2018-19 south carolina

YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING IMPORTANT FOR A SPECIAL PERSON: a sponsor note. Need a last-second gift? How about an actual piece of the Big House? Friend of the blog Martin Vloet got his hands on the original redwood Big House benches—the ones installed in 1927 and used until 2005—and had them made into limited edition pens, cufflinks, pendants, and bottle openers. He also claimed the old plastic seats and cut them up into magnets or pendants. The first 99 pens are reserved for Michigan football players, past or present, that want like to claim their jersey number. The rest of the pens will ship, #100 through #1927, on a first-ordered basis.

Use the code MGBFREESHIP and save on domestic shipping of any size order placed by 11:59 pm TODAY. As long as it goes out tomorrow, USPS Priority Mail should be able to make it to any US address by December 24.

Follow this man. Eric Shap on Michigan's defensive issues in their last two outings:

3/ I thought the defense in the USC game was especially sloppy -- poor post defense, guys losing shooters, and getting beaten back door. Those issues were mostly corrected against WMU, but another concern I'll be keeping an eye on due to Michigan's scheme is non-contact screens. pic.twitter.com/XKYoNyXaCQ

— Eric S (@eric_shap) December 18, 2018

5/ Lastly, Michigan's early season two-point defense was unsustainable and both South Carolina and WMU hit some difficult, low percentage shots inside the arc. pic.twitter.com/VxzSaXQB4h

— Eric S (@eric_shap) December 18, 2018

A combination of a December lull against teams that don't really have Michigan's attention and a reversion seemingly well past the mean; if holding Eric Paschall to 3/13 from two without doubling wasn't a realistic picture of Michigan's D, well neither is that last set of clips above.

If NET's taken as seriously as RPI that's fine. Weird article in the Washington Post trashing the NET rankings, which are wonky as any NCAA hodgepodge is going to be but hardly a disaster waiting to happen for tournament seeding. The article has three wrong premises. One is that NET is the be-all and end-all of selection and seeding:

You might not think such a discrepancy in the rankings would mean much, but consider how this could affect the NCAA tournament, where a team like Texas Tech would be given a No. 1 seed via its NET ranking, but plays more like a No. 3 seed, per its consensus ranking.

The committee still exists. We're still talking about quadrant one wins. There are still teamsheets. NET will be followed no more blindly than RPI was. Which was a little blindly, if we're being honest, but not to the point where a team gets a one seed solely because of a single number on the sheet.

Two is that a hodge-podge of computer rankings is an appropriate comparison point. Many, if not most, of the rankings in the giant compilation the author cites are predictive rankings that are inappropriate for selecting and seeding the field. At this point in the season many still have a significant preseason component—Kenpom won't be fully preseason-free until the end of January. If the season ended today a field selected and seeded by Kenpom alone would give Purdue, which is 6-5 and has just two B-level wins, a five seed. NET ranks Purdue 31st instead of 17th. NET's deviation from the average here is a positive. The article cites Houston's NET ranking (10th) vs their computer composite (23rd), but you could cherry-pick a weird outlier for almost every one of these ranking systems. ESPN's BPI has Michigan 11th.

Three is that NET won't be able to better distinguish between teams given an additional half-season of data. This is an absurd comparison to make:

Based on last year’s consensus rankings, a top-four consensus team had an average RPI ranking of 3.3. This year the average NET ranking of a top-four team is 5.5, almost identical to a team ranked between No. 5 and No. 8 in the consensus group. In other words, the NET rankings are incapable of distinguishing between a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, a stark contrast compared to last year where, via RPI, there was a clear difference between the two.

For one, last year's RPI-influenced committee put Kenpom #9 Kansas and Kenpom #14(!!!) Xavier on the one line. As a group the two-seeds were stronger. For two, most teams have only played a third of their games so far. Of course there is going to be more disagreement amongst ranking systems when they have less data.

The only real question is "is NET better than RPI when tourney time nears?" Open question, but it would have to try real hard to be worse.

[After THE JUMP: more NCAA legal troubles, what is USC even doing, and a sudden 180]

Sometimes I don't have a column. In these times: just bullets.

12/8/2018 – Michigan 89, South Carolina 78 – 10-0

A sloppy outing ends in an eleven point win as Michigan is clearly better, so that's nice. Items:

The un-Michigan game. Michigan 1) rebounded almost half their misses, 2) turned it over 16 times, 3) made 77% of their free throws, and allowed the bricklayers on the other team to shoot 53% from two. This was very un-Dude. Certain things did make sense in the recent history of Michigan basketball. South Carolina got up just 11 threes, didn't go to the line much, and Michigan burned the nets themselves.

