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The Defensive Turnaround: Real or Opponent-Driven?

After Brian posted this in the Rutgers game column...

Teske back? Myles Johnson isn't exactly Luka Garza but he is shooting 53% from the floor on decent usage in Big Ten play. Teske shut him off. Johnson was 0/3 and all three of his shots might have been blocked by Teske. Indiana's Trayce Jackson-Davis had as many points (4) in the first three minutes of the Indiana-Minnesota game as he had against Michigan, when he was 2/3 from the floor. IIRC not much of De'ron Davis's game came against Teske.

Tillman did okay personally from two (6/10) but MSU collectively shot 38% from two; OSU shot 44% and Wesson's twos were mostly putbacks or fadeaway jumpers.

Teske's been very rough offensively for the last month but as Michigan's defense surges he seems to be a major part of that. A return game against Trevion Williams up next will be a good measuring stick.

...I took a look at Synergy to see if there were some explanation for Michigan's defensive improvement beyond Teske simply playing better. This led to an entire post's worth of information.

The stats that leap off Michigan's defensive page are their wildly varying abilities against certain sets. They boast a remarkably good pick-and-roll defense but are among the worst power conference programs against isolations and post-ups. Here are the numbers from Synergy for M's defense, with passes included (note: Synergy separates out putbacks from offensive rebounds, so the points per possession figures are lower than you might anticipate):

The good news: pick-and-rolls are generally better offense than post-ups and isos, so if you have to choose a play to be killer at defending, that's the right one.

After that, I wanted a good visual of Big Ten offenses and their acumen in pick-and-roll and post-up situations. I'm dire at working with anything related to Excel, so thankfully Seth put together some scatter plots for me. My (rather obvious) operating hypothesis was that Michigan would prefer to avoid good post-up teams. Here are the Big Ten's post offenses charted by frequency and efficiency:

Michigan's worst defensive performances have come against these teams almost without exception—the outlier is the first Michigan State game, when the Wolverines couldn't slow down the Winston/Tillman pick-and-roll. Iowa, led by Luka Garza, broke the original scale—Garza is so obscenely good in the paint that the Hawkeyes are more efficient on post-ups than any Big Ten team is on pick-and-rolls. Purdue will, indeed be a big test.

The Wolverines haven't had many of those lately. Indiana is their worst defensive performance by adjusted efficiency since the Jan. 17th loss at Carver-Hawkeye. Their next-worst game in that span: Illinois. Other than Ohio State, which the defense handled relatively well despite the loss, Michigan's recent stretch of good defense has come against teams that generally don't post up often or particularly well—Rutgers checks both boxes.

I'm worried a decent portion of Michigan's recent defensive turnaround is due to the competition. The stretch run will be a challenge. The next three games all come against post-oriented teams: Purdue, Wisconsin, and Ohio State. Then comes a respite against Nebraska before closing the season against Maryland, a very good team but one that Michigan is well-suited to defense.

[Hit THE JUMP for why that's the case, plus a look at the conference's defenses and a preview of Sunday's M/MSU WBB tilt.]

1/9/2019 – Michigan 84, Purdue 78 (2 OT) – 11-4, 2-2 Big Ten

"Survive and advance" is the kind of thing people say in March after a 13 seed gives their team the business for 35 minutes and then skids to a halt just short of the finish line. As bits of conventional wisdom go, it's actually not bad. You're locked in a 68-team tournament with a bunch of opponents who are also pretty good. There's no such thing as a bad tourney win. Yes, even that one against Montana.

Michigan just played a 2 OT game in which six guys got more than eight minutes. We are in survive and advance mode. Every time Michigan poked their nose in front late your author had a thought bubble appear above his head. In it, his friend Jerry popped up, said "survive and advance!," and then muttered something about Huddersfield Town FC your author tried to ignore.

This is a comedown from annihilating Gonzaga to win Poseidon's Trident but I've mostly made my peace with it. Sugarplum dreams of this team being elite have given way to some harsh realities. Michigan is pretty short and not particularly athletic and the preseason expectations were closer to right than bouncing up to the #4 team in the country. The Big Ten is a ball of knives. We are barreling towards the first-ever NCAA tournament with Rutgers but not North Carolina.

Every game is a swing game, except one. Kenpom gives Michigan a 92% shot at beating Nebraska at home just before the season's end. They do not have an 80%+ shot in any other game. Nor do they have an insurmountable task. Games at OSU and Maryland sandwiching the Nebraska game are 26% and 29% shots. Everything else is in coinflip land. There are no bad wins from here on out, especially when Michigan is down its most efficient offensive player and one of three defensive cornerstones.

Did we win? Good. No further questions.

[After THE JUMP: Further questions!]

12/29/2019 – Michigan 86, UMass-Lowell 60 – 10-3, 1-1 Big Ten

As a general rule, whenever Michigan plays an opponent and I think "oh, they have a hockey team" that opponent is going to show up with a 6'5" center and a point guard wearing a beret. One of their bench guys will have wooden teeth. UMass-Lowell has a hockey team. They put a freshman named "Connor Withers" on Jon Teske.