2020-21 lsu

Things discussed:

• Vaccination Roundtable: somebody get Sam a shot!
• LSU: Taking Will Wade to the trash can. Has LSU never seen a basketball? All they do is Iso, as soon as the 2Pt floaters weren’t falling and they shut down their PG things looked fine.
• FSU: Very very tall. Big question is whether their 7-footer can take out Dickinson because they have the long athletic guards. It’s more Liam Robbins than Kofi Cockburn. FSU turns it over a lot and scores in transition with Scottie Barnes.
• Cheap fouls.
• FSU gives up threes, not two’s. Chaundee game again?
• Alabama talk just in case: Seth likes that you can stop them at the rim and they’ll keep coming anyway. More afraid of FSU than Bama, not because they’re a better team but because they’re a worse matchup.
• Women’s hoops: when they’re not just Naz they can beat anybody! Leigha Brown being a second banana puts Hailey Brown in the right role. Doing it with out Dilk!
• Big Ten, where you go? Lots of love for Krutwig.
• Hockey: bad draw.

[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]

This is the second of a pair of half-sized episodes so we could get one out between the games last weekend.

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com.

And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, and Information Entropy, the Raw Power app for iOS by Gentleman Coders.

And introducing SignalWire, which is the virtual office platform we recorded this on because we’ve had it up to here with Zoom (use the code MUPPETS and they’ll buy your team lunch!)

1. Recapping LSU

starts at 1:00

That was terrifying. Hurrah for the regression to the mean on lean twos and floaters off the dribble. They were who we thought they were, weren’t they? Smith struggled with length but his offensive creation wasn’t missed when Chaundee was on the court. Also how nice is it that Michigan has so many guys who can win them a game? Also the refs: 10 really bad calls, split unevenly, felt worse because every possession was life or death.

2. Previewing FSU

starts at 25:18

Remember the last FSU team? They’re like that: super duper tall, use a lot of bench in weird places, including having the best player on their team, Scottie Barnes, coming off the bench. This is because they can’t defend the rim without their two 7-foot centers who haven’t faced a lot of post-ups. Not great off-the-dribble shooters which is good news because no guard is less than 6’4”.

3. Big TEHN!

starts at 48:23

We survey the carnage of our conference mates who didn’t make it out of the opening weekend, from least to most disappointing. Rutgers is now in the Big Ten since they didn’t make it out of Round 2 despite being expected to win at some point.

[The player after The Jump]

3/22/2021 – Michigan 86, LSU 78 – 22-4, 14-3 Big Ten, Sweet 16

With apologies to Chaundee Brown and Eli Brooks, all hail the real MVP: regression to the mean.

Cam Thomas came out in full-on NBA Jam mode, and folks I gotta tell you it felt bad. After Thomas hit a one-footed fadeaway 18-footer around the midway point of the first half it felt like he would never miss anything. It felt like by the second half he would scorpion kick a ball into the basket for his billionth point and then fade into the background like the avatar of a fallen god. "Peace," Thomas would utter mysteriously, "basketball has been solved."

Meanwhile Michigan came out and hit one of six clean looks from three. Visions of Will Wade hunched over a cauldron full of booster cash and other nefarious reagents flooded my vision. This is how LSU gives up three after three and survives. This is occult, man. Why would LSU stop at strong offers or rampant, repeated institutional Title IX dysfunction? Satan! Satan is involved. I feel his presence.

These are the things you think in the first eight minutes of a basketball game when you're happy with almost all the shots both teams take and furious at the results.

None of these feelings show up in the box score. LSU shot 44% from two; Michigan shot 67%. LSU shot 24% from three; Michigan shot 40%. This game was only a single digit affair because LSU turned the ball over all of three times. This sounds weirdly disciplined for a team that frequently didn't bother to even raise a hand in the direction of three-point shooters, but then again only one guy on the team bothers to pass inside the arc. Water finds its level.

------------------------------

With apologies to regression to the mean, all hail the real MVPs: Eli Brooks and Chaundee Brown.

Both are four-year college players, but other than that they could not be more different. Brooks has been at Michigan almost as long as D'Mitrik Trice has been an undead warlock. Brown is new. Brooks spent much of his career in a state of emotional precarity, one turnover or missed shot from a funk that would last games and games. Brown showed up determined to shoot every last plausible three he could get his hands on, no matter recent results. Brooks is listed at a willowy 6'1" and when he dunks a basketball everyone says "I didn't know he could do that!" even though he just did it a couple games ago. Brown is 6'5" and built like a linebacker. When he dunks I wince in case he does a chin up that destroys the basket.

But here they did the same things, more or less. They checked Cam Thomas, in their varied ways. They buried open threes. They ventured inside the line successfully. They did not stand around with question marks over their head when offensive actions were attempted. They led Michigan to a Sweet 16.

Remarkably, that's their sixth in the last eight tournaments. The two exceptions were years when Caris Levert got injured*. The only team that can match that claim is Gonzaga, which has morphed from a curious team into a dominant program over the last few years. Michigan will seek to match Gonzaga in that, too.

Brooks and Brown feel like the past and future of Michigan basketball. Brooks is a heady overachiever maximizing his talent. Brown is a physical marvel unleashed by newfound structure. This is not to say they are separate. The Venn diagram has some overlap here. As mentioned, Brooks has thrown down some rad dunks, and Brown is the kind of culture guy who might blow up on the sideline at Breslin. Together they spearheaded a second-round tourney win, and point the direction forward. Less a transition than an adaptation.

Right now Michigan needs both of them as they stare down the only chalk left in this bizarre tournament.

*[As is required by law, let us reiterate that LeVert was shooting 53/45 with a big free throw rate, a 33 assist rate, a 13 TO rate, on 26% usage when he was lost for the season. He had one bad game against a high major in there (SMU) but was more or less at that level of production in the other four A-tier games before he was lost.]

[After THE JUMP: heeeeeeeere's Willy!]