3/28/2021 – Michigan 76, Florida State 58 – 23-4, 14-3 Big Ten, Elite Eight

Michigan was up 11 at halftime and Twitter was unanimous: they weren't even playing that well. Twitter cannot agree on anything.

there’s always someone on twitter arguing with no one. saying stuff like “but I was told steph curry wasn’t a good shooter”

— Mambo No. Pfizer (@killakow) June 11, 2019

Twitter cannot agree what color a dress is or whether a Vehicle Miles Traveled tax is a regressive monstrosity or a good, urbanist idea. The only things Twitter has ever agreed on are 1) a boat stuck in the Suez Canal is extremely, extremely funny, and 2) the Michigan-Florida State score did not accurately reflect how deeply Juwan Howard and friends had dunked the Seminoles into a trash can.

When Twitter's right, it's right. The boat is amazing, and FSU was deep in a trash can. After surveying all available stats this one seem like the best indicator: Michigan had 34(!) shots at the rim. They had 14 other twos. That is a crazy ratio, and honestly it felt like making 23 of those 34 at the rim was cursed. We've got Austin Davis assisting Chaundee Brown out here.

"How good are they," Bill Raftery exclaimed after that. And yeah, the impression Michigan gave off in this game was a magnificent, implacable They. Scoring was distributed. Aside from the deep bench Michigan scoring went like this: 14-14-13-12-8-6-6. Five different guys had at least two assists. Davis didn't make that roster but he only played eight minutes, so he gets a pass.

Michigan followed up a first half where they shot 33%—they weren't even playing that well—by hitting about 70% of their looks in the second half, and that conversion rate was deserved. Michigan's second half shot chart is incredible:

One bucket outside the paint, and ~2 that aren't at the rim. That is against the tallest team in America, and a team that entered the game 10th in two-point defense. Michigan assisted on 15 of 18 second half baskets. Clinic. That was a clinic.

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There is something tremendously satisfying about winning a game where it's not about hitting shots. Michigan was 6/25 away from the rim, and it did not matter because half of Michigan's possessions ended either at the rim or in free throws.

Maybe LSU was onto something with their "give Michigan all the open threes" approach. Anyone can miss an open three. Michigan just had to hit a couple fewer and it was game on. Here there was no respite. FSU's ball denial and constant switching is on the completely opposite end of the defensive spectrum and all it got the Seminoles was the above parade to the rim.

On the other end, well… FSU got a bucket at the end of the first half. It was a pick and roll that evolved into an elbow jumper off the dribble. If you remember the preview, FSU is abominable—second percentile—at jumpers off the dribble. A bad idea shot that Michigan would give FSU all day which they will hit a quarter of the time. That's a win.

The larger win was encapsulated in the TV crew's reaction. Raftery exclaimed "they ran something! They ran something!" This is not a good spot to be in. When the color commentator is shocked that you did a basketball set more than nineteen minutes into a game, and that basketball set got you a not particularly efficient shot that you're particularly horrible at, you're going to be so far down the trash can that light reaching you from the rest of the universe is noticeably redshifted.

[After THE JUMP: Big Minutes Johns]

BULLETS

[Brett Wilhelm/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Big minutes Johns. Brandon Johns was one of the guys who got to 14 points, leading the team. Even more surprising: he was Michigan's highest usage player at 30%. That's in part because Michigan had some of those rebound-your-own-miss-and-put-it-back possessions, but Johns had 13 shooting possessions and a couple assists. Michigan opened the second half with a high-low set on which Johns put Koprivica in a blender:

Michigan's done a good job of getting Johns post touches where he can use his outstanding athleticism and Juwan Howard-taught moves to overwhelm guys who are frequently smaller or less athletic. Koprivica is, uh, not smaller.

That high-low action got Johns a floater bucket and an assist to Davis later. I imagine a world where Johns is the starting 4 in 2021-22 (and Moussa Diabate is getting the rest of the minutes there) is going to see a lot of that.

The eraser. Franz Wagner went head to head with Scottie Barnes for a big chunk of this game and came out the clear victor. Not only did Wagner end up the Kenpom MVP of the game, Barnes was held to eight points and a 72 ORTG. Franz wasn't all of that but neither was that Franz's only defensive impact:

Franz Wagner individual defense versus FSU. Exceptional mobility, lateral quickness, and length pic.twitter.com/GhFtkVqsFe

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) March 29, 2021

The sequence where Wagner broke the FSU press to set up some Johns FTs, plunged into the lane for a layup, and then contested a Barnes shot into a miss, then put a rebound off an FSU player to regain possession was peak That Doesn't Show Up In The Boxscore. (Okay: one bit did end up in the boxscore.)

Rebound of the year. There are surely more consequential ones but none are more mansome:

Brown can do some things.

