juwan howard is your new basketball dad

My best friend coaches high school basketball in California. We grew up in Ann Arbor as hoops obsessives. He called me on the home phone, because that was how you did it then, when local hero LaVell Blanchard committed to Michigan. We bought tickets for $5 apiece outside of Crisler Arena during the Brian Ellerbe era; one time someone insisted on giving them to us for free. We attended every home game during the glorious NIT title run of 2004.

We also watched a lot of games like this from the other side: a Michigan team desperate to maintain some forward momentum getting smashed back to the Stone Age by Michigan State. As the Spartans hung close in a whistle-marred, stilted first half, my friend sent a text: "We're like 10% more focus from winning this game by 25."

Michigan locked in and won by 19, then celebrated their first regular season Big Ten championship since 2014 in front of Tom Izzo. Juwan Howard earned his first banner as head coach and it feels far from his last. The Wolverines could've been sent reeling by their upset loss against an Ayo Dosunmu-less Illinois team on Tuesday. Instead, they grinded through early foul trouble, got themselves together at the end of the first half, and put on a defensive clinic in the second.

We didn't see this growing up.

another Wagner to haunt Izzo's nightmares [Campredon]

After Michigan jumped out to a 7-0 lead, the pace slowed and the lead shrunk due to turnovers (8 in the first half) and fouls (10), both of which had an outsized impact on Hunter Dickinson, who had eight points, four turnovers, and two fouls before halftime in only nine minutes. Austin Davis also picked up two quick fouls, which led to a Brandon Johns cameo at center that sparked a late first-half spurt to head into the tunnel up by 11. 

Then the superior team put the hammer down. Michigan State shot 9/30 in the second half, going 7:52 without a point as the Michigan pushed the lead to 28 and making four of those field goals after Howard emptied the bench. Franz Wagner hit three quick three-pointers to end any hope of a Spartan comeback, Dickinson stayed foul-free while going 3/4 after the break, and Isaiah Livers and Mike Smith added triples during the scoring barrage.

defense wins championships [Campredon]

The Wolverines could've stopped scoring after a Dickinson bucket with 13:44 to play and still won. Instead, they continued to pour in points until the game got well out of reach. That allowed Howard the chance to give curtain calls to his seniors—Isaiah Livers, Austin Davis, Eli Brooks, and Mike Smith—in their final home game, then root on the bench mob before the confetti fell.

That was the Michigan team we'd become accustomed to watching before Tuesday. That's a one-seed. That's a conference champion.

They can put a stamp on the regular season on Sunday in the rematch at the Breslin Center. A game-long coronation that possibly knocks MSU out of the NCAA Tournament would be a dream way to head into the postseason. We've been waiting a long time.

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

2/14/2021 – Michigan 67, Wisconsin 59 – 14-1, 9-1 Big Ten

A few days ago I posted about Hoop Lens on/off splits and rather marveled at Eli Brooks's defensive impact everywhere other than opponent three-point shooting. This stuck in my head, especially after noting that Purdue's Sasha Stefanovich also seemed to have an impact that far outstripped his usage, and I proposed that the next time we do Big Ten awards that there should be an "Isaiah Livers All Star Team" dedicated to players who don't have huge counting numbers but do have a massive impact on their teams.

Livers popped into my head as the namesake because of last year's team, which was elite when Livers was available and went 3-6 in Big Ten play during the stretch where he was out. His career has been one of efficient shot absorption and plus defense. At no point would you have called him a star. He's just the guy who pushes you over the top when someone else runs the show. To borrow a phrase from football's departed defensive coordinator: a guy, not a dude.

Isaiah Livers is no longer an Isaiah Livers All Star, and has never been further from it in this game when they needed it most. Michigan played a disjointed COVID layoff first half. The flowing parade of excellent shots wasn't gone, necessarily. It was severely attenuated. Actions died in the mid-post, smothered by Wisconsin's usual brand of error-free defense. There were a lot of kickouts into difficult late-clock isolation situations. Austin Davis took a 15-foot jump hook. Livers himself got a transition opportunity against a backpedaling Brad Davison and unproductively dumped it off to Brooks. Mike Smith managed to turn a dribble into a sort of mid-range bounce pass to Wisconsin. My brain battled between an id of Tommy Amaker groans and an attempt to rationally place this game in the context of a three week layoff.

