2/19/2020 – Michigan 60, Rutgers 52 – 17-9, 8-7 Big Ten

It was weird seeing Jalen Rose directly behind the Michigan bench last night. It was weirder when Eli Brooks hit a cold-blooded three after getting stuck with a late clock possession against a 6'7" guy. The camera cut to the bench, where Zavier Simpson and Rose were doing the same thing:

This is a synthesis of two different Michigan pasts, its present, and its future.

One of the two pasts is offscreen: it's Brooks canning the three. Brooks is the most Beilein kid on Michigan's current roster. He's utterly devoid of swag. He remembers things after you tell him. He plays relentless positional defense in the manner of a guy determined to overcome limitations. He shoots from distance; the rim is a rumor unless the opposition has gotten beaten by one of Michigan's sets.

He feels like a mid-major player who got bumped up by circumstance. Eli Brooks is Zack Novak and Stu Douglass and the progression of guys who are just making it work against all athletic odds. Maybe not the most common Beilein archetype, but the most Beilein archetype.

The other past is obvious, with apologies to Chris Hunter: Jalen freakin' Rose. Fab Five guy. Decade-long NBA career. Now paid to be interesting in public. The Fab Five was larger than life and Rose was always the guy with the mic. Your author had some problems with Rose in the Beilein era because he didn't seem to care about the program at all until it made the Final Four, and then that was just an opportunity to talk about how rad the Fab Five was.

To be clear, Rose has every reason to be bitter about how Michigan treated him and his classmates for close to 20 years. that bitterness could only increase as the idea that paying basketball players was immoral was repudiated by ever more important components of the college basketball ecosystem. First bloggers, then sportswriters, then coaches, and finally the NCAA itself. For Michigan's banners to stay down while Will Wade and Bill Self keep their jobs after being definitively proven as violators by the FBI (the FBI!)… well, if that was me I'd probably be pretty distant too.

But he's back, and he's hanging on Eli Brooks. Hanging.

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The present is Zavier Simpson, who's only on the bench in the shot above because he's got four fouls and Michigan's buying him a couple minutes. Aside from this brief period he barely comes off the floor, leads Michigan in scoring, and is robbed of a double-digit assist game by Michigan's erratic three-point shooting.

Simpson is the exact opposite of a Beilein archetype, brought in as a no-shoot all-D point guard. He's beaten himself into a progressively better player over the course of four years. He's not a Beilein creation or a Juwan Howard creation. He is always becoming himself with no outside intervention except from maybe dad. He scores his 1,000th point in this game on a hook shot he and only he uses.

It didn't matter whether Beilein stayed or not. There was never going to be another Zavier Simpson. Juwan Howard won't recruit anyone like him; John Beilein wouldn't have. That's because there are no other players like Zavier Simpson. He is sui generis.

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To get to the future you gotta put it all together. Brooks is 0/5 in this game at the suddenly impregnable RAC. This space repeatedly wondered whether he had a mental block against high level teams, and thought David DeJulius should start eating to his minutes. Juwan Howard didn't, and Juwan Howard was right, and Eli Brooks just hit the iciest shot of his career.

Jalen Rose is there, a couple games after Dikembe Mutombo and Worldwide Wes were at Welsh-Ryan, of all places. Juwan Howard knows everyone and everyone likes him. Michigan's tendency towards factionalism could easily rise up in the aftermath of losing the best coach in program history, but it won't because everyone wants Juwan Howard to succeed from Lebron James on down.

Zavier Simpson is there. Juwan Howard has gotten out of Simpson's way and let him have his team.

It's really hard to get everyone pulling in one direction. Everyone reading this knows that in their bones. In Juwan Howard it seems like Michigan's found a guy who can pull up the guys who need it, leave the guys who don't alone, and gather everyone to him, past, present, and future.

[After THE JUMP: the new disaster artist]

[Wilcomes]

Simpson 1,000. Simpson's 1,000th point came on a late-clock hook shot, as fate ordained it must:

This @Xaviersimpson3 hook shot is insane.

His 1,000th career point is worth style points. @umichbball x #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/QKL32xBuIy

— Michigan On BTN (@MichiganOnBTN) February 20, 2020

The other candidate was hitting a three after the opposition let him take a warmup jumper, but Steve Pikiell is a better coach than Tom Izzo so he stopped doing that after Simpson hit his first couple.

[Wilcomes]

The Castleton rescue. After five minutes of Adrien Nunez doing the usual in the first half, Michigan finally tried someone-anyone else when Johns picked up a quick third a minute into the second. The imperfect solution was to play Castleton at the 4; this worked out far better than the alternative would have.

Castleton wasn't particularly involved in his first couple minutes on the floor as Michigan played zone and he looked a little lost—Simpson had to wave him through on his first offensive possession. Then he took a perimeter pass from Simpson and dove to the basket with one dribble for an and-one. Hello.

Then: Michigan switched back to man to man and Rutgers took it at him a few times, first getting that off-balance cumong-man shot from Mulcahey that Castleton did everything right on.  He got switched on Miles Johnson as Teske moved out to cover a guy at the free throw line in zone; he was able to hold his ground enough to force a looping pass that allowed Teske to recover for a block. After Davis came in Castleton had a block on Young and altered another of his shots into a miss. Yeboah drove him and then fell over after Castleton stuck with him. Somewhere in there Castleton got an OREB over Jacob Young on a switch, got fouled on the putback, and converted both ends of a one and one.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Michigan doesn't win this game if Castleton doesn't play those ten minutes. Michigan was down five when he came on and up four when he left; they were –5 in five minutes with Nunez on the floor in the first half. If Michigan needs a fourth guy at the 3/4 at some point in the future it's got to be him.