The New York Football Knicks. Man, when South Carolina commits a foul it is not subtle. Iggy got flying shoulder thumps immediately preceding most of his FTAs. Michigan hit the bonus with about 12 minutes left in the second half and that felt late. In the first half I kept looking up at the scoreboard to see which South Carolina player had just earned an autobenching only to find out that Martin was rotating his guys so thoroughly that none of the hacking removed key players for long stretches. Both Alanzo Frink and Felipe Haase had three fouls in about ten minutes. Silva fouled out late; five other guys had two fouls.

Jon Teske got some back when he trucked Silva:

[Barron]

That was deemed a charge; at least Teske got his money's worth.

Illuminati Charles Matthews. Matthews was 2/4 from two, 2/4 from three, 2/4 from the line, and had 2 DREBs and 4 OREBs. Spooooooky.

The defense slowly comes back to earth. Michigan's early two-point D was always going to be unsustainable and things are creeping back up. The good news is that folks are still posting items about Michigan's defense in relation to some of the best in the last decade of college basketball; the bad news is that Michigan's regressing back towards the mean faster than those defenses:

Michigan’s defense may end up relatively normal (in historical terms) after all. Then again, UM's been amazing at either offense *or* D in literally every game, except @ Northwestern. Very Beilein-y. pic.twitter.com/4HJo5f8Kma

— John Gasaway (@JohnGasaway) December 9, 2018

All of those teams had giant block rates. The only reason all three didn't finish first is that 2015 Texas (20%!) beat out 2015 Kentucky (18.2). Last year's MSU (18.5) team had Jaren Jackson (sometimes) and also finished first. Michigan is currently 115th—not bad, but not a number that is going to see you finish the season with a historically good two-point D.

Even if the absurd two-point D was a bit of a mirage, Michigan's D is still very very good in a sustainable fashion. They're forcing more "other twos" than anyone other than San Diego. They're 9th in the country at preventing threes from getting up, and are still top 50 at preventing the opponent from getting to the rim. Teske may not be a super elite shotblocking center but he's also averaging just 3.3 fouls/40, which is a major part of Michigan's #1 ranking in free throw rate allowed.

Michigan is going to be a very good defense. They probably aren't going to be #1 at the end of the year. If they are it's going to be because they're pretty good at two point D and funnel everyone inside the line.

[After THE JUMP: on the other hand this is still a Beilein team.]

1 hour and 38 minutes

The Sponsors

This show is presented by UGP & The Bo Store, and if it wasn’t for Rishi and Ryan nobody would get our jokes. Our other sponsors are also key to all of this: HomeSure Lending, Peak Wealth Management, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, the University of Michigan Alumni Association, Michigan Law Grad,Human Element, and Lantana Hummus

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1. Northwestern

starts at 1:00

Most road building for a Northwestern game ever? Wildcats took NBA step-back threes and made them and still didn't crack a PPP. Iggy has broken out. First Austin Davis conversation: it wasn't all on him, but he was significantly non-Teske. Do fouls attract mtore fouls? Billy Donlon knew to play Xavier Simpson like Tum Tum. Extensive discussion on Chris Collins on all fours and Brian hates weird fun traditions. Seth admits to having thrown seafood at various hockey games.

2. South Carolina

starts at 25:09

A terrible offense cracked a point per possession! Revise opinion of the defense? Michigan just sloppy in the first half. Not *AS* good at two-point defense. You can't sag off Gravett and they did, and he made all three of his shots. The Austin Davis conversation. Michigan not as focused in this game but it never felt like they'd lose.

3. Peach Bowl Preview

starts at 55:54

Florida alternated good and bad games. Hard to gauge SEC teams because the conference has a bad bottom half and the SECiesta. Still the same guys plus two transfer receivers. Seth compares Feleipe Franks to what you'd see if John Navarre was coached by Rich Rodriguez, which is unfair to everyone. They're good at pass rush mitigation, not pass pro. Concerned more about the three speedy slot receivers than the starters. Florida has ironic names: Polite is very rude to quarterbacks, Moral is a bad dude. So bored with Florida.

4. Hockey Things

Starts at 1:16:14

Are we mad at the goaltending or not? Defense has weird breakdowns. Mostly they're missing an entire top line.

MUSIC

• "Grown Man"—Lil Wayne
• "Do You Feel It"—Chaos Chaos
• "Life Like Weeds"—Modest Mouse
• “Across 110th Street”

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