Livers post-ups—generally regarded as something to tolerate by my brain—transformed into one of the more viable options in a sea of questionable ones.

Livers fired up threes whenever he got a window, cut into the lane for the opening bucket of the second half, and even rebounded a couple of his misses from two. The only thing he did wrong was miss the front end of a one-on-one en route to his third straight Kenpom MVP performance.

Without Livers playing exactly like he did going into the break, Wisconsin's halftime lead would have been insurmountable.

This has a lot to do with Hunter Dickinson's gravity, of course. Relentless doubling of Dickinson kicked off in the previous Wisconsin game; it is not a coincidence that Livers is 15/29 from behind the line since. But to take advantage of gravity you need guys who can be ruthlessly efficient off the ball. Livers has always been that. In this game he also offered something more:

I don't know if it will last, but the thing about this team is that it doesn't have to. This was previously a team that ran everything through Hunter Dickinson. Everyone doubles him; Livers pops up. Wagner's got a couple of NBA lottery games in him down the stretch. Chaundee Brown is going to pop up and go 3/5 from three a few times. There's going to be a 9 assist Mike Smith game. This is a roster with holes like "you can shoot over the guards a bit" and "the backup center is old-fashioned."

I perused some Wisconsin message boards after the game and the overall feeling was that they'd been beaten by a better, more complete team. If the slavering message boards are admitting it, it's probably true.

[After THE JUMP: "recovering" has been repealed from our description of Brad Davison as "recovering psychopath"]

I'll come clean. I've had a difficult time getting started on this season's basketball preview, even though the football program is doing everything they can to turn my focus to the hardwood.

Some of that stems from the lack of closure to Juwan Howard's debut season, which the ongoing pandemic ended as Michigan warmed up for their opening Big Ten Tournament game, an event that somehow occurred this calendar year. Xavier Simpson and Jon Teske never got their hero sendoffs, Franz Wagner's ascent was interrupted, and we'd never find out if the team would gel in the postseason around a healthy Isaiah Livers—nor how Howard would coach with the full rotation finally at his disposal.

A force of an entirely different nature is also working against my brain: unconstrained excitement for the 2021-22 season, when Michigan may very well be bringing the #1 recruiting class in the country to campus. It's hard not to sense a transition year after Howard's top recruiting targets for this season slipped away and he's signed two five-star prospects in a loaded six-player class for next year.

yeah that might be a problem

There's also that pesky ongoing pandemic. Today, the NCAA announced it's moving the entire D-I men's basketball tournament to Indianapolis, which was previously slated to host the Final Four. The schedule is all but nonexistent less than two weeks before the season's supposed November 25th start date. Michigan doesn't have a 2020-21 schedule page on their official site. They've booked two games: the ACC/B1G Challenge matchup against NC State next month and a Nov. 29th tilt with Oakland, both taking place at the Crisler Center.

Seton Hall shut down practices last week, becoming the fourth Big East team to deal with a COVID outbreak this offseason. Tom Izzo and Jim Boeheim both tested positive for the virus in the last week; Izzo is physically isolating himself from Michigan State's program while Syracuse has had to shut down entirely after another member of the program tested positive. The voice of reason at the moment is the head coach of the Iona Gaels.

Save the Season. Move the start back. Play league schedule and have May Madness. Spiking and protocols make it impossible to play right now.

— Rick Pitino (@RealPitino) November 14, 2020

Yes, that Rick Pitino. We're in a bad place, collectively. It's hard to have a season without a schedule; it's hard to have a schedule without some general guidelines for how to safely play in a pandemic.

Will they forge on? Almost certainly, whether they remain on schedule or not. March Madness is a cash cow the NCAA's member schools will let go unplayed for a second straight year only if there's no other option. I'm not here to endorse this course of action, only to write about it.

[Hit THE JUMP for SO, LET'S TALK MICHIGAN BASKETBALL]