nebrasketball

Scores from last week (home team listed second):

• OSU 73, Maryland 65
• Nebraska 61, Minnesota 79
• PSU 58, MSU 60
• Rutgers 66, Iowa 79
• Wisconsin 61, Nebraska 48
• Indiana 79, Northwestern 76 (2OT)
• Purdue 68, Minnesota 71
• Illinois 77, Nebraska 72 (OT)
• Indiana 59, OSU 78
• Iowa 88, MSU 58
• Northwestern 50, Rutgers 64
• Michigan 67, Wisconsin 59
• Nebraska 62, PSU 61
• Minnesota 59, Maryland 72

Your eyes don't deceive you: four of the 14 Big Ten games last week involved Nebraska, which not only put an overtime scare into Illinois but snapped a 25-game conference losing streak the next time out against Penn State.

With the Illini escaping an embarrassing loss, there wasn't too much of note at the top of the standings. Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio State all took care of business, while Wisconsin went 1-1 against the Wolverines and Huskers. Purdue's chances of moving into the top four for the Big Ten Tournament took a hit with a loss at Minnesota.

Most of the interesting action happened in the NCAA Tournament bubble range. Losses to Michigan State and Nebraska likely killed PSU's tourney hopes. Indiana slipped past Northwestern in overtime and got blown out by the Buckeyes. Maryland, on the other hand, moved up in the fancystats with a 13-point win over the Gophers.

The Standings

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

Teams are settling into relatively tight ranges now—we were a Penn State away from this being the first week no team moved double-digit spots in the combined KenPom/Torvik rankings. The Nittany Lions are easily the toughest team to project at the moment because of their dearth of games played and divergent results like "beating Wisconsin two weeks before losing to Nebraska."

[Hit THE JUMP for Nebrasketball's wild ride, home/away splits and what they can tell us about the postseason, and more.]

2/9/2019 – Michigan 61, Wisconsin 52 – 22-2, 11-2 Big Ten

I'm a person who looks a at lot of box scores. I look at a lot of tempo-free box scores, and a lot of bonus stats derived from play-by-play data, and then I watch the basketball. The thing that continually surprises me is just how neatly most basketball players can be defined by a deep enough dive into box score stats.

Just Shooters are just shooters. D'Mitrik Trice is a great example: he has about 10% of his shots at the rim, shoots a fair number of unassisted threes, and that is enough to paint a picture of Trice's offense exact enough to define him. In the last game the sheer loneliness of Geo Baker was neatly captured by his teammate's assist rate on his twos: under 5%. Ethan Happ, surely one of the most bizarre players in the last 20 years of college basketball, is a butterfly pinned to a board once tempo-free stats are applied.

Most of it is in there. Stats don't capture Simpson's sky hook or Charles Matthews's colossal leaping fadeaways, but they'll tell you the what and a lot of the how.

Charles Matthews's "what" has been wut:

I probably don't need to remind anyone reading this column of the above, specifically the bit that says 27%. It was 24% before this game.

The dissolution of Matthews's despair came gradually—he had two points in the first half—and then all at once. A second-half Matthews post-up got him to the rim, and hooray. The next possession, Matthews post up, Matthews elects to take a contested fadeaway baseline jumper. I did not think that was going in. It did. I didn't think the next one was going in, either. It did. So did the next one, and by the end of the game there was only one person who was going to take the bad-idea shot after Michigan ran the shot clock down. That, too, was a long fadeaway jumper. Swish.

Sure, what the hell. There's no reason Matthews's jumper fell apart this year so there's no reason it can't come back.

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If combined with offensive contributions from anyone else, a consistent offensive output from Matthews gets Michigan back to what they were earlier in the season, when they were able to run away and hide from good teams. At Villanova: 19 points on 16 shot equivalents, run away and hide. Vs UNC: 21 points on 16 shot equivalents, run away and hide. There have been blips and bloops since but nothing resembling his finishing stretch last year.

It's hard to square the version of Matthews Michigan has had much of the season with the guy who was banging out a string of efficient tourney performances. Last year's post-season ORTGs: 120, 108, 130, 97, 90, 97, 138, 103, 120, and then a dud in the final: 47. Matthews seemed to be rounding into the final collegiate version of himself, a guy who wasn't ever going to rack up MVP numbers but would be a consistent source of moderately efficient points that Michigan could count on and build off of.

Instead a mid-season drought Atcaman in its intensity.

