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THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#3 Michigan (23-4, 14-3 B1G) vs #16 UCLA (21-9, 13-6 PAC12)	lamentably out of stock
WHERE	RAW Power App Stadium Indianapolis, IN
WHEN	9:57 PM Eastern Tuesday, March 30th
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -5 Torvik: M –4.8
TELEVISION	CBS PBP: Brian Anderson Analyst: Jim Jackson

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan plays for its third Final Four since 2013 tonight against play-in upstart UCLA. This is not your typical 11 seed, by the numbers. UCLA's boat has been lifted both by its performance and the Pac-12s shocking romp through the tournament, so they've skyrocketed from 45th in Kenpom on the eve of the tourney to the 16th you see above.

That said, Michigan just stuck #13 Florida State in a trash can and should feel at least a little fortunate that UCLA squeezed by Alabama in overtime. The three-heavy Crimson Tide hit 25% from deep and 44% from the line; it felt like replaying that game several times would result in many more Alabama wins than UCLA ones.

The Bruins do come in with a couple of common opponents: they lost 77-70 to OSU in Cleveland and squeezed by MSU in OT in the play-in round. OSU shot 61% from two; EJ Liddell and Zed Key combined for 17 points on 12 interior shooting possessions. That may be Dickinson-relevant. (Liddell was also 1/3 from three, FWIW.) I'm not sure there's much to take out of the MSU game other than schadenfreude. MSU's offense doesn't have a lot of comparison points with Michigan's.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

No changes from last time out.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

I usually have something to say here but I do not this time.

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

THE THEM

UCLA has a center, a point guard, and a wide array of 6'6" guys who do most of the heavy lifting.

The center is Cody Riley, a 6'9" junior who's mostly a traditional paint-bound big. He does hit a high percentage on jumpers at or around the elbow (48%!) but only takes a couple of those a game. The large bulk of his work is done in the post, where he's hitting 58% on the season. He grades out fairly meh as a post scorer per Synergy because he boots the ball out of bounds almost a quarter of the time he's on the block.

Riley grades out spectacularly as a post defender, allowing 15 points on 34 possessions. Standard "ain't no Kofi in that conference" disclaimers apply. On the other hand, UCLA held Evan Mobley relatively in check in their two games against the Trojans. He was efficient but not dominant, scoring 13 and 9 points in the two games. Dickinson is a different kind of deal, especially in Juwan Howard's offense.

Riley is foul prone and when things go wrong they can go really wrong. He's fouled out in 28, 27, 23, and 10 minutes this season and he's had his playing time curtailed in several others. This is a major reason that a team with only one center (more or less) plays him 21 MPG. His on/off splits are a dead heat but he's suffered some bad 3P%/FT D luck on defense:

Not quite an Austin Davis 2P% D gap but that's big enough to be real. Riley isn't much of a rim protector; the alternatives are worse.

ope let me just sneak by you for a sec [Andy Hancock/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Point guard and possessor of rad hair Tyger Campbell is mostly a facilitator because he's undersized and not crazy athletic. He plays the role of the traditional pass-first point guard well, with the #65 assist rate in the country against an acceptably low TO rate. Campbell is not a deep shooter (25% on 65 threes this year, 27% last year) but has a great midrange game:

On one level this is a very good defensive matchup for Mike Smith but he's probably going to get shot over a few times. Campbell puts midrange jumpers down at a 46% clip. He's barely better at the rim. Campbell creates all his own twos and has one unassisted three on the year so it seems like the obvious thing to do is go under every screen.

And now for the Brigade of Wings. As the graphic indicates above, they're all pretty much the same guy. They're all a flavor of Not Just A Shooter hitting about 50% from two and 35-40% from three with low TO rates and limited playmaking. All are three level scorers, give or take. All of them are at least pretty good at everything you can do offensively on a basketball court. There's not even much separation between them once you drill down into fancystats.

Charles Matthews, the Kentucky transfer, but this guy[Andy Hancock/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Kentucky transfer Johnny Juzang is the highest usage member of the trio by a wide margin and correspondingly the least efficient. This is mostly because he shoots threes at about twice the rate the other two guys do despite being the guy at 35% while the other two are at 40%. Juzang is the most rim-allergic of the three wings; he makes up for it by also being excellent in the midrange.

