. This he has done admirably. He's developed a closeout style where he sidles up to you without jumping and just sort of, you know, insinuates himself in there. It's awkward. It works. Gabe Kalscheur got a couple of buckets by going off the dribble and shooting over him, and that's always going to be a thing given Smith's size. If those are the things Smith is giving up, you'll take that and run.

Smith has also been remarkably unselfish, especially since he's coming off multiple seasons of giant usage. Even when he takes a difficult stepback, as he did early, he's not just shooting to shoot. A couple possessions later he roasted Carr with a threatened stepback to set up Dickinson for a dunk:

His main problem is trying too many audacious passes so his teammates can dunk. He's seamlessly faded into a role, and repaired his glaring deficiency in a couple months.

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Everyone wants to win. Mike Smith and Chaundee Brown are dying to win. Everyone else in the rotation is either a freshman from a DMV power or a guy who's been kicking around the Michigan program for at least a year or two. They come from good cultures that emphasize doing the things you need to do to be successful. They have been successful.

So they don't know. They don't know what it's like to go 14-42 in three whole years of ACC conference play. They don't know what it's like to put up 34% usage for a 1-13 Ivy League team. They don't know what it's like to drive into the lane against UNC and dump it off for a teammate who does not do the Hunter Dickinson thing (catch it and dunk it) but rather some bad Ivy League process where the ball is the subject of a multivariate analysis before being goofily booted into the third row with a business plan attached to it.

These guys know. Early this year Smith was asked how it felt to be 2-0; he said something to the effect of "I've never been 1-0." Brown runs around clapping his giant meaty arms and smiling so wide his head seems like it's about to fall off. Together they've injected Michigan's culture with the only thing it lacked: desperation. Even when you're up 34.

[After THE JUMP: Richard Pitino's face!]

2/16/2020 – Michigan 89, Indiana 65 – 16-9, 7-7 Big Ten

Sports fans are prone to wild swings in mood, often with little justification. Everything that just happened will keep on happening, and this goes double when things are bad. Back when I ran the Blogpoll voters tended to overrate their own teams a hair when things were going well, but it was a dead certainty that they'd under-rank them significantly after a loss. Every voter, every time.

Lose painfully for a month and your perspective gets jaundiced. When Michigan played at Nebraska a few weeks ago they were down Zavier Simpson and Isaiah Livers. Then Franz Wagner got in foul trouble. Michigan spent a big chunk of the first half with Adrian Nunez and CJ Baird on the court. Our photoshopper-in-residence Abraham wondered on twitter why he was watching a random MAC game, and I laughed sardonically.

At some point in January I said I wanted to sim to the end of the season and get the Howard croots on campus. This season felt like a snakebit write-off: Livers couldn't stay on the court, the trident was haunted, Michigan would get a million good looks they miss while opponents poured in every variety of garbage known to man.

At the same time I tried to argue that Michigan's January was a massive statistical outlier that could not last, because Michigan was not the second-worst team in the country at all things from behind the three-point line. And lo:

Those five games are the five they've played in February.

Michigan is starting to look like Michigan again but the key is playing this way through March (and staying healthy) via @ethan_sears https://t.co/U1qQIU8WDS pic.twitter.com/2sqv103WZd

— Dylan Burkhardt (@umhoops) February 17, 2020

The situation is now flipped. Michigan's probably ahead of its skis a little. But you've seen the shots. You've seen Michigan tee up open corner threes over and over again as the opponent issues a contested jack from NBA range. Reality is somewhere between 59 and 1. It's a lot closer to 1.

[After THE JUMP: The Mona Lisa of floor slaps]

2/1/2020 – Michigan 69, Rutgers 63 – 13-8, 4-6 Big Ten

This space has been complaining about the repetitive scripts of this season's basketball games, so it was nice to get a different one even if it was a script recycled from previous years: the Rutgers brick factory. The emblematic Cable Subscribers possession ended after an interminable period of backboard volleyball that saw six different point-blank attempts get up. None went down.

Michigan got pounded on the boards and had six more turnovers than Rutgers for a whopping –26 possession differential. The only way to win that game is by watching the opponent heave up waves, nay, oceans of bricks. Rutgers provided, in the Rutgers way.

This was not weird at all in the context of watching Rutgers play Michigan. It's what happens. Rutgers paid fair tribute to that game a few years back by acquiring all of six assists. Not quite the one from back in the day. Not too far off.

The familiarity of the game made the context of the game downright bizarre: Rutgers is ranked. Michigan is playing them in a packed, partisan Madison Square Garden. Michigan is 12th in league play and in desperate need of some quality wins to keep them off the bubble. The situation entering the game is the exact opposite of even the recent, feisty Pikiell Rutgers teams. And then the game is the same way.

Rutgers has gotten good by turning the feistiness up to 11. They still can't shoot: they're 311th in 3P%, 324th in FT%. And while the 2020 Michigan three point curse gave it a run, not even it was up to the task of guiding Rutgers mortars into the net. For the first time in a month Michigan finished a game with a significant advantage from beyond the arc. It is possible.

[After THE JUMP: Johns emerges]