hunter dickinson is 7'2 mcgary

Skipping Class

guess how this happened [Campredon]

Ever since Minnesota handed Michigan their only loss, the opponent plan of attack against Hunter Dickinson has generally been to throw some sort of double team his way. While this lessened his scoring impact until Sunday's 22-point outburst against Ohio State, the team has still scored at an impressive clip when adjusting for opponent quality, and it's in large part because Dickinson is putting opponents in lose-lose situations.

The Buckeyes decided to double when Dickinson dribbled. Keeping the cue for sending help the same for most of the game helped ensure OSU didn't blow assignments; it also made them predictable in a way Dickinson exploited from the jump. Michigan's early three-point barrage was almost entirely due to the help on Dickinson leaving them susceptible to skip passes that either immediately led to open shots or put the ball within a couple passes of an open look:

Dickinson's passes are thrown from a great height, have plenty of heat on them, and hit the intended recipient right in the shooting pocket. The first is critical for not turning the ball over, the latter two for giving teammates space to take shot that's in rhythm. This is one of the longest passes you can make in a halfcourt setting and the help defender still has a foot on the edge of the paint when Chaundee Brown catches it and goes right up with a shot:

Here's a hockey assist featuring a heads-up play by Isaiah Livers to stop his cut and move the ball to an even more open shooter:

Dickinson ran into trouble earlier in the season when he forced these skip passes through traffic. Those turnovers have disappeared since the Purdue game. He's showing more patience and an understanding of where the help is coming from, which has him picking out the correct player to hit:

Dickinson picks up his dribble and gets the ball high before Kyle Young arrives, which gives him an extra beat to survey the court. He turns away from the help and throws an overhand dart to Mike Smith. Duane Washington Jr. does well here just to run Smith off the line and limit this to two points.

[After THE JUMP: how Dickinson scores on doubles and the numbers behind opponents' post defense conundrum.]

Michigan stuffed Wisconsin's 11th-ranked KenPom offense into a trash can on Tuesday. The Badgers shot 11-for-37 on two-pointers, got to the line only six times, and recorded eight assists against ten turnovers. Of their 12 offensive rebounds, five were the knocked-out-of-bounds team rebound variety, which doesn't pose any putback danger. They went stretches of 6:37 and 7:26 without scoring—that's getting blanked out for 35% of the game.

The Wolverines laughed at the idea of potential mismatches. A big guard against M's small backcourt? Brad Davison posted up Mike Smith on UW's second possession, hurled up a brick, and proceeded to go 1-for-8 for two points, his lowest scoring output in almost a year and the third-worst game of his four-year career by O-Rating. D'Mitrik Trice scored five points in the first three minutes, then two more for the rest of the half, and the Badgers were down 33 points by the time he got on the board in the second.

The primary worry heading into the game was that Hunter Dickinson would have trouble with a pair of legit stretch fives. Wisconsin's center duo of Micah Potter and Nate Reuvers combined for 16 points on 7/20 shooting with zero trips to the line, zero assists, and five turnovers. So much for that.

Michigan boasts the nation's #1 two-point defense and are tenth in KenPom's adjusted defensive efficiency. Using the Wisconsin game as a lens, let's look at how Juwan Howard has created this monster.

You Can't Run

Scoring on the fast break is obviously easier than scoring in halfcourt. A team can get a lot of their defensive work done early by getting back. This has to be demoralizing:

Michigan gets back. Wisconsin scored two fast break points on Tuesday even though they recorded four steals. I need a college stats site to start tracking chasedown blocks:

The plays that don't show up in the highlight reel are even more important than the Tayshaun-on-Reggie moments. Despite often holding massive leads, they've had very few lapses. Only 3.3% of initial opponent field goal attempts against Michigan occur in the first ten seconds of the shot clock following a made Wolverines basket, the fifth-best mark among high-major teams, per hoop-math. They communicate, find their matchups, and don't lollygag.

