Yeah this one really sucks. Not sure what these players know that we don't, but it would seem Taylor Williams and Taylor Woodson were both in line for increased roles even with the incoming freshmen. Sad to see her go.
Michigan finished 20-13, 9-9 B1G, 47 in NET rankings
Michigan has two wins against ranked teams: home against then #17 Ohio State in December and over #12 Indiana in the Big Ten quarterfinals without Mackenzie Holmes. They are 2-5 against ranked teams this season and lost in the Big Ten semis to Iowa. Michigan also beat fellow B1G bubble teams Penn State and Maryland.
Junior guard Laila Phelia is leading the way with 16.8 points per game and really elevated her play in the B1G tournament. She was the only player to make the all-tournament team who did not play in the final. Three players are shooting about 35% from deep: junior guard Jordan Hobbs (39.1%), senior guard Lauren Hansen (37.5%), and senior guard Elissa Brett (35.8%). Sophomore forward Chyra Evans is currently starting in the post, I believe because of her ability to distribute, but has some work to do on her finishing ability. She doesn’t quite have the size to back down a defender, but is quick and smart about slipping to the hoop. Senior forward Cam Williams is the first off the bench and definitely uses her size against less experienced bigs, but has less proficiency distributing.
Wait what? I'm confused. This post is about Michigan Women's Basketball. Is there a different sport you're asking about? Unfortunately men's basketball won't be making the tournament unless they miraculously win the Big Ten Tournament this week, which is...not happening. And I don't know enough to do other sports lol
On the 6 line, it seems like Baylor and Louisville are cooling off at the end of the season, which might be the best we can hope for there.
Of the 7s, I think Creighton would be a decent matchup, as they haven't played much high level competition. Definitely we want to avoid a white hot Tennessee team.
Between Iowa State and Florida State, I think we've had less success against bigs, so I would probably pick Florida State to avoid Crooks and Brown. They are freshman and Cam Williams has had success against inexperienced post players, but Crooks and Brown seem pretty experienced at this point in the season.
Kansas might be the best 9 for us to play as a middling Big 12 team instead of UNLV and Princeton who are at the top of their conferences. UNLV and Princeton's success might become an illusion against better competition, but I'm not sure I want this Michigan team to be the ones to test that.
I would agree there's a reason she's not playing, and I think she definitely has weaknesses with her defensive quickness and ability to create on offense. I'm pointing out the three point shooting more as something that is hopefully not illusionary and that KBA can leverage to keep her here and give her more minutes next year vs something another team could use to lure her away by telling her they'll let her shoot a bunch. I really hope she stays and takes another step up next year. Her experience in the program would be invaluable with the freshmen coming in who will probably get significant minutes.
The charges were awesome and definitely a continuing theme under KBA. Brett doesn't always light up the scoreboard, but she's always active on defense both taking charges and trying to hassle ballhandlers.
I am definitely worried about Kampschroeder transferring for playing time as well as Crockett. Kampschroeder (38%) and Crockett (38.1%) are actually leading the team in three point percentage, but have only gotten 50 and 21 attempts respectively. Hobbs is the next best three point shooter this season, shooting 37.7% on 106 attempts. I hope that KBA can sell both on an increased role next season and keep them around, but who knows how minutes will shake out with Olson and Swords coming in and Taylor Woodson already seeing minutes during the competitive portions of the game.
Maybe. Most projections have us still in the bubble. A loss tonight would mean we might need some help from other teams in the bubble to get in, while a win would secure our spot for sure.
Michigan's games in the Big Ten Tournament will be on Big Ten Network unless they make it to the championship, which will be broadcast on CBS. The first two games on Wednesday are on Peacock for some reason. The rest are on BTN until the championship.
I feel like this is definitely a team with room to grow, but the question is whether that growth will happen this year, next year, or not at all. We're starting two juniors and a sophomore who were both with the team last year as well as two grad transfers who are new to the team. So there's room to grow individually and as a team and hopefully KBA can get them to put it together sooner rather than later.
Yeah, this one really hurt, especially because they were in it the whole way and I really wanted to see them get both of the wins against Nebraska and Rutgers before the very likely loss to Caitlin Clark and friends. The Michigan State game will be a big one at home.
