Bball - First Game Impressions

Submitted by WolverineMan1988 on November 10th, 2021 at 9:02 PM

1. Buffalo is a very experienced team with some solid talent. We shouldn’t be surprised that it turned into a game for awhile.

2. Defense - While we are very athletic with certain lineups, this team is very much a work in progress on that end. The overall communication, footwork, and rotations need to improve a lot and I’m sure they will as time goes on. 

3. Offense - Jeenathan Williams was the best player on the floor tonight…until he wasn’t. Hunter Dickinson owned the last 8 minutes and was the main reason Michigan was able to put the game away. I’m very anxious/excited to see who emerges as the 2nd and 3rd scoring options. Could easily be a by committee approach but I think we’d like to see Houstan really emerge as time goes on.

4. Lineups - Juwan likes to experiment and I think we are going to see this happen for awhile early in the year because there are so many possibilities with this year’s team (this will make Craig Ross potentially unhappy for awhile as he prefers 6/7 man rotations lol). I think it’s very likely that the starting lineup from tonight is not quite the starting lineup later in the year. 

5. The ceiling is the roof. Go Blue!

What are some of your thoughts?


 

 

 

Beaublue

November 11th, 2021 at 5:06 PM ^

Free throw shooting seems to be a skill that is very difficult to improve.    History is full of great basketball players (usually big men) that can't make the percentage of free throws I could.   Wilt, Shaq, Andre.   And close to home Xavier.  

I am sure they all took thousands of practice free throws without significant improvement.  

Joined: 09/17/2013

MGoPoints: 4125

KTown81

November 11th, 2021 at 4:09 PM ^

Overall, very optimistic about what I saw. As someone who's watches roughly 80% of the basketball games every year, I tend to see things relative to how they were in addition to what I'm seeing actually happen. These are just my initial impressions (some of these fall under the WAY too early to draw serious conclusions on, just my gut watching)

1) Loved DeVante' defense and tenacity off the bat. Hated DeVante's free throw stroke. Not optimistic about DeVante's three-point stroke. Didn't pass the eye test of a Mike Smith upgrade or even an equal. Want to see more games to see if his jump shot comes around because that will be so important to keeping Ds honest. Again, really limited film.

2) Loved Diabate and Houstan. Hell of a first game for a couple of freshman. Not perfect, but man, the potential and flashes were outstanding.

3) Hunter is Hunter. I believe I read this already, but it does appear that he's better but perhaps he wasn't too far from his ceiling at his best last season. Doesn't matter -- he's awesome.

4) Eli will be huge this year. Would like to see him hunt his shot more, echoing what many have said.

5) Love love love that Coach Howard played everyone in the first half. He's gotta see who responds, who plays well with one another, etc. Really good awareness of what he wanted to get out of this game.

6) Finally, Terrence saved the game. I kept on telling my wife, somebody's gotta step up, somebody needs to make some plays. He did. That three was unbelievable, not to mention his D and rebounding.

Looking forward to the guys getting on the court with even higher competition!

 

 

Joined: 02/03/2021

MGoPoints: 107