The team's size and versatility helps too; if, for example, Dickinson is caught upcourt after a tough finish, Wagner can be there to pick up the opposing center for a few seconds while the team settles back into their matchups. When teams attack cross-matches early in the shot clock, they find it tough to score. Here's Chaundee Brown forcing Nate Reuvers into a tough fadeaway:

It would've been better for Wisconsin if Reuvers had given that up instead of forcing the action. That often happens against Michigan. According to Synergy, M faces transition possessions only 12.6% of the time, the fourth-lowest rate in the Big Ten, a conference not exactly known for permitting easy fast break buckets.

[Hit THE JUMP before someone blocks it.]

14-10-5-2-5.

That's not a software key code or the combination to my bike lock. It's tonight's stat line for Franz Wagner: 14 points (on 12 shooting possessions), ten rebounds, five assists, two steals, and five blocks. He did all that in only 29 minutes, not because of foul trouble, but because Michigan (9-0, 4-0 Big Ten) beat the hell out of a Northwestern (6-3, 3-2) team that posed some seemingly difficult strategic problems for the Wolverines to solve.

The 85-66 final score doesn't reflect the beating. Michigan was up 14 at halftime and spent most of the second half with their lead in the mid-to-high 20s; the margin was 28 when they emptied the bench at the under-4 media timeout.

The game looked competitive for about five minutes. Juwan Howard solved the puzzle of how to defend stretch five Pete Nance with the bigger, slower Hunter Dickinson by not guarding Nance with Dickinson at all, instead using Wagner and Isaiah Livers to guard the central hub of Northwestern's five-out offense while sticking Dickinson on more limited power forward Robbie Beran. Nance scored eight quick points and Beran added another bucket after blowing by Dickinson off the dribble. Michigan, meanwhile, couldn't stop passing the ball out of bounds.

survey and destroy [Campredon]

It all clicked in a hurry. The WIldcats sent a hard double-team at Dickinson, whose signature pinpoint skip pass began a lovely passing sequence capped by a Wagner three-pointer. Michigan ripped off a 10-2 run over the next 2:40. After missing their first three attempts from beyond the arc, the Wolverines rained in nine of their next 14 to finish the half as Dickinson bent the defense out of shape with his behemoth presence and skillful passing.

Eli Brooks drilled three of four from downtown in the first half; Wagner and Chaundee Brown each added a pair on their way to ten first-half points. Brown was coming off a scoreless 21-minute outing at Maryland. Dickinson only had four points and (somehow) zero assists at the break but the ball always found the open man created by the extra attention directed the center's way; M tallied 12 assists on 17 first-half field goals.

Nance, meanwhile, scored two points after his initial outburst—not just in the half, but for the rest of the game. Howard stuck to the plan to great effect as Michigan's combination of length and athleticism shut seemingly every option down. NU's leading scorer, Miller Kopp, needed 14 shots to score 13 points—four of them after M was up 29 late—as he was hounded by Wagner and Livers. Wagner even blocked one of Kopp's pull-up jumpers. Boo Buie, one of four Wildcats to average double figures, did not score all night.

THUNDER ELI [Campredon]

The onslaught continued in the second half with Dickinson looking for his own shot more often. He finished with 19 points on 14 shooting possessions in 27 minutes; he went 6/8 for 15 points in only ten second-half minutes. The rest of the team could mostly focus on entry passes and off-ball cuts; Brooks finished off one of the latter with a massive dunk for the second straight game, sending the bench into hysterics. The starters would return the bench mob favor later when Jace Howard scored his first career basket on a tough and-one finish.

Northwestern's night can be summed up in two sequences. Beran, who fouled out with a team-high 14 points, had stared down a pursuing Livers after a fast break dunk early in the second half; when Livers got isolated on Beran later on, he cleared out his side of the court, gave Beran a few hard backdown dribbles, and then faded away for a shot that hit nothing but net. Not long thereafter, Buie drove to the rim and attempted to finish over a walled-up Brandon Johns, yelling "and-one" on the release; the ball missed everything, no foul call came, and Johns hit a three on the other end.

Even if NU is a paper wildcat, Michigan played like a powerhouse tonight. Their standing as one of four remaining unbeaten teams in the country looks more impressive with passing day as the rest of the Big Ten tears each other to pieces. Dickinson looks like an All-American; Wagner is starting to play on at least an all-conference level. This is a top-ten team until further notice.

[Hit THE JUMP for more pictures and the box score.]