I also don't know what to make of Alyssa Crockett's minutes and hope she stays, especially since she was good friends with Kate Clarke from last year, who is now gone. Crockett got minutes at the beginning of the season, but now seems stuck in the "only if we are desperate" category coming off the bench and I would love to see her get more time. Hopefully KBA has talked with her about her role this year vs next year, but we also have Olson and Swords coming in who will compete for those minutes.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I'm thinking I'll add a short summary statement to the title, but not the full score, just because that sounds more fun to me to write. Like for Rutgers it would have been something like "An ugly road win".
I understand the desire to want to not be spoiled that I Bleed expressed, but considering the norms of this blog, I don't think there's an expectation to not be spoiled on the outcome of a game within the title. I set myself an expectation to post these the morning after the game instead of the day of for my own sanity, so if readers want to not be spoiled, know that these posts will generally be up in that timeframe.
I'll consider it. I kind of like that people have to click on the post to see the score, but I have moved the score to its own line and bolded it to make it obvious after receiving feedback on my first few. Do you feel like the score in the title would make more people click through? Or just make my admittedly generic titles more interesting?
This was definitely the shortest bench of the season. I'm not exactly sure why, but it probably had to do with preparedness to pass out of the press. Maybe also rest, as the team hasn't had to play in 8 days. KBA tends to shorten the bench as we get into January and February, so we'll see if this is just for this game or for the rest of the season.
This is definitely a bit of a rebuild year before next year's recruiting class arrives. Phelia will also still be around along with quite a few young players from this team. They should definitely make the tournament this year, but it's looking like a top 4 seed is out of reach unless they really start putting things together against top competition. Ohio State on December 30 will be the game to watch and see if the team wins or is even able to compete with a legit squad.
Will do. I'll include that in the next game notes. As of today they are 9-2 and 1-0 in the B1G. They play Florida next on Wednesday 12/20 at 6:30pm at the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, NC. They also play Florida A&M at home next Friday. These are separate games.
As far as the whole season, they definitely look like a tournament team, so the question is seeding. The important seed line for women is 4 or above, since that lets you host the first two rounds at home and have a much better chance at getting out of the first weekend. We'll need to see them get ranked soon and start moving up in order to have a decent shot at that.
I agree about Cam. The quick substitutions are rough. I think her last missing piece is really the footwork in the post and she'll be lethal. She seems to have figured out her fouling issues from last year, so hopefully we'll see that last piece drop into place soon.
I would agree with Henne here that this will be a tournament team and the Sweet 16 would be a big accomplishment this year. Another thing to keep track of is whether they can get into the 4 seed range so they can host at Crisler. Definitely a possibility, but will require this team to work well together with their transfers.
In terms of comparisons to the men's team, I might think of KBA more relative to Beilein than Howard with her emphasis on developing lower-rated recruits. She has definitely gotten more highly rated recruits as evidenced by Naz's class and next year's class, but this is an in-between year. Perhaps comparable to one of Beilein's years between the title runs. The potential is there, we should make the tournament, but not contending for the title.
Point taken, I'll make that more clear next time. I will say that this was definitely a game where a more skilled team than MTSU could have taken advantage of plenty of Michigan mistakes.
Oakland didn't really try to press, but both the exhibition and opener opponents did. Michigan looked like they could handle it sometimes, so they've definitely been practicing it, but we'll see if that translates to the higher level of competition against OSU's press. Jury is still out in my book.
I really have no idea about Evans or what held her out of the exhibition and opener. I keep hoping real injury reports will materialize at some point, but I have yet to find them.
Thanks for pointing out Sollom. I hadn't noticed what you or matty said and will need to pay more attention to her.
Also thanks for the correction on the 1-2-2 zone. I did some basic googling that I should have done before and will move to that label now.
I feel like our best lineup right now is Phelia, Hobbs, Hansen, C. Williams, and T. Williams. But I also agree that Brett and Evans will shake that up, so I'm looking forward to their return. Macy Brown has also seemed more competent off the dribble than Hansen, but has not produced points like Hansen has. Hopefully Macy can grow over the season so she's ready to take over the spot next year.
I would say at this point making the tournament is the program baseline and the next step up is consistently getting a top-4 seed in order to host the first two rounds at Crisler. This team should make the tournament, but will need some luck to be a top-4 seed. With Laila back, steps up from other returnees, and some potentially great incoming players, we should be able to consistently get in the tournament and hopefully take steps up from there.