Brooks had some tough possessions. Michigan's offense was mostly a well-oiled machine but there was a period in the first half where Brooks was taking some extremely inadvisable shots, including a contested scoop against Koprivica, an early-clock elbow jumper off the dribble, and a semi-transition floater that missed the rim entirely. The two latter possessions were back to back and then Brooks got a gift of a 1-and-1 after a silly press foul from FSU; he missed the front end.

This doesn't have a larger meaning. Brooks carried Michigan early against LSU and even during this tough stretch he caused a couple FSU turnovers; he's a keystone for an Elite Eight team. I only mention it because maaaan that was frustrating.

Punishing full-court press. One of my few, but perpetual, complaints about John Beilein's teams is that they were susceptible to those half-ass three-quarter-court presses that are designed to drain the shot clock and do little else. Beilein's offense often took a lot of time to get a shot and there were certain games in which it felt like getting into offense with 18 seconds on the clock was a problem. Those teams never did this:

Michigan never fully dissuaded the FSU press but they got in enough transition situations off of it that it felt like a net loss for the Seminoles.

[Jack Dempsey/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Smith off the top top top of the backboard. Mike Smith had another tough game against a ton of length (8 points on 10 shooting possessions, 4 A, 2 TO) but had two of the biggest buckets of the game. One was the and-one where he explored the furthest reaches of the backboard right after FSU had cut it to five:

The second was a late-clock possession in the first half when FSU had subbed in Wyatt Wilkes, who is named "Wyatt." Smith nailed a step-back three over him.

Do not place a person named Wyatt on Mike Smith. Or Darryl, if he's the Big Ten DPOY.

Downtown Chaundee Brown. Brown had two of Michigan's three makes from three and on both his height, ability to elevate, and lack of hesitation created the look. Brown followed up the Smith step-back mentioned above by nailing a contested corner three with the clock under ten.

Brown's ability to get up good threes in situations other guys would have to drive at is a quiet strength of his game.

Fun with Synergy buckets. This game via the lens of what buckets the Synergy charters put various possessions in:

• Michigan had a 15-9 advantage in spot-ups. Just 12% of FSU's possessions ended up in spot-ups, and remember that they were a 99th percentile spot-up team.
• Synergy does not have a specific dribble jumper category in their play type charting. "PNR ball handler" is a decent proxy, although you're going to get a lot of floaters and some layups in there. FSU had 39(!) PNR ball handler possessions to Michigan's 23.
• Michigan had a 16-8 advantage in shots off cuts. Cuts are probably the most efficient half-court offense Synergy charts and that's 21% of Michigan possessions.
• FSU did have a 7-3 advantage in passes to the roll man and forced Michigan into 9 iso possessions versus their three; this was a result of their near-ubiquitous switching. Michigan only got 8 post-up possessions despite the switching.
• Michigan had eight putback attempts to FSU's two.

A shot quality demolition.

"And one!" It has long been this site's contention that screaming "and one" should be a class B tech if you 1) miss and 2) aren't fouled. This would have been a 40 point game if that rule was in place because seemingly every FSU shot inside the arc was accompanied by an impressively loud (and impressively incorrect) "and one!"

I think Scottie Barnes was the main culprit but he was far from alone.

A win, but not as much of one as you'd think. UCLA was not #TeamFoul and reaped the whirlwind (from a 29% three point shooter taking one from 30 feet) but poured in on in overtime to knock out two-seed Alabama. Michigan now gets a team whose season was unimpressive enough to end up in a play-in game. Hooray?

Well, yeah, but Pac-12 teams are surging up Kenpom because they just won a ton of games against excellent competition and UCLA will enter the Michigan game ranked 16th. That's 4-5 seed territory. Better than a two? Yes. As mentioned, Michigan just stuffed a 4 in a trash can. Not quite 11 territory. UCLA's play-in game opponent, Michigan State, is ranked 63rd.

On the other hand, I do agree with this take on the potential matchup:

Even if Kenpom were equal, I think UCLA is a better stylistic matchup. Bama has quick guards that can bother us like Illinois did (although no Cockburn). Wagner/Chaundee/Brooks can handle Juzang and Jacquez. UCLA can win, but UM solid favorite.

— Chris (@Wolverine60614) March 29, 2021

UCLA plays a traditional big almost all the time and Cody Riley is a 6'9" guy with a 3.5 block rate. That should be advantage Michigan.

I think that's a precursor to the… uh… I don't know what this wrestling move is but I know it is one.

No context college basketball: pic.twitter.com/ontpjGS86b

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) March 28, 2021

I'm not sure I've seen a basketball game stopped for entanglement before.

Turtleneck man loses it. Danny Kanell did not take the game well:

Screw you

— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) March 28, 2021

This was part of a conversation about a tweet in which Kanell cited a two-game sample to argue that the officiating was terrible.