2020-21 rutgers

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]

2/18/2021 – Michigan 71, Rutgers 64 – 15-1, 10-1 Big Ten

Here's a famous tweet.

I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

This is how your author felt when last night's broadcast began with the announcers relaying Steve Pikiell's take on the game, which was "we're going to jack up a bunch of heavily contested off-the-dribble twos and see how it goes." The announcers said it a little differently, leaving out the heavily contested jacks so they could euphemistically refer to this behavior as "shooting in the midrange."

There's midrange and then there's midrange. There's Franz Wagner midrange where he's using his crazy gumby arms to get up layups from outside the paint, and there's Rutgers midrange that comes from just inside the three-point line with several angry gnomes climbing all over the shooter. When those latter go down at the rate they did in the first ten minutes of the game there's a lot of heavy sighing and maybe the occasional "cumong!" uttered.

To be fair to Rutgers, they did repeatedly attack the basket. Since Michigan is the king of drop coverage and Rutgers is Rutgers these attacks often felt like assaults designed to destroy the rim for unspeakable crimes rather than genuine attempts to score. When the dust cleared, Rutgers had identical marks both at and away from the rim: 11/25.  One of those numbers is really good, considering the circumstances. The other is not really good.

Throw in a near-total lack of threes and the result: 0.98 points per possession despite turning the ball over just three times. That was the best-case scenario for Rutgers, give or take a transition miss, and they did not quite hit a point per possession. This is life in the midrange salt mines.

Hearing one of the better coaches in the Big Ten resign himself to those mines was a bit of a jarring experience. But if you're signing up for the Rutgers job and succeed there you have to have a pretty clear-eyed view of things. That's what Rutgers had to do, and but for a couple meaningless threes in the last minute it got them what it's gotten nearly everyone except Minnesota (and, uh, Penn State): a double-digit loss.

[After THE JUMP: Franz rises, Dickinson recedes]

Before it got excruciating, that was pretty fun!

Franz Wagner put on a show, scoring 20 points on only 12 shooting possessions, pulling down seven boards, and dropping off three assists that all led to dunks. The rest of the Wolverines spread out the scoring and took care of the ball. Michigan played suffocating defense that forced Rutgers into an evening of contested midrange prayers.

The officials also put on a show, in a different way, calling the second half so much tighter than the first that it was hard to believe the same crew was out there. Michigan led by 15 points with 16 minutes play, pushed the lead to 17 at the under-12 timeout, and kept the margin in double figures until 1:51 remained. Yet the half felt like a brutal slog because it contained 24 of the game's 31 fouls, most of them before Rutgers annoyingly took a few intentional hacks to shine up the score late.

Jacob Young's three-pointer with four seconds left mattered only to KenPom devotees and gamblers, to whom it mattered quite a lot. It was an unfortunately fitting capper to the half, albeit not the game, for which Michigan deserved a larger final margin.

hope you like contested fadeaways [Campredon]

It took a while for M's offense to kick into gear, but the defense held strong all night. Even with the late bullshit, RU didn't crest a point per possession, and their shooting got predictably worse after some early long fadeaways dropped. For most of the game, the Scarlet Knights sat on one made three-pointer, and they weren't getting to the rim much, either.

A pair of baskets by Brandon Johns sandwiched around a Wagner dime to Austin Davis finally gave the Wolverines some breathing room in the first half, and they carried that momentum into the tunnel when Wagner corralled a loose ball and dropped in a ludicrous baseline teardrop to beat the halftime buzzer.

Wagner came out hot in the second half, working the high screen to assist a Hunter Dickinson slam, draining a three off an offensive rebound, getting to the line for a pair of free throws, isolating a defender for a runner, and attacking a closeout to create another Dickinson dunk all before the second media timeout.

Wagner, the creator [Campredon]

From there, Mike Smith's steady hand at point guard and a steady stream of whistles took over. While Michigan went an extended stretch without scoring, the Scarlet Knights couldn't tighten the gap, and Smith repeatedly broke their attempts to press and trap him into turnovers. He finished second on the team with 12 points, hit a demoralizing scoop layup late, and only turned it over twice in 34 minutes despite heavy on-ball pressure, particularly from Young.

Rutgers couldn't score in the halfcourt and couldn't get the ball away from M's ballhandlers. Despite the offensive drought, the game was never in danger.

With Wagner starring and Smith chipping in, the team overcame an inefficient scoring night from Dickinson (ten points on 11 shooting possessions) and 4/15 combined shooting from Isaiah Livers and Eli Brooks. It's difficult to tell which player is going to lead the offense in any given game, though someone always steps up. The defense, meanwhile, is reliable as a metronome. Michigan is now 10-1 in the Big Ten, two losses clear of second-place Illinois, heading into Sunday's top-five matinee at Ohio State.

[Hit THE JUMP for the box score.]