That's fair. There were definitely a few slip ups that led to very open baskets for SVSU. I guess my thoughts are more that this was a good starting point, given the time needed to make a defense gel. I expect the defense to get better from here, hopefully with added depth from Evans and Brett.
I really don't think we'll know until the season gets going. For sure, it will be different after losing both Leigha Brown and Maddie Nolan. Hopefully Phelia and Cam Williams take big steps forward as well as some freshman-sophomore jumps and production from the transfers. If I had to guess, I think this team will be competing to host the first weekend of the tournament like last year's team and hopefully we'll end up with some good injury luck this year. Next year (assuming Phelia sticks around and Olson/Swords arrive) will really be the year with a lot of consistency that could be another elite 8 or better year.
On the basketball side of things, I'm not sure. She started all last year, so I would presume she would have started all this year. The only thing I can think of is that a lot of the players she came in with and played with over the last few years have graduated or transferred, so she may have wanted to move on from that perspective. But the academic angle is a good bet.
The only thing I know is that I think she attended the Europe trip, but did not play because of an injury. This is based on the pictures UM posted where Eidle's ark was in a sling and that they said there was one player who didn't play. Hopefully she's ok.
Neither was a top 5 scorer in any of the three games, but Jordan Hobbs did get a shout out after the 3rd game with a stat line of "5 pts, 6 asts, 6 rebs and a charge drawn". I would love to see both take a step forward this year too, we'll see.
My take would be that this had to do with how each team finished their seasons. UNLV won their conference tournament, while Michigan was ranked as high as 12 and then lost 4 of 6 to finish the season. But some of that was because Phelua was injured for a while and Brown missed 2 games. We haven't really put it all together this season against a top 10 opponent, but hopefully tomorrow is the day.
The last line of your preface is "This is the story of how Michigan fixed itself." What should we be looking for during this season and beyond to show that Michigan is indeed "fixed"?
Why does Hagerup feature so prominently in the book? Was it just availability or do you think his specific story is key to understanding the period of time covered by your book?
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No it is not, especially seeing our best player (Phelia) and another starter (Evans) hitting the portal. Hopefully Michigan can reel them back in.
Yeah this one really sucks. Not sure what these players know that we don't, but it would seem Taylor Williams and Taylor Woodson were both in line for increased roles even with the incoming freshmen. Sad to see her go.
Michigan finished 20-13, 9-9 B1G, 47 in NET rankings
Oh lol, I had a brain fart. Give me a minute. I'm at work, but I'll throw that together soon.
Wait what? I'm confused. This post is about Michigan Women's Basketball. Is there a different sport you're asking about? Unfortunately men's basketball won't be making the tournament unless they miraculously win the Big Ten Tournament this week, which is...not happening. And I don't know enough to do other sports lol
On the 6 line, it seems like Baylor and Louisville are cooling off at the end of the season, which might be the best we can hope for there.
Of the 7s, I think Creighton would be a decent matchup, as they haven't played much high level competition. Definitely we want to avoid a white hot Tennessee team.
Between Iowa State and Florida State, I think we've had less success against bigs, so I would probably pick Florida State to avoid Crooks and Brown. They are freshman and Cam Williams has had success against inexperienced post players, but Crooks and Brown seem pretty experienced at this point in the season.
Kansas might be the best 9 for us to play as a middling Big 12 team instead of UNLV and Princeton who are at the top of their conferences. UNLV and Princeton's success might become an illusion against better competition, but I'm not sure I want this Michigan team to be the ones to test that.
I would agree there's a reason she's not playing, and I think she definitely has weaknesses with her defensive quickness and ability to create on offense. I'm pointing out the three point shooting more as something that is hopefully not illusionary and that KBA can leverage to keep her here and give her more minutes next year vs something another team could use to lure her away by telling her they'll let her shoot a bunch. I really hope she stays and takes another step up next year. Her experience in the program would be invaluable with the freshmen coming in who will probably get significant minutes.
The charges were awesome and definitely a continuing theme under KBA. Brett doesn't always light up the scoreboard, but she's always active on defense both taking charges and trying to hassle ballhandlers.