 

The new Isaiah Washington. We lost the Big Ten's most beautiful disaster this offseason when Minnesota guard/sabotage artist Isaiah Washington transferred to Iona*. Well, folks, there is another. You may remember a moment where the referee had to give Jacob Young and Zavier Simpson a talking-to for excessive jawing. You do not remember Jacob Young making a half-court bucket because he didn't.

Young had another perimeter pick-six (after three in MSG) and finished off the fast break after DDJ got blocked into the Earth's center. He was 0/8 from the floor otherwise and missed both his free throws. This is par for the course for Young, who has a magical statistical combination:

• he's playing almost 20 minutes a game
• he's Rutgers' highest usage player by a mile (27%; nobody else is > 20%)
• he has the worst ORTG on the team(80) by 11 points(!!!)

This dude is shooting 44/21 with a TO rate of 25. Ace punched some numbers into Torvik and Young has the worst ORTG for a 25%+ usage upperclassman in the TRank era, which goes back to 2008. And he runs his mouth! I love him.

Good news for fans of the Beastie Boys dressed up like 1970s cops: the Big Ten gets another go-round. Young is a junior.

*[Washington was granted immediate eligibility, presumably on grounds that he is too entertaining to put on the bench. He's shooting 43/36 as Iona's third banana and has an ORTG over 100. All things end, jelly fam.]

this is good, keep doing this [Wilcomes]

David, we have to talk. This is the second game David DeJulius has slapped the floor. IIRC this time it resulted in Rutgers free throws. Someone show him the Maryland-MSU game and tell him to let East Lansing have that.

Nice recovery, though. No one would have been surprised if DeJulius had simply faded into the court after this:

One of the more inconsiderate things I’ve ever seen on a basketball court pic.twitter.com/IWaoEq0A11

— Farmer Jones (@thefarmerjones) February 20, 2020

I don't think I've seen a stepback obliterated like that before. But DDJ managed to recover for 10 points on 10 shot equivalents in a game where 1 PPP was a winning number; he did join the "picked by Jacob Young" club on an early pick-six.

Teske back? Myles Johnson isn't exactly Luka Garza but he is shooting 53% from the floor on decent usage in Big Ten play. Teske shut him off. Johnson was 0/3 and all three of his shots might have been blocked by Teske. Indiana's Trayce Jackson-Davis had as many points (4) in the first three minutes of the Indiana-Minnesota game as he had against Michigan, when he was 2/3 from the floor. IIRC not much of De'ron Davis's game came against Teske.

Tillman did okay personally from two (6/10) but MSU collectively shot 38% from two; OSU shot 44% and Wesson's twos were mostly putbacks or fadeaway jumpers.

Teske's been very rough offensively for the last month but as Michigan's defense surges he seems to be a major part of that. A return game against Trevion Williams up next will be a good measuring stick.

[Wilcomes]

Shot deficit overcome: the story of beating Rutgers. Michigan did a much better job on the offensive boards despite giving up 14. This was 32% of Rutgers misses, about on their baseline this year. And given the nature of Rutgers shots they're always going to have an OREB advantage because their eventual destinations are far less predictable. When you fling a three off the side of the backboard the resulting rebound is a 50/50 proposition.

The larger problem was getting just four offensive rebounds in 27 opportunities. Brandon Johns foul trouble had a lot to do with that. Castleton contributed one in his 10 minutes; Franz got two; Austin Davis got one.

Let's punch some outcomes into Torvik. Bart Torvik Dot Com has a "teamcast" page where you can punch future results into Torvik's projections and see where your team lands in different scenarios. Michigan is currently projected as a 5-seed in the median outcome. Let's explore ranges:

• Worst Case Scenario (lose out, first round tourney loss to OSU): 9-seed, but Torvik does assert there's an 18% chance Michigan would miss the tourney.
• Reasonable Worst Case Scenario (as above except Michigan wins at home against Nebraska): 7-seed, 98% chance of selection.

This should be enough to move Michigan into "lock" range in bracketology posts. Alert your local Eamonn Brennans and John Gasaways.

• Average-ish (win both home games and @ Purdue, 1-1 in tourney, W vs OSU, L vs Maryland): 4 seed(!)
• Pretty good: (only regular season loss @ Maryland, 2-1 in tourney with extra game a L against Wisconsin): 2-seed(!!!)
• Win all the games: uh also a two seed in the same spot.

These seem optimistic to me but in these latter scenarios Michigan is somewhere between 13-8 and and 11-9 in Q1 games with a fair few 1A wins.

The NET problem. I don't get what NET's deal is about Michigan and a few other Big Ten teams. Some blind resumes:

Record	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Avg NET W	Avg NET L	WAB	Kenpom SOS
17-9	6-8	4-1	2-0	5-0	122	25	21	3
20-6	7-4	5-2	3-0	5-0	124	42	11	25
17-9	5-8	5-1	2-0	5-0	121	31	25	11

Not a whole lot to choose from between the 17-9 teams. The 20-6 team had a bit of an easier scheduled but WAB accounts for that when it places them 11th; they have the most Q1 wins despite fewer opportunities. Seems like it should be

• 20-6
• some gap
• 17-9 A (SOS #3)
• 17-9 B (SOS #11)

Instead it's:

• #15 Michigan State (17-9B)
• gap
• #24 Michigan (17-9A)
• #25 Penn State (20-6)

What's the problem? Probably the NCAA still using garbage strength of schedule measures that have MSU in the 40s, Michigan in the 50s, and Penn State in the 130s.