12/12/2020 – Michigan 62, Penn State 58 – 6-0, 1-0 Big Ten

Stanley Kubrick made a lot of movies featuring deranged men pushed to their breaking points, and he had a particular way to demonstrate that these men were no longer bound by the strictures of your normie morality, man. It's not hard. TV Tropes:

The Kubrick Stare is really quite simple to pull off. You simply do the following:

1. Tilt head down
2. Look up beneath eyebrows

...and voila! Instant super-creepy look!

Nothing so easily executable should be so consistently effective, and yet.

The Shining

Full Metal Jacket

Go do it in the mirror. It is the easiest piece of acting yet invented. The stare is so effective that the TV Tropes live-action film section on Kubrick Stares goes 40 deep and is no doubt incomplete. It communicates what it needs to communicate, every time.

When the Kubrick Stare happens, something is about to go down. There may be literal, if ghostly, rivers of blood, or someone might get shot or go to a weird masked sex club. But there is going to be a metal band named after whatever happens. Masked Sex Club is opening for Rivers Of Blood this weekend at the Nowhere Pub in This Analogy Works Better Without A Pandemic, NV.

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Here's a thing I like about Hunter Dickinson other than the fact he's hitting 73% of his twos. When he hits one of his twos, he runs back to get on defense looking like this.

Face down, eyes up, brows furrowed: hell yes. As long as Hunter Dickinson does not move into a haunted hotel or enroll in the military or marry Nicole Kidman or become the Joker, he's good, and Michigan is good for the duration of his tenure here.

Jon Teske did not do this. Jon Teske occasionally dunked on giant human beings and was very red afterwards. He did not seem more angry after scoring, ever. After Teske hit a three he'd take out an imaginary bow-and-arrow and shoot it; I always envisioned him as a 7-foot Cupid distributing the joy of making a three. His suction-cup-tipped arrow would ploink a small child in row eight and it would be really nice. If I was going to make a list of college basketball players who might also be serial killers, Teske would be last. Hunter Dickinson would be… not last. (#1: Brad Davison.)

This site has long-established Teske stan credentials but we also clung hard to Teske's "Big Sleep" nickname for various reasons. One was that it was appropriate. Teske was a center playing in a John Beilein offense, so he would do a lot of screening and occasionally pop up on the end of a pick and roll/pop. At no point did anyone think "we need Teske out there to make the offense function," for many reasons.

Juwan Howard inherited a Beilein team and—aside from a game-opening post-up designed to activate Teske like he was Totoro—operated it like one. Michigan's four factors last year are virtually indistinguishable from the paradigm Beilein set up:

one of these is Beilein, one Howard

It's still early days for Howard, who's just one recruiting class in, but we can already see the shift away from Michigan's blood-red back half of the four factors. Michigan's added six points to their OREB number and five to their FTA/FGA number in year two. Those climbs might be blunted by Big Ten play, but the mere fact Michigan is sending two or three big guys to the offensive boards should produce a bonafide greenish hue there by year's end.

Michigan's team history on Kenpom is quite a ride; for the purposes of this post it's enough to note that Michigan's offensive rebounding under Beilein was above-average in his first year and in 2013, when he had Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III. Literally every other OREB/FT rate square is somewhere between pink and the deep evil red of a ranking in the 300s. Amaker turnover red.

This is not a complaint about how John Beilein did offense because your author is not insane. I'm talking about it because it's taken six games of Hunter Dickinson to completely reshape expectations for what Michigan can do, and what they should do. Post offense is inefficient? Not so far. Immobile mountain persons are unsuited for modern basketball? We'll check back after Wisconsin. Transition defense above all? Not when you've got some guys who can jump really high or occupy two persons worth of space on a daily basis. Michigan is using posts to create shots, not merely absorb them.

