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THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#2 Michigan (20-4, 14-3 B1G) vs #220 Texas Southern (17-8, 10-3 SWAC)	yeah buddy
WHERE	Mackey Arena West Lafayette, IN
WHEN	3 PM Eastern Saturday, March 20
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -25 Torvik: M -23
TELEVISION	CBS PBP: Ian Eagle Analyst: Grant Hill

THE OVERVIEW

Texas Southern defeated Mount St. Mary's 60-52 in the First Four and now enters the NCAA tournament proper. (Condolences to Michigan State, which could not replicate that feat.) Your author regards this with grim amusement since he's been advocating for Michigan to avoid SWAC teams for years since they've acted as anchors in a lot of teamsheet metrics no matter how you beat them. The first year Michigan actually filled out their schedule primarily with mid-majors in the 100-200 range, they draw a SWAC team in the first round.

Anyway, TSU's bid represents a return to form for the Tigers, who had four bids in five years under Mike Davis from 2014-2018. Davis moved on to Detroit, where he's been rebuilding the crater that Bacari Alexander left. TSU hired former LSU coach Johnny Jones and has resided at or near the top of the league since; this is their first bid under Jones.

TSU has not made it out of the first round during this period because all but one of their bids was as a 16 seed. The 2014-15 Tigers got a 15 largely on the strength of an overtime victory over Michigan State. I don't make up the historical facts, I just report 'em.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Isaiah Livers does not make the lineup card at all.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

The Johnny Jones Index temporarily replaces the Bo Ryan Index. The Johnny Jones index is how many images on the first page of a google image search are of you at another job.

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

THE THEM

TSU is extremely big for a SWAC team, with just one contributor under 6'3". They rank just outside the top 50 in average height, just ten slots behind Michigan. Unfortunately none of them can shoot. The Tigers are first percentile on catch and shoot looks, and first percentile on jump shots overall.

PG Michael Weathers is the alpha dog on a relatively balanced team. Weathers started at Miami (Not That Miami), transferring after one year and landing at Oklahoma State, then transferring again. A google search for him autocompletes with "short shorts" and yep, can confirm:

Jordan Poole approves [tsusports.com]

Weathers is most effective in transition and gets a lot of opportunities because TSU tries to get out and run as much as possible. The two most efficient half-court things the Tigers do are Weathers pick and roll and Weathers isolation. Those pick and rolls lose a chunk of luster once you look at Synergy's "PNR + passes" breakout. Weathers passes out of PNR slightly over half the time, and those instances aren't much more efficient than Weathers just taking a shot himself.

Weathers is a reasonable spot-up shooter, hitting 30% from deep, but only gets about two opportunities a game because he's so ball-dominant. But that's not who he is: a majority of his usage is at the rim, he has a solid FT rate, and his TO rate is 22 because it's rim or die.

Two 6'9" guys who would be 4s on the major college level but also man all of TSU's center minutes are next. Joirdon Karl Nicholas is nominally more center-shaped since he's 6'9" 220 and does more C things like rebounding and posting up. He is not at all good at the latter (16th percentile) even at the SWAC level. He cuts to the basket a lot, which is something Michigan will have to be alert for, and otherwise exists on offense mostly when he gets a putback attempt. If he is away from the basket he will not shoot; he has 13 jumper attempts on the season.

John Walker III is TSU's most efficient player since he's shooting 63% from two and gets to the line at a high rate. At 200 pounds he's not at all a center—he is in fact 25 pounds lighter than Franz Wagner—but gets forced into that role most of the time Nicholas is on the bench. Like Nicholas, he gets most of his halfcourt usage off of cuts, putbacks, and rolling to the basket. He will spot up from time to time and has a solid 41% conversion rate on other twos. The very occasional three goes down at a 28% clip.

Walker had a major efficiency dropoff in TSU's five games against Kenpom Tier A+B opponents, hitting just half his shots and suffering a 60% spike in turnovers. His 76% conversion rate at the rim is likely unsustainable against high major opponents.

Both of these guys have OREB rates hovering around 10% and block rates just inside the top 200. Adjusting those numbers for competition is difficult but it's worth noting that the Tigers had a Michigan-level two point defense in conference play. That has largely melted against high major competition, as everyone other than Oklahoma State and (very bad) Washington State hit 57% or better inside the arc.

The starting lineup rounds out with two low-usage 6'5" wings. Senior Justin Hopkins shoots 48/30 and has a top 100 FT rate; junior Jordan Gilliam is at 40/26 and has way too many turnovers for his role. Both guys went off a cliff in A+B games.

The TSU bench:

• Burlywing Galen Alexander started much of the year but was sent to the bench three games ago (and played < 10 minutes in the previous two). He's TSU's top three-point threat at 34% but even he spends most of his time inside the line.
• Junior wing Yahuza Rasas is a black hole on offense shooting 40% from two and turning the ball over a lot. He does grab offensive boards.
• Senior guard John Jones is Just A Shooter hitting 32% from deep. Forays inside the line have been Brad Davison level bad.
• Senior Chris Baldwin plays about 4 minutes a game as a backup C. 

THE TEMPO-FREE

Left offense, right defense, overall numbers:

TSU is 341st at hitting threes and sensibly 336th at launching them. They go hard at the rim; they're ninth nationally in percentage of shots at the bucket. They're not particularly efficient there but that means they hit 58%. Getting to the rim is good. You can see that in their OREB and FTA percentages, which are both top 50 as they pressure defenders and draw help defense. Since this is a low major that attacking posture is paired with a bunch of turnovers.

Defensively, TSU is almost all green on Kenpom even on drill-down numbers. In conference play their D efficiency of 89.8 would be just outside the top ten nationally… but that's unadjusted. Once Kenpom drops the hammer they zip down to 220th. In conference play they look like SWAC Michigan: second best 2P% D, best FTA/FGA allowed, good at preventing assists, good rebounding, meh turnovers forced.

This hasn't held up against high-major foes but neither has TSU been blown out of the water. PPP allowed against KP top 100 teams:

• Oklahoma State: 1.16
• St Mary's: 1.32
• Auburn: 1.16
• BYU: 1.14

Those numbers aren't good, but they're not going to get easily run over like some low-majors who have absolutely no ability to contest size.

THE KEYS

Contest at the rim. This was going to be "keep them away from the rim" but that's not happening; TSU is going to crash towards the restricted circle and get up whatever they get. Michigan has been very good at dissuading rim attempts this year (29th nationally) and solid once teams get there. They've also been exceptional at keeping teams off the line. Forcing the Tigers to finish over bigger bodies will be enough.

A corollary: Michigan's going to have to be careful watching for flash cuts to the basket, particularly from the two bigs. TSU gets an unusually large number of buckets that Synergy files under "cut," which is one of the most efficient buckets Synergy has.

Don't foul jumpshooters. Dickinson's had issues staying on the floor when he gets switched onto guards and closes out on long jumpers. This should be good practice for not doing that, since TSU is first percentile(!) at shooting jumpers. It shouldn't matter what percentile the opposition is—no closeout on a 15-18 footer is worth even a small chance of a Dickinson foul—but here the message should be explict.

[Campredon]

Activate Brandon Johns. Ace is about to post some data that, while thin, seems to support the "Brandon Johns is better with more minutes" hypothesis. Here's a game against a team with reasonable height at the 4 but that height is about 40 pounds lighter than Johns. He should be able to go to work in the post, building confidence for further games should Michigan be so fortunate as to advance.

Don't have a historically anomalous shooting performance on both ends. That'll about do, I think.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 25.