I am definitely worried about Kampschroeder transferring for playing time as well as Crockett. Kampschroeder (38%) and Crockett (38.1%) are actually leading the team in three point percentage, but have only gotten 50 and 21 attempts respectively. Hobbs is the next best three point shooter this season, shooting 37.7% on 106 attempts. I hope that KBA can sell both on an increased role next season and keep them around, but who knows how minutes will shake out with Olson and Swords coming in and Taylor Woodson already seeing minutes during the competitive portions of the game.
Maybe. Most projections have us still in the bubble. A loss tonight would mean we might need some help from other teams in the bubble to get in, while a win would secure our spot for sure.
Michigan's games in the Big Ten Tournament will be on Big Ten Network unless they make it to the championship, which will be broadcast on CBS. The first two games on Wednesday are on Peacock for some reason. The rest are on BTN until the championship.
I've been happy to do it, it's been a lot of fun. We'll see what I'm up for next season. Thanks for your contributions in the comments.
I feel like this is definitely a team with room to grow, but the question is whether that growth will happen this year, next year, or not at all. We're starting two juniors and a sophomore who were both with the team last year as well as two grad transfers who are new to the team. So there's room to grow individually and as a team and hopefully KBA can get them to put it together sooner rather than later.
Yeah, this one really hurt, especially because they were in it the whole way and I really wanted to see them get both of the wins against Nebraska and Rutgers before the very likely loss to Caitlin Clark and friends. The Michigan State game will be a big one at home.
I also don't know what to make of Alyssa Crockett's minutes and hope she stays, especially since she was good friends with Kate Clarke from last year, who is now gone. Crockett got minutes at the beginning of the season, but now seems stuck in the "only if we are desperate" category coming off the bench and I would love to see her get more time. Hopefully KBA has talked with her about her role this year vs next year, but we also have Olson and Swords coming in who will compete for those minutes.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I'm thinking I'll add a short summary statement to the title, but not the full score, just because that sounds more fun to me to write. Like for Rutgers it would have been something like "An ugly road win".
I understand the desire to want to not be spoiled that I Bleed expressed, but considering the norms of this blog, I don't think there's an expectation to not be spoiled on the outcome of a game within the title. I set myself an expectation to post these the morning after the game instead of the day of for my own sanity, so if readers want to not be spoiled, know that these posts will generally be up in that timeframe.
I'll consider it. I kind of like that people have to click on the post to see the score, but I have moved the score to its own line and bolded it to make it obvious after receiving feedback on my first few. Do you feel like the score in the title would make more people click through? Or just make my admittedly generic titles more interesting?
I agree Matty. This team has a clear identity and good defense. Hopefully we keep growing into that.
This was definitely the shortest bench of the season. I'm not exactly sure why, but it probably had to do with preparedness to pass out of the press. Maybe also rest, as the team hasn't had to play in 8 days. KBA tends to shorten the bench as we get into January and February, so we'll see if this is just for this game or for the rest of the season.
Update: tomorrow's game against Florida A&M looks to have moved to 1pm.
This is definitely a bit of a rebuild year before next year's recruiting class arrives. Phelia will also still be around along with quite a few young players from this team. They should definitely make the tournament this year, but it's looking like a top 4 seed is out of reach unless they really start putting things together against top competition. Ohio State on December 30 will be the game to watch and see if the team wins or is even able to compete with a legit squad.
Will do. I'll include that in the next game notes. As of today they are 9-2 and 1-0 in the B1G. They play Florida next on Wednesday 12/20 at 6:30pm at the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, NC. They also play Florida A&M at home next Friday. These are separate games.
As far as the whole season, they definitely look like a tournament team, so the question is seeding. The important seed line for women is 4 or above, since that lets you host the first two rounds at home and have a much better chance at getting out of the first weekend. We'll need to see them get ranked soon and start moving up in order to have a decent shot at that.
Illinois isn't a great team, but a win in the Big Ten is a win, especially when you have the tough schedule that Henne mentioned above.
Lol glad to hear wedgie is a thing, I guess I'm behind the times. Thanks for the thoughts/analysis!
No. She did score the team's last 4 points, but they were both short buckets under the basket. She got fouled on one, but missed the free throw.
Thanks for the +/-, great perspective on the bench contributions last night
Glad you're enjoying them. Sorry if I'm negging something people actually like.
Correction that the last 100 point game was 12/21/2017 against Delaware State. My bad. Same facts about Dunston and Hillmon apply.