I admit that I was a bit worried that Howard's ability to coach up bigs, and clear desire to use them as a focal point, may have locked Michigan into a brand of basketball that felt wooden. It wasn't a major concern, just a thing in the back of your mind as you consider the contours of basketball in 2020. Right about now it feels like a thing that the opposition doesn't have a lot of good tools to combat anymore. When the 7'1" guy looks at you like Private Pyle, you might be in a spot of trouble.

[After THE JUMP: who likes some midrange defense]

BULLETS

[Campredon]

A hand for Eli Brooks. Brooks forced Sam Sessoms into a ridiculously tough shot at the end of regulation. Sessoms came in off three straight solid performances against high majors or close enough(VCU) and got largely stuffed in a locker here with 10 points on 16 shot attempts. I don't think more than one of his buckets was on Brooks—one was Sessoms snaking by Dickinson in a pick and roll—and when Michigan went no-threes on the final possession they knew the likely iso guy was going to be Sessoms.

A more Yak-like performance. Ace and I had a small debate on the podcast about Michigan's ability to defend the three-point line in this game. He is correct that there were some issues with Michigan players getting lost that led to open looks. Overall, though, I felt this was a much-improved outing relative to Toledo. Let's break it out:

• PSU entered the game taking 45% of their shots from behind the line.
• They had 19 threes and 46 twos—just 29% of their shots were from behind the line.
• Two of those were from Trent Buttrick, a career 25% shooter who should have the green light from Michigan's perspective. If you disregard those it's 27%.

The shots PSU got may have been uncomfortably high quality at times—I particularly remember a three attempt from Dread in the second half that felt like a huge let-off when it missed—but their sheer quantity was well below their season average.

In fact I think Michigan's dedication to running guys off the line, or at least annoying them, may have been part of their struggle on the defensive boards. More than once guys like Johns and Dickinson spent themselves on what felt like low-impact contests from a long way away, giving PSU players a better opportunity to grab the ball.

Speaking of Yak-like. Penn State got up 14 shots at the rim. They had a whopping 32 mid-range attempts, which they hit five of. Michigan's distribution: 15 at the rim, 16 midrange, and four of those midrange shots were the kind of "midrange" where Hunter Dickinson is shooting a hook from just outside the restricted circle. He went 4/4 there.

Data from Torvik's extremely useful shooting splits page:

• Michigan is 10th at preventing shots from getting to the rim and 11th at forcing midrange twos.
• Since "midrange" encompasses a ton of shots from off-the-dribble 17-footers to post hooks it should be noted that Michigan is allowing opponents to hit just 22% of midrange shots, 9th nationally.
• This combination is unmatched nationally and just two high-majors (Ole Miss and Creighton) are even in the ballpark.

Michigan remains dedicated to pushing opponent shots into the midrange and should continue reaping the benefits of drop coverage whenever they come up against centers who can't shoot.

Given this context it's weird that the defense has felt bad for big chunks of the season, right? I keep checking out post-game box scores after games expecting some alarming numbers and then the opposition is hitting under 40% from two.

Get up in them late and live with the consequences. Two of those threes were late-clock jacks, one when Wagner got matched on Sessoms late, one when Brooks got matched on Jones. Both times Michigan defenders played it too passively. The jacked-up three is the default move for a lot of guys late in the clock and Penn State was absolutely miserable inside the line. Get up on them.

not a hook but still reminiscent of Simpson [Campredon]

It was not a hook. Eli Brooks's arcing runner did remind you of Zavier Simpson but it was not a full-on hook. We are zealots about defending the honor of the point guard skyhook. We award that shot 0.3 hook points.

Three two absurd calls. 1) Franz Wagner not getting a shooting foul after getting bumped while in his shooting motion, 2) the worst charge call of the  year on what should have been a Mike Smith and-one, and 3) Hunter Dickinson not getting called for goaltending on a ball that had gone off the backboard. Except… not so fast on that last one. The NCAA manual:

Violations- Goaltending. (Rule 9-17.5). When the ball contacts the backboard and any part of the ball is above the rim on a field goal attempt, it is considered to be on its downward flight. In such case, it is goaltending when the ball is touched by a player as long as it has a possibility of entering the basket.