Other than Campbell, Juzang is the most likely Bruin to run a pick and roll, where he is very dangerous as scorer. He's especially proficient at pulling up for short jumpers and runners; this could be a problem against Michigan's drop coverage. This space has been yelling about having Dickinson not bother to close out on stuff like this; this may be a situation where closing out is not optional. Could get dicey.

ope gonna make the tournament here one sec [Andy Hancock/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Jamie Jaquez is much lower usage than Juzang but has been on a tear to end the season, even dating back to (most of) UCLA's tough four-game losing streak before the tourney. ORTGs in UCLA's last 7: 126, 120, 119, 140, 146, 111, 125. That is a sustained run of shotmaking and turnover-free assist generation. He demolished Michigan State, putting up 27 points on 22 shooting possessions; he never came off the floor. He was diabolically effective against Alabama as well:

Jaquez is a three-level scorer with some Franz Wagner swooping layup game, though those assists are fairly typical. He might kick it to the corner. He's not going to hit a cutter with a whiz bang exclamation point.

Jaquez is a 40% three point shooter on just under three attempts per game. Not high volume, but efficient.

The same can be said for Jules Bernard, who is almost exactly like the other two guys. Like Jaquez he's lower usage and shoots 40% from three. I don't know how to say this for the third straight time. He's those guys, more or less.

One note: Synergy individual defensive metric caveats apply, but all three of these guys are grading out in the 20s. We've found that Synergy D stats can mislead about who's a good defender and who isn't, but when everyone who's not a point or a C is at about the same level they're probably all liabilities.

The UCLA bench:

• Mac Etienne and Kenneth Nwuba get scattered minutes as backup 5s. (UCLA lost their #2 big halfway through the season.) Neither has enough time on the court to say much about them but they're probably not real good.
• David Singleton is Just A Shooter hitting 47%. He's 6'4" so probably has some ability to defy contests.
• Jaylen Clark is a 6'5" slasher who's effective when he gets to the rim, which he does much of the time. He's also an OREB threat. Not a shooter—just 2/10 on the year from three.
• Jake Kyman is a Yet Another Generally Competent 6'6" Three-Level Guy.

THE TEMPO-FREE

Left defense, right offense:

Those factors add up to the #11 offense in the country and the #54 defense. B10 defenses in the same range include PSU and Minnesota.

UCLA is notably slow. They get just 8% of their shots in transition, per Synergy, and despite that extreme selectiveness they're averaging under 1 PPP. They're 25th percentile. They're also extremely slow on defense because they have a superb transition D that limits opportunities and clamps down on them heavily. (Also they don't force many turnovers.) Put another way: they're slightly slower than Wisconsin.

Drill-down stats of note:

• Like LSU, UCLA is very good at threes (34th) but doesn't take many (296th). This is because they're playing two non-shooters almost all the time.
• Over 20% of their half-court shots end up in the last five seconds of the clock, and their eFG there is 42%.
• UCLA's half court defense is 21st percentile on Synergy. Michigan's half-court offense is 97th percentile. This seems good if the game is going to be played entirely in the half-court. 

THE KEYS

image not relevant but still mandatory [Jack Dempsey/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

Uhhhh demolish their half-court defense? UCLA is a team that does everything it can to stay out of transition on both ends. This is generally a good idea on defense, but might have limited applicability against a Michigan team that barely loses any eFG% once the shot clock gets deeper. Michigan in the first ten seconds of the clock: 57.6%. After: 54.4%.

Michigan has displayed an ability to dissect all varieties of man defense that have been presented them except for Kofi drop coverage that one time; with UCLA struggling in the half-court and vulnerable to foul trouble in the post it seems like Michigan could be in for another clinic.

The importance of being Chaundee. Michigan can match UCLA's size by playing Brown at the two and may have to do that against a team that has a lot of guys who can pull up effectively. This wouldn't be too different from Michigan's two competitive tourney games, in which Brown played 22 and 27 minutes.

Brown's ability to D up the third 6'6" guy for long stretches could be a major asset.

Big Minutes Brandon Johns. Johns should be a post mismatch for whoever's on him. He'll have two inches—and probably another couple inches of vert—and at least twenty pounds on his man. Michigan played a lot of high-low against FSU and there's no reason to deviate from that unless something else is working well enough that it's not necessary.

Johns is also drawing bunches of fouls so having him get into the paint is another way Michigan could get Riley in potentially game-deciding foul trouble.

Don't get Rocket Watts'd. UCLA has a lot of opponent-invariant shotmaking on their team; this is the scariest thing about them. They're 7th nationally in launching midrange twos (MSU was 16th, which is why that game often felt like basketball from 20 years ago) and top 30 at making them at 42%. It'll probably take an anomalously good midrange performance for UCLA to win this game; unfortunately that is something they are capable of.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 5.