I am ready to call it: the tourney streak is over. Michigan is currently the 25th team out on Torvik, currently estimated to have an 0.1% chance of receiving an at-large bid. They've got about an 8% chance to sneak in by winning the Big Ten tournament, largely because the league is very very bad this year.

This is quite a fall for a team that is coming off four consecutive Sweet 16s and was a one seed two years ago. How did we get here? Let's assess.

The Number One Recruiting Class In The Country was fool's gold. Michigan's heralded recruiting class of 2021 has one player in a meaningful role: Kobe Bufkin.

The two five-stars were essentially busts as college players. Caleb Houstan was a mediocre, streaky, defensively-meh wing who contributed nothing when his shot wasn't falling—which it almost never was outside of Crisler. Moussa Diabate was less frustrating but was a 20% usage guy who had middling efficiency. He had a lot of promise as a defender, but offset that promise with a lot of freshman mistakes. Both guys left to be second-round picks and are currently buried on NBA benches, so Michigan ended up playing a couple of middling players for heavy minutes—Houstan especially was inexplicably un-benchable—and those growing pains are benefiting this team in no way whatsoever. You can argue that having Houstan and Diabate around last year is worse for this year's team because other players would have more on-court experience.

Meanwhile, Frankie Collins transferred away from a near-certain starting job after Michigan added Jalen Llewellyn in the transfer portal. Collins is not exactly good at Arizona State. He's shooting 40% from two and his TO rate is over 20. But he's improved his shooting, adding 20 points to his FT% and hitting 33% of his threes; he's also got a massive assist rate that's 24th nationally. He's ASU's highest-usage player; his ORTG of 100 is bad… but it's 10 points higher than Dug McDaniel.

The other two players, Isaiah Barnes and Will Tschetter, were always long-term projects. In year two it appears neither is ready to take on a significant role. They're both averaging 4 minutes a game. This in and of itself isn't a big problem except for the fact that the aforementioned three players are not here.

If there's a lesson to be learned here it's that certain five stars aren't worth it. You have a guy headed for the lottery? Ok, get him. One-and-done second rounders are not worth bothering with. Also, try to avoid players who have not spent more than one consecutive year anywhere since middle school. 

[Campredon]

Bufkin is good, and it's probably not a coincidence he's in the recruiting sweet spot that hits around #50. He was the #46 composite prospect, which is out of the range that the NBA is going to take you even if you're not any good yet because there are only so many people with NBA-capable bodies in the world. It is in the range where you can expect to at least get the "hey, NBA, check it out" year from a player.

[After THE JUMP: more bad things! No good things!]

Admissions shot down Terrance Shannon. There have been rumors about how hard it is to get non-grad transfers into Michigan for years but never a case where a player has more or less explicitly been denied. Shannon is the exception. If Michigan's transfer process was not idiotically onerous he would be on campus:

Hunter Dickinson and Jace Howard were asked if they could have any other player in the Big Ten as a teammate, who would they want.

Without hesitation, and a laugh, both answered: "Terrance Shannon" 😂

— Anthony Broome (@anthonytbroome) October 12, 2022

Shannon is an efficient, high-usage wing for Illinois instead, shooting 54/34/77 from the floor with a massive FT rate. He's also a 6-6 wing stopper the likes of which this team badly needs. Illinois is just 4-4 in league play but is about 30 spots higher than Michigan in Kenpom and is projected as a 9-seed on Torvik.

Not letting in a potential paradigm-shifting basketball player because his credits won't transfer is the kind of Queensbury rules thing only Michigan would do to itself. Let's hope this sort of thing doesn't happen under Santa Ono anymore.

Hunter Dickinson isn't Hunter Dickinson this year. These numbers have come up a bit but there's still a stark dropoff from last year's Dickinson in tough games versus this year's. Last year Dickinson's numbers were impressively flat when the going got tough. His ORTG was 120 in all games, 120 against Kenpom top 100 opponents, and 120 against Kenpom top 50 opponents. This year he's at 115 against everyone and his ORTG drops ten points in tougher games. His assist rate is down, his FT% is down, and in key games his performance has not been up to par. In Michigan losses Dickinson has posted ORTGs of 84, 106, 94, 81, 98 (against CMU!), 100, and 108 before a 144 yesterday against Maryland. Given the narrow nature of almost all of those losses—only Arizona State was more than six points in regulation—it's probably not an exaggeration to say that the metronomically efficient sophomore Dickinson pilots Michigan to four or five more wins this season.

I don't get it. To me, Dickinson is not fighting for good post position and getting the ball way outside the paint too often, where he then settles for jumpers. Per Synergy he's lost almost 0.2 PPP on post-ups this year, dropping from a 94th percentile player to a 70th percentile player, and that's with tomato cans occupying a larger portion of the schedule 18 games in instead of 32.

But also this bullet point leads into another…

They've either been unlucky or not clutch. Michigan ranks 308th in Kenpom's luck stat. The aforementioned Arizona State looks to be coasting to a tourney bid at 15-4 but its ranked exactly one spot in front of Michigan on Kenpom; they are 17th. Michigan is 2-8 in games that are six points or closer at the end of regulation. They lost to Virginia by 2, Kentucky by 4, UNC by 4, CMU by 2, and managed to turn a 4 point lead with the shot clock off into OT against Iowa. There is an alternate universe in which Michigan is a pretty mediocre team that is nonetheless safely in.

Llewellyn tore his ACL. Llewellyn was off the a horrible shooting start but you have to figure that would have leveled out somewhere considerably more reasonable than 19% from three, and the last two transfer point guards Michigan has brought in have all improved significantly over the course of the season. It's reasonable to assume his presence would improve Michigan somewhat, and "somewhat" is all it would take. See previous bullet.

----------------------------------------------------LINE OF DEMARCATION------------------------------------------

The five things prior to the line of demarcation are about 95% of the problem. There are a few smaller issues.

 

[Campredon]

Terrance Williams hasn't stepped up. I remember frothing at the mouth during the Tennessee game last year that Williams was stuck on the bench while mope mode Houstan was giving Michigan nothing. Williams finally got in down the stretch and immediately got two crucial putback buckets. That dawg in him, etc.

Williams has about the same level of usage this year as a starter and has backslid in every shooting category. He got benched for 19 minutes against Northwestern after a couple of back-to-back hustle plays he did not make. He's just a guy.

Most of the 3/4 defenders are hideously bad. I did not expect Jett Howard to be prime Charles Matthews but he's come in under even modest expectations defensively. Joey Baker is hitting 46% from three and can't get starters minutes because he's a walking blow-by. Williams has been okay, mostly; when he's not giving Michigan much they turn to Will Tschetter, who is not a plus player on D at this point in his career. Michigan pulled out Tarris Reed to check Kris Murray for big chunks of the Iowa game and while that went surprisingly well it says something about something.

Nobody from the deep bench is a pleasant surprise. It was possible that Barnes, Tschetter, Jace, or Khayat would pop up and be an interesting 15 MPG bench guy. Doesn't look like that's happening.

Reed's free throw shooting is abominable. Reed looks like a player but Michigan had to take him off the floor for key stretches of the Iowa game because he's currently a 23% free throw shooter(!!!). You expect high TOs and iffy FT shooting from a freshman big, but this is another level.

Dug McDaniel is a yet another first year point. For the love of God, please stay on campus. This is the fourth straight year Michigan has had a new-to-the-program point guard after the Simpson era ended, and I hate it. I just want someone to run the Michigan offense like he knows what he's doing.