This changed for the 2014-15 season and I had never seen it come up in a game but since the shot from Sessoms went off the very bottom of the backboard it appears Dickinson's block was legal. Why they have this weird carve-out I don't know. Seems to me if you can get good at layups that hit the absolute nether regions of the backboard you've earned your buckets.

[Campredon]

Johns oscillates wildly. Brandon Johns had a rough game to the point where Michigan inserted Terrance Williams late when they wanted to switch everything, but even in there he had a number of defensive possessions where he was excellent against pick and roll and able to contest without fouling. If he can just get his feet under him and not, you know, commit four turnovers in 14 minutes Michigan might have something there.

This situation feels a lot like early Eli Brooks. This Brooks is unrecognizable compared to the sophomore and even junior version. That version went through long stretches where he felt almost unplayable because the ball would get to his hands and possessions would die there due to his uncertainty and lack of confidence. This version of Brooks is attacking the basket when appropriate and has a hair trigger from three when he gets a look.

So it does happen. Johns himself had a stretch in the middle of conference play last year that felt like a breakout, and then he turned back into a very athletic pumpkin.

[Campredon]

Take a timeout maybe? One effect of having Johns off the court is that Terrance Williams, who was 4/9 from the free throw line prior to this game, ended up with the outlet pass after PSU's first attempt to tie the game. He missed both and Sessoms got a second bite at the apple. I'm not surprised that "what if Terrance Williams has the ball at midcourt up two with the shot clock off?" is not an end-of-game scenario Michigan has down pat just yet, but if that happens again a timeout near half-court would be a solid option.

In non-Williams free throw news, Michigan goes 17/18. That is a decisive factor in a game that was separate by two points down the stretch. Michigan's hitting 77% from the line this year, and other than Williams and Davis there's nobody who isn't at least very good.

Penn State might have a guy for down the road. Abdou Tsimbila came off the bench after Hunter Dickinson scored three buckets in quick succession late in the first half and was the proverbial bull in a china shop. He blocked Isaiah Livers, and then landed on him for a foul. He dunked once and scored the rare no-look layup; he got a couple offensive rebounds; he impressively rejected a Hunter Dickinson dunk. He also picked up three fouls in six minutes, and it should have been four since he was the guy on the other end of the ridiculous Smith block/charge.

So he's got a long way to go. But if I was PSU I'd let him foul out every game. It'll make you somewhat better and also make for an entertaining subplot.

We have to talk about recruiting rankings. Football has a bit of a rankings issue: 247 explicitly pitches their ranking to the NFL draft because that is the primary metric they are judged on. This can affect rankings of vipers and slot receivers and running quarterbacks. It's an issue.

That issue seems much bigger in college basketball in the immediate aftermath of Hunter Dickinson's emergence. Dickinson was the #42 player in his class. That might be fair if recruiting rankings are really early NBA draft rankings. For college performance it's ridiculous. You may remember Greg Brown, the five star Michigan took a swing at who decided to go to Texas. Brown's currently shooting 52/21 and has an 87 ORTG in 20 MPG for Texas. Keon Johnson and Jalen Springer, two five-stars who went to Tennessee, are coming off the UT bench so far. Duke's freshmen are all sub-100 ORTG guys four games in.

Some are going to blow up and all have higher NBA ceilings than Dickinson, but because of that they'll all be gone next year. Recruiting rankings are increasing subject to a pro adjustment. Michigan would be infinitely worse off if they'd lost Dickinson and held on to five-star Isaiah Todd.

Michigan's 2021 recruiting class is exciting because it has a probable one-and-done in Moussa Diabate but also has a five-star who gets "not that athletic buuuut" takes in Caleb Houston and also has two guys in the sweet spot around #50 that has a lot of very good long-term college players. That combination is Villanova-esque.