THE ESSENTIALS

i have theories about that hair

THE US

I mean… I told you. I told you!

…it looks like [Montana's] defense holds up much better than their offense when the biggish boys roll into town: PSU, Stanford, Georgia State, and Washington all had 1 PPP or worse when they played the Griz. Those were all losses because Montana's offense crawled in a hole and died, averaging about 0.8 PPP. Penn State is the best of those teams on D, finishing 21st. Michigan is about 4 points per 100 possessions better than PSU, and far better than the other teams.

This might be a bit of a meatgrinder.

It was a bit of a meatgrinder in the same way Stalingrad was. And now everyone's freaking out about a 14-point NCAA win. Including me, a little. Take a breath.

THE LINEUP CARD

Projected starters are in bold. Hover over headers for stat explanations. The "Should I Be Mad If He Hits A Three" methodology: we're mad if a guy who's not good at shooting somehow hits one. Yes, you're still allowed to be unhappy if a proven shooter is left open. It's a free country..

*[Zanna's got a slight plurality of C minutes in Houston's last five. He's at 37% on the season.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview.]

THE THEM

theory: Gray sacrificed his hairstyle to a demon in exchange for powers

I probably don't have to do a lot of convincing when I say that Houston begins and ends with man-bun PG Rob Gray after a 39-point, 50% usage outburst that barely got the Cougars past 11-seed San Diego State last night. Gray doesn't shoot alarmingly well (50/35 from the floor) but he has 30% usage and a 2:1 A:TO ratio. He is enough of a threat on his own to draw attention and open up a bunch of good threes for his teammates despite the fact that Houston only has two guys who shoot threes other than Gray. He's also a fairly high-volume FT shooter hitting 80%.

Gray is fond of pull-up threes (only half his makes are assisted) and gets virtually no help from his teammates to get his own. Houston's default offense is "Gray, do something." He did enough stuff to get the Cougars a six seed, and then singlehandedly propelled them to the second round. He's dangerous.

Zavier Simpson can score zero points in this game and still be the major catalyst for a Michigan win if he can turn Gray into just a guy.

Gray's running mates in the backcourt are also 6'1" guys but are diametrically opposed otherwise. Galen Robinson is a wild penetrator with high assist and turnover rates; he gets just over half his shots at the rim where he hits a very solid-for-a-guard 66%. Anything not at the rim is a disaster. Michigan's clear imperative is to stay in front of him by sagging and allow him to shoot anything short of a layup.

On the other hand, Corey Davis is a dangerous sniper. He's hitting 43% on a high volume of threes and is Not Just A Shooter. He's mostly a shooter but does have an assist rate around 15 and shoots decently (49%) from two; combined with his decent-ish FT rate about a third of his attempts come inside the arc.

Still, Davis's 3PAs will be a major swing point in the game. SDSU held him to 0/5, which was the first time since the fourth game of the year he'd put up a goose egg from three. He's gotten 10+ attempts up in 5 of his last 8 games.

With Wes VanBeck apparently out, the only bench option at the guard spots is 6'3" Just A Shooter Armoni Brooks. Brooks is an archetypical JAS with miniscule A, TO, and FT rates who gets 10% of his shots at the rim. He's hitting 42% on 195 threes this year, 99% of which are assisted. He does bring some defensive juice.

Davis, #5, is yet another IU transfer that makes the tourney

Houston's forwards are pretty unconventional. For one, they're short. 75% of Houston's minutes at the 4 and 5 come from 6'6" and 6'7" guys, with the remainder going to a 6'8" guy. Over the season the minutes have shifted significantly, with 6'6" LIU-Brooklyn grad transfer Nura Zanna emerging as the (nominal) starting C. Zanna does almost literally nothing on offense except OREB,—he'd be top 50 if he had enough minutes to qualify on Kenpom—put back those OREBs, and turn the ball over. He does not assist because if he has the ball it's because Gray has dumped it to him in the expectation he will dunk it. Zanna commits buckets of fouls since he's expendable. 

Zanna is expendable because Houston has a bunch of dudes like him. Backup Breaon Brady gets about 10 MPG and is a near-clone of Zanna: huge OREB, TO, and fouls called numbers. His usage is significantly higher and he will go to work on the block some, but when you have a 95 ORTG increased usage is a curse, not a blessing. Freshman Fabian White is the same deal. He's a little more refined and Houston's best shotblocker, but his non-TO usage has been close to nil against good teams. 6'10" Chris Harris is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency guy who gets unearthed for a few minutes a game when the guys in front of him are in foul trouble, as they frequently are.

The lone Houston player taller than 6'3" who's not an unskilled board-and-foul-machine is 6'6" Indiana transfer Devin Davis. Davis is an old-school burlywing who isn't a three threat and has a lot of trouble getting all the way to the rim; he compensates with a quality midrange game (46% on non-rim twos) that's about half assisted. He does OREB some and does foul some, but his TO rate is less than half that of the other guys and his assist rate does not require a microscope to detect.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Houston's slightly wonky offense is opposite a top 20 defense that is somehow eighth in 2PT defense despite having all those short guys. They're good at grabbing DREBs and middling at TO rate; they put a ton of guys on the line because of those foul-prone bigs.

The latter isn't great for Michigan. Since it doesn't really matter which big is on the court for Houston they can be super aggressive when Matthews or Simpson attacks the basket. On the bright side, Houston looks like a team that might be propping itself up on three-point luck. They allow an exactly average number, don't play zone, and are still top 40 in 3P% D.

On the other side of the ball Houston is 36th. They crash the boards (30th) and excel at draining threes, but only take an average number because they only have the three guys who are capable from behind the arc. That's good for Michigan, which has been strong on the boards and is elite at preventing launches from deep.

THE KEYS

Mothra vs Manbun. It is not a great revelation when I tell you that Zavier Simpson's ability to check Gray one on one is a huge factor in the game. Simpson has the ability to crowd Gray to dissuade those pull-up threes, and cut him off all the same. Gray is going to get some number of points. If his ORTG dips under 100, like virtually all PGs who've faced off with Michigan and Simpson over the last month and a half, Houston's path to victory gets narrow.

No threes. Corey Davis can attack closeouts all he wants as long as he's not rising up for a 43% shot at 3. Ditto Armani Brooks, except Brooks will not be attacking any closeouts. Houston has no particularly efficient players inside the arc. The #1 focus should be winning the three point line.

Prepare for a softer approach on PNR, maybe? Kelvin Sampson was fairly specific about what worried him about Michigan:

Michigan is a difficult prep because of how their five man plays, Wagner. There's always somebody you're trying to compare somebody with, who does he remind you of that you've played against. We haven't played against anybody like him. Like most foreign players, they like to slip out of screens, and that's what makes it difficult. I tell our kids, there's real screens, there's fake screens. He sets a lot of fake screens, and he forces your big to run to the three-point line, and he's got such a good dribble game. He's a difficult matchup. …

You just don't know what Wagner is going to do. You don't know if he's going to stop and set a screen or if he's going to slip out of it, and when they do, there's five people behind the three-point line when he does that. And then when they swing it, here comes the drive. And if you're late with your help, the ball is in the opposite corner, and you've got Livers or Poole or Duncan Robinson, one of those guys, shooting threes.

If this in fact the approach Michigan's going to have to rescreen and attack the other way, like we saw a few times in the Big Ten tournament. If that doesn't work for the Cougars they're set up to try the all-switching defense that's given Michigan problems to date. That could lead to a lot of drives for Simpson and a lot of free thows off those drives. A mixed blessing at best.

Know the system better than they know what to do against it. At Michigan Beilein has overperformed in just about every second-round game he's had.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 2.