2020-21 ohio state mbb

1 hour and 39 minutes, wsg the Sklars Brothers to promote our Roast of John U Bacon

The Sponsors

"Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. They're also behind our Ann Arbor Institutions t-shirt program. They have awesome custom tees and hoodies and low, affordable prices. They also have tons of great Michigan apparel that you can wear proudly to support the maize and blue! 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, and introducing the Raw Power app for iOS by Gentleman Coders.

1. The Game, Which is The Game this year

starts at 1:00

That and that and that and the other thing and then yes, the officiating.

The rest of the writeup and the player after The Jump]

It was as Columbus as it gets, and some breathtaking basketball all the way, as Ohio State’s designs on a championship got slapped down like a top-five John Cooper team.

And you can't have one without the other…

Michigan sits atop Big Ten standings as lonely one of their first-half perimeter shooters.

Sponsor note. Folks: sports betting is now legal in Michigan, and we've partnered with DraftKings Sportsbook. You can place wagers on all manner of things.

You cannot bet on 22-year tourney streaks coming to an end, but a lot of other stuff.

THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

We have come to it at last: Michigan’s end-of-the-year gauntlet that is likely to get the postponed Illinois (#6 to Kenpom) game shoehorned somewhere between a visit from Iowa (#3) a visit to Ohio State (#5), and perilous trips to Assembly Hall and Breslin. The other contenders all have similar schedules. March Madness has nothing on the next two weeks of basketball in the Midwest.

The Tour du Péril begins Sunday afternoon in Columbus, in the most significant game yet played in the nation’s toughest conference. Ohio State is very good, so good that in a normal year they’d probably be the conference frontrunners, and head coach Chris Holtmann a shoe-in for Big Ten coach of the year. Of course it’s not a normal year. The conference is a minefield stalked by terminators. Juwan Howard can’t give a player a ball, or a hand up off the floor, without announcers, rival talk radio hosts, and national pundits praising the job he’s done this year.

Meanwhile Ohio State’s been on a tear, going 10-1 since early January with road wins over Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa in that stretch. Their season has been a mirror of Michigan’s, right down to an early mid-major upset they escaped and would rather forget (UMass Lowell) and a blowout at the hands of Minnesota at The Barn. Their other losses are by a point on a bad shooting night at Northwestern, and a season sweep at the hands of Purdue, one of those being the game Liddell was out. They still have Iowa and Illinois rematches, but OSU gets to host those too. A win over Michigan and a Big Ten title and a 1-seed are on the table. If the Wolverines walk out of Columbus with a W like the football team would have, the thus-far COVID-free Buckeyes’ only shot at a regular season crown is lobbying the conference to reward it solely on most wins. This is The Game.

Being in Some Kevin Warren Bullshit™ range is all the more incredible when you look at the parts Holtmann is summing. They’re an elite offense—#3 overall to Kenpom & Torvik—despite not doing anything remarkably well except taking care of the ball, drawing fouls, and making free throws. Their defense is hovering between Maryland and Nebraska in the in-conference efficiency rankings. Nobody in the rotation is taller than 6-8. Only two of their guards are major threats from the arc, one of those is the most extreme Just a Shooter™ we’ve ever graphed, and there’s nothing like a traditional point guard. I’m not sure how that equals a top-5 team either, but it’s been weeks since we could plausibly pass it off as a fluke.

THE US

My graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Michigan is coming off two impressive but clunky victories over Wisconsin and Rutgers following a 20-day state-directed shutdown for  B117 variant outbreak in the athletic department, 14 days of which was spent in isolation. The grating conclusion of the Rutgers game dropped Michigan a crucial few points so Iowa could slip ahead of them in Kenpom. Hunter Dickinson is barely hanging onto the end of the KPOY top ten. They fell from 10th to 23rd in foul avoidance and are deep last among tourney hopefuls (310th overall) in free throw percentage against. The local sports blog has a new logo and readers who could spot a missing tooth in earlier times aren’t even picking up on it. It’s first-world rough in Ann Arbor right now.

THE LINEUP CARD

My graphic [click for big]:

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview.]