Sponsor Note. If you need some business lawyering, Richard Hoeg will do it for you. Create a business. Get a contract drawn up. Go over your options if there is a conflict.

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Odd time, but you might work from home. WBB takes on Ohio State in mere minutes on BTN in a duel of ranked teams. Refresh your knowledge with Ace's WBB weekly. Hockey starts at 6:30 on NBC Sports streaming. Check it out if you want to be further enraged about BTN+!

Great googly moogly. When track goes viral this is the way it goes viral:

MUST WATCH FROM OVER THE WEEKEND:

Down by four seconds heading into the 4x400 relay anchor leg, @UMichTrack's Ziyah Holman blasts a 51.79 split to bring the Wolverines all the way back for the win.#GoBlue 〽️ pic.twitter.com/hMYo5C76bH

— Michigan Athletics 〽️ (@UMichAthletics) January 18, 2021

That was Holman's first meet. She did not go viral for winning the 600-meter race by over four seconds. The Olympics are a strong possibility.

[After THE JUMP: one line one line one line]

Bracketology items. The state of various bracket projections:

• Joe Lunardi has both Michigan and Iowa on the 1-line. Other Big Ten teams: 3-seed Wisconsin, 4 OSU, 5 Illinois, 6 Minnesota, 8 Purdue, 10 Indiana, 11 MSU. This was last updated the 19th so it doesn't have Purdue's win over OSU.
• Jerry Palm also has Michigan on the one line, with Iowa on the 2 line.
• SB Nation's Chris Dobbertean has Michigan on the one line.

Michigan and Iowa on the one line is also the Bracket Matrix consensus. Bart Torvik's T-Ranketology, which projects final records, has Michigan on the one line as well; it deviates from the consensus by putting Houston up there as well. T-Ranketology is interesting because it's an algorithm that doesn't have things like "Duke and MSU should be good"* baked into its head like humans do. Therefore Duke—a first four out team to the Matrix—is the 14th team out and MSU—an 11 on BM—the 12th team out. Those are amongst the biggest deviances in the T-Rank bracket.

On the women's side, ESPN's Charlie Creme continues to slide Michigan upward. They've made the 3 line on his latest.

*[Or at least not much. They're getting some bump from their historical performance in T-Rank itself, though that is steadily dropping as more games come in.]

Indiana's issue. Eamonn Brennan in the Athletic about why Indiana can't get any traction in the Big Ten:

Indiana's second-half shot chart is pic.twitter.com/A7UJ3pReKU

— Eamonn Brennan (@eamonnbrennan) January 15, 2021

That was posted with like 30 seconds left in the game; Indiana took six 3s in the second half. It missed all of them. More pressingly, though, only one of those six 3s came before garbage time — a short-armed, totally confidence-free hoist by freshman wing Trey Galloway. That was it: 18-minutes plus of basketball, one 3-point attempt.

Before that lone shot went up four minutes into the second half, Galloway caught the ball on the right wing, a step or two behind the line, as totally wide-open as any player could ever ask to be. He didn’t even look at the rim. Instead, he held the ball for a moment, waited for Jackson-Davis to flash and then passed it to him; Jackson-Davis turned, got to his left hand, ran into three defenders and forced up a miss off the glass. By design or not, whether because of that cold first half or not, that possession defined the make-or-break portions of IU’s night. Not only did the Hoosiers refuse to take perimeter shots, but they also barely shot outside a couple of feet.

A team with Trayce Jackson-Davis should be able to manufacture good perimeter looks but the Hoosiers are 11th in the Big Ten at hitting 3s and 12th at getting them up.

Another world. Also from Brennan, his latest power rankings discuss what Nate Oats has done at Alabama:

pic.twitter.com/S43Z6g1GRx

— No Context College Basketball (@ContextFreeCBB) January 20, 2021

As much praise as Oats is getting lately, and rightfully so, it doesn’t take a basketball genius to diagnose what’s going on here. Oats’ preferred style of play was evident last season, though in his first year in Tuscaloosa, he was willing to compromise slightly to make it work. This season the pieces are in place, so Alabama is ramping things up to the extreme edges of analytic maximization. This is full-on Mike D’Antoni/James Harden Rockets style offense: playing fast, strictly outlawing midrange jumpers and making sure every shot happens at the rim or behind the 3-point line. Just 9.9 percent of Alabama’s attempts are classified as 2-point jumpers, per Hoop-Math.com, a number out on the far statistical extremes. It’s a shot Alabama simply does not take.

Oats is a Michigan native who probably would have been under consideration for the job if he hadn't already taken the 'Bama job when Beilein went to the Cavs. (Despite Oats's move there were rumors to the effect that he might still be interested.)

I've caught bits and pieces of Alabama games and kind of thought they were bad because they feel like a bad team: go super fast, try to stay out of half-court, and jack up a ton of threes. But they're 11th on Kenpom! They're treating the SEC approximately like Michigan is treating the Big Ten.

A fascinating guy. Longtime OC Tony Franklin had been at Middle Tennessee for a few years, but this season broke him:

“I USED TO FIGHT FOR WHATS RIGHT AND STAND UP,” he wrote March 19 in his personal notes, which he shared with The Washington Post, along with emails, text messages and other documentation of his efforts to raise concerns to superiors. “BUT THIS IS AN EASY JOB AND I JUST NEED A FEW MORE YEARS AT THIS INCOME.” …

“We are wrong bringing these kids back,” Franklin wrote. “I will personally tell each player on offense to only come back if this is a place they feel safer and that they need shelter.”

Massaro reminded Franklin that the school’s policies were changing by the day and encouraged him not to do anything rash. He also cautioned Franklin “to not be insubordinate” and that the athletic department “will not tolerate opposite messaging.”

Franklin's done coaching.

Brandon Johns attempts to hit the on-ramp again. Jared Greenspan in the Daily on Michigan's most mercurial player:

Each game, Johns’s breakout performances prompted the same question: Has he turned the corner? And each time, the ensuing games revealed that he had not.

In Tuesday’s win over Maryland, Johns again showcased his potential. He tallied a season-high 11 points and four rebounds across 13 minutes, shooting 4-of-6 from the field. Mental lapses — so often the defining characteristic of Johns’s play — were absent.

“Brandon’s thing early on was that he wasn’t locked in,” senior forward Isaiah Livers said. “His name was called, he just wasn’t ready. Now, he’s anticipating his name called and coming to get me as my first sub. You can see it in his eyes. I just love it. That’s the thing I’ve seen from his freshman year. He’s locked in and ready to go.”

Everyone's infected at MSU. A rather staggering number from Brendan Quinn:

To date, 12 players on Michigan State’s 15-man roster have tested positive at one point or another. Some were back in the preseason. Sophomore forward Malik Hall is known to have faced a bout back in August. There have been others along the way. Izzo tested positive in early November.

At least once the get up and going against they won't go back on pause? In the article Izzo asserts that they're going to have 14 games in a 32- or 33-day span, which means the Big Ten is hellbent on getting those games in. More one-day turnarounds are in the offing.

NFL draft items. Kwity Paye checks in 11th on PFF's board:

Paye has everything you could want physically to be an every-down problem in the NFL. While he never put it altogether at Michigan, he’s shown he can take to coaching and has made strides every single year.

Jalen Mayfield is 65th; Cam McGrone is 86th.

Etc.: How basketball is handling COVID. Empty ball screens explained. Hammer and Rails previews the Purdue-M game from the Boiler perspective.