Correct
I agree about Cam. The quick substitutions are rough. I think her last missing piece is really the footwork in the post and she'll be lethal. She seems to have figured out her fouling issues from last year, so hopefully we'll see that last piece drop into place soon.
I would agree with Henne here that this will be a tournament team and the Sweet 16 would be a big accomplishment this year. Another thing to keep track of is whether they can get into the 4 seed range so they can host at Crisler. Definitely a possibility, but will require this team to work well together with their transfers.
In terms of comparisons to the men's team, I might think of KBA more relative to Beilein than Howard with her emphasis on developing lower-rated recruits. She has definitely gotten more highly rated recruits as evidenced by Naz's class and next year's class, but this is an in-between year. Perhaps comparable to one of Beilein's years between the title runs. The potential is there, we should make the tournament, but not contending for the title.
Point taken, I'll make that more clear next time. I will say that this was definitely a game where a more skilled team than MTSU could have taken advantage of plenty of Michigan mistakes.
Oakland didn't really try to press, but both the exhibition and opener opponents did. Michigan looked like they could handle it sometimes, so they've definitely been practicing it, but we'll see if that translates to the higher level of competition against OSU's press. Jury is still out in my book.
I really have no idea about Evans or what held her out of the exhibition and opener. I keep hoping real injury reports will materialize at some point, but I have yet to find them.
Thanks for the additional notes here! I'm not trying to be the only voice on this, just trying to up discussion on the WBB team, so I'm all for it.
I would say at this point making the tournament is the program baseline and the next step up is consistently getting a top-4 seed in order to host the first two rounds at Crisler. This team should make the tournament, but will need some luck to be a top-4 seed. With Laila back, steps up from other returnees, and some potentially great incoming players, we should be able to consistently get in the tournament and hopefully take steps up from there.
That's fair. There were definitely a few slip ups that led to very open baskets for SVSU. I guess my thoughts are more that this was a good starting point, given the time needed to make a defense gel. I expect the defense to get better from here, hopefully with added depth from Evans and Brett.
I really don't think we'll know until the season gets going. For sure, it will be different after losing both Leigha Brown and Maddie Nolan. Hopefully Phelia and Cam Williams take big steps forward as well as some freshman-sophomore jumps and production from the transfers. If I had to guess, I think this team will be competing to host the first weekend of the tournament like last year's team and hopefully we'll end up with some good injury luck this year. Next year (assuming Phelia sticks around and Olson/Swords arrive) will really be the year with a lot of consistency that could be another elite 8 or better year.
On the basketball side of things, I'm not sure. She started all last year, so I would presume she would have started all this year. The only thing I can think of is that a lot of the players she came in with and played with over the last few years have graduated or transferred, so she may have wanted to move on from that perspective. But the academic angle is a good bet.
The only thing I know is that I think she attended the Europe trip, but did not play because of an injury. This is based on the pictures UM posted where Eidle's ark was in a sling and that they said there was one player who didn't play. Hopefully she's ok.
Neither was a top 5 scorer in any of the three games, but Jordan Hobbs did get a shout out after the 3rd game with a stat line of "5 pts, 6 asts, 6 rebs and a charge drawn". I would love to see both take a step forward this year too, we'll see.
The Washington Mystics, who signed Goree, currently have 4 players out with injury, including All-Star Elena Delle Donne.
Thanks for posting, wishing Goree all the best.
My take would be that this had to do with how each team finished their seasons. UNLV won their conference tournament, while Michigan was ranked as high as 12 and then lost 4 of 6 to finish the season. But some of that was because Phelua was injured for a while and Brown missed 2 games. We haven't really put it all together this season against a top 10 opponent, but hopefully tomorrow is the day.
Absolutely agree.
Decimal on discord, johndecimal on reddit
win that thang
The last line of your preface is "This is the story of how Michigan fixed itself." What should we be looking for during this season and beyond to show that Michigan is indeed "fixed"?
Why does Hagerup feature so prominently in the book? Was it just availability or do you think his specific story is key to understanding the period of time covered by your book?
Zoltan Kovacs the Hungarian Secretary of State, Zoltan Kovacs the Hungarian canoer, and Zoltan Kovacs writer in Nocturnal Submissions to name a few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Kov%C3%A1cs