Matthews has cut his turnovers down and become a functional free throw shooter at the same time so his overall efficiency has been more or less what it was a year ago. But you do want more, because when he hits one of those fadeaways where he jumps so high his head's level with the rim he's a marvel. Matthews alternates between being "Bambi on ice," as Beilein famously described him, and looking like a robot hawk designed to kill God and play basketball. Sometimes when you're on, as the man said.

If Michigan could just bottle that Matthews and mass produce it for 12 or 13 or 16 games down the stretch… but no. Probably not. Matthews is riding back-to-back reasonably efficient games against major competition for the first time all year. There will be oscillations, like there are with Poole and Brazdeikis, and Michigan will hope to ride the waves such that they're able to navigate to post-season destinations.

[After THE JUMP: Happ comes back to the pack]

draft this man [Eric Upchurch]

What? Mo Hurst did not go in the first round of the NFL draft, which is now #1 on my list of WTF NFL draft moments in the I-look-at-everything-in-detail era:

1. Hurst.
2. Jonas Mouton, constantly out of position looks-like-Tarzan dude, goes in the second round.
3. Alan Branch falls into the second round behind three DT jabronis.
4. Lamarr Woodley also falls into the second round of that draft.
5. David Harris, same thing, same draft.

Ernest Shazor dropping out entirely was a twitter suggestion but Shazor checked out immediately after ending that Purdue receiver and reportedly had some off-field issues. The most absurd thing from Michigan's end was Ryan Mundy transferring to WVU and then getting drafted.

I reserve the right to revise this opinion if it turns out that Hurst's heart condition is more severe than people are letting on. Todd McShay did assert he would plummet because of it before yesterday's first round.

This is not a true thing. Don Brown is not a sitcom dad. And only a sitcom dad would do this.

Don Brown shared that during a previous trip to Paris “I had a bad experience. I was having a hard time finding coffee and I got a bunch of espressos and out them in a big glass. Oh my God I thought I was having the big one!” (Imagine Don Brown on espresso!!! Lol)

— angelique (@chengelis) April 27, 2018

Don Brown did not pour 30 dollars worth of espresso in a cup and slam it with one gulp and then almost die. He is a highly competent leader of men. This isn't I Love Lucy.

Oh God. What if it is? What if we're in the I Love Lucy universe? IT WOULD EXPLAIN AN AWFUL LOT, WOULDN'T IT.

I'll take a carton of Cartons. 247 basketball analyst guy Brian Snow has issued a Michigan prediction for "soon to be five star"(!) IA PG DJ Carton based on a bunch of people's assertions about Carton's recruitment. Pick sounds somewhat speculative—it's a number of people with low-confidence opinions, not one or two with a high-confidence one—but it's still a situation where Michigan is recruiting against the rest of the Big Ten instead of one-and-done powerhouses that they're batting 0.100 against. (McGary.) There are no regional offers left to get, and he's been everywhere already:

He’s also a step ahead of most of his classmates in his recruiting process. That’s due in large part to a busy visit scheduled his family has managed for him over the past year.

“I have been to Creighton, Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Iowa, Marquette, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana, that’s all I can think of right now.” Carton said in Texas.

Michigan is in a good place, as Carton is currently Recruit Who Asserts He Has No Future Visits Set Up Except This One School:

Another trip to Indiana is under serious consideration per his father and another Big Ten campus trip seems likely as well.

“I don’t have any scheduled right now but I did talk to (Michigan) coach (John) Beilein and he is wanting me to come to campus as soon as possible,” Carton said. “My family and I are going to probably scheduled that one soon.”

As a bonus, Sam agrees and also asserts that 5-star TX SF Jalen Wilson is highly realistic. He's taking an unofficial in two weeks and… uh… commit watch maybe? Probably not. But maybe? And then we shoot Boeheim if he looks even a little squirrelly?

The Hoiberg plan. Nebrasketball picks up that Robert Morris transfer:

Robert Morris transfer Dachon Burke has committed to Nebraska. The 6'4" guard averaged 17.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 2.1 steals per game this past season.

— Lukas Harkins (@hardwiredsports) April 26, 2018

He'll sit one and play two. Tim Miles continues to stack his roster with transfers—probably smart for a program that's near zero viable recruits and doesn't have a lot of history.

Etc.: Andrew Kahn reviews Charles Matthews's sophomore season. BEST OF BACON. Pork? John U? EITHER WAY PRETTY GOOD. Being not-rich at Michigan. More blue ribbon takes.