THE ESSENTIALS

THE US

Seth's graphic:

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Michigan should have a nice easy senior day run out for Teske and Simpson after a couple of alarming defensive performances against stretch fives. I don't think Michigan is anywhere near the bubble but this is the one possible pratfall that could get people talking, so hopefully they can focus up.

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

THE THEM

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The Big Ten offers up few freebies this season, but the solitary home game Michigan gets against the bottom two in the league is a freebie indeed. Kenpom gives Michigan a 17 point edge and a 94% chance to win, numbers Michigan hasn't seen since the nonconference season.

Nebraska is 2-16 in league play, having suffered a season sweep at the hands of Northwestern. Their two wins are against Iowa and Purdue. The former is inexplicable, the latter a key component of Purdue's vertigo-inducing 2019-20.

The Cornhuskers rank 146th in Kenpom, which makes them the worst Big Ten team since the 2015-16 Rutgers outfit that was a miraculous 279th. They managed to stay in the previous outing by shooting 54% from three over the first 30 minutes of the game—this was peak Cursed January for Michigan—and felt to an 11-point defeat as soon as their shooting reverted to something approximating normal.

PERSONNEL

Mack(#3) had a triple double in Nebraska's win over Purdue

PG Cam Mack was the chief source of shooting WTF in the first game. He hit 5/7 threes. Since he's 5 of 29. On the season he's a 34% shooter; like various Wisconsin guards his efficiency goes off a cliff inside the line, where he's 37% in league play. Mack is pretty quick and can be a problem in the open court, but he forces up a ton of junk at the rim once he gets stuck in half-court situations. He does have a top 25 assist rate nationally.

Like the rest of the Nebraska roster, Mack is horrible at free throws. He's shooting a sophomore X-level 57%, so he wastes his decent free throw rate.

SG Dachon Burke committed to Tim Miles as a a sit-out transfer from Robert Morris; as per usual with low-major guys transferring up the transition has been rough. Burke is shooting 46/30 as Nebraska's highest-usage player; he's also scuffling badly at the line (56%, down from 63% last year). Like Mack, Burke gets to the rim a lot and humps up seriously challenged shots. Both guys also take a lot of off the dribble threes with dubious success rates.

SF Haanif Cheatham started his career at Marquette, transferred to FGCU, barely played, and then got in a grad transfer to Nebraska. He's been reasonably efficient as a driver and finisher. He gets a majority of his shots at the rim and finishes decently for a 6'5" guy; he's also a solid catch and shoot guy from behind the arc. He is miserable at jump shots off the bounce, so if you can close him out and stay in front of an ensuing drive his backup plan is a bad one.

Cheatham knows this and plays within himself, with an impressively low TO rate for a guy who gets most of his shots at the rim. Cheatham gets to the line a lot, where he's a 66% shooter. This is the best rate for anyone with an appreciable number of attempts.

PF Thorir Thorbjarnson is the other Nebraska player with non-horrifying efficiency. He's the one guy on the roster who's a plus three point shooter (39% on 117) attempts; he's been efficient inside the line and makes his free throws. He's Just A Shooter with low usage and a TO rate too high for his role, but you could put Thor Squared on a number of Big Ten teams and he'd get 10+ minutes.

Center Yvan Ouedraogo is French and absurdly young—he's going to turn 18 later this month. This may give him some runway to improve, but that runway is long indeed. He's currently shooting 43% from two and 46% from the line; his 1.5 block rate is south of Austin Davis.

Ouedraogo is active on the offensive boards. That's his sole positive trait at this juncture in his career. He is a major reason Nebraska has the worst two point defense, worst block rate, and worst defensive rebounding rate in the Big Ten.

The bench:

• C Kevin Cross, a 6'8" freshman who you probably remember nailing three consecutive bad threes in the previous outing. Cross is shooting 26% from deep on the season and is 4/29 since playing Michigan. If he continues hitting from outside the curse is real. When not shooting threes Cross is hitting 42% from two with negligible OREB and block rates.
• G Jervay Green, a JUCO transfer shooting 52/31. He's got a decent assist rate; he turns it over too much. He's horrible at the line.
• G Charlie Easley, a freshman walk-on. He's got more threes than twos; he's hitting the threes at a 19% clip.

F Matej Kavas is out for the year.

THE RELEVANT NUMBERS

As mentioned above, Nebraska is small and young in the frontcourt, leading to some very red numbers. They'relast in the league in two point D, block rate, defensive rebounding, eFG D, free throw percentage, and avoiding blocked shots. They're close to dead last at getting to the line, two pointers, and grabbing OREBs.

There is one thing Nebraska is legitimately good at: forcing turnovers while not putting the opposition on the line. This is because Nebraska gambles a lot, putting themselves in situations where there's going to be a steal or a good opportunity.

THE KEYS

Keep it in the halfcourt. Nebraska's eFG drops 12 points once you get outside the first ten seconds of the shot clock. The Cornhuskers will look for any opportunity in transition or semi-transition; they particularly like quick threes off of early penetration. Once in the halfcourt they get a ton of stuff thrown back in their face.

A large portion of this is Nebraska's deflection-heavy defense. They hop a lot of passing lanes hoping for fast break buckets—they lead the conference in steal rate without committing an undue number of fouls. The Jacob Young Pick Six is something to watch out for. So too are rakedowns from the outside. Wagner and Johns combined for 10 of Michigan's 17 turnovers in the last game; cleaning that up will help at both ends.

Zavier Simpson's available for this game, so I'd expect the TO rate to drop significantly.

how you gonna keep em out of the paint once they've seen Yvan Ouedraogo [Campredon]

Hammer them in the paint. Michigan won the rebounding battle by grabbing 30% of their misses and allowing just 4 OREBs on the other end, but it should be worse this time around. This was the game where Teske had a couple quick buckets and then got to halftime with 3 shot attempts, leading to a series of Johns post-ups.

Austin Davis got 3 minutes and hit his only shot. If Teske isn't getting good shots up early, Howard is likely to pull the trigger on Davis since he should shoot 80% from the floor against this team.

Simpson's addition should also unlock a bunch of looks at the basket for him. Nebraska's lack of shotblocking should make his forays into the paint productive. Nebraska will have little choice other than offering help, so…

Appease Angry Michigan Three-Point Randomness God. Nebraska in the last outing: 9/21. Michigan: 7/24.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 17.