hunter dickinson is kinda tim duncan maybe

Double down on Dickinson, you get the three. The star freshman center was only on the court half the time, and scored a measly three points with one assist. But that’s all he needed to do a lot of damage to a Terrapins squad not yet fully recovered from the last time these teams met, as Michigan responded to their first loss of the season with an even more vicious demolition of the team they were visiting when the blowout streak began. Dickinson, who was hounded into five turnovers by Minnesota’s double-teams on Sunday, only had one tonight as he came ready to the pass the ball right back out of the post whenever Maryland tried the Gopher gambit.

It helped that his teammates were ready to sink the open looks that provided. Mike Smith, who had to create most of Michigan’s offense last weekend, was the first recipient of those open looks, scoring 7 of the team’s first nine points, and nine of his 11 first half points from the arc to go with three assists.

As attention shifted to Smith it was Livers (20 points on 11 shot equivalents, 4/5 from distance) and Brown (2/5 from the arc) getting the open looks while Maryland star forward Donta Scott stayed glued to Franz Wagner. In just 11 trips down the court Michigan had a 14-3 lead, and Dickinson was headed to the bench to watch his teammates finish the job.

In his stead, Austin Davis was his usual crafty self on offense, though Maryland’s five-winger lineups were too much for Big Country’s perimeter defense. Juwan also experimented with a weird lineup that gave freshman Zeb Jackson some of his first extended first-half minutes, surrounded by Davis, Eli Brooks, Chaundee Brown, and Brandon Johns. The lineup wasn’t precisely a success, but it ate up minutes and left the score at 28-19 before a timeout and a return to normality. More importantly for the future, for the first time Jackson looked comfortable on both ends of the court.

Even that lineup looked more together with the presence of Eli Brooks, who missed the Minnesota game with a foot sprain but started this one. The senior captain matched his season high of five assists to two turnovers, and held up on defense as usual despite the rickety foot and some tough matchups with Maryland’s huge and athletic backcourt.

With the starters back in, the 2nd half was more of the same until an odd technical foul exchange, which began when Mike Smith stripped UMD guard Eric Ayala, who was gingerly returning from a groin injury, on his way up for a late-clock prayer in traffic. The ball bounced right to Maryland winger Daryll Morsell, who’s still wearing a mask from Franz Wagner’s accidental elbow in their last meeting.

Morsell made the freebie but jawed at the refs for not getting an and-one from contact to his face by, who else, Franz. Referee Bo Borowski issued a technical foul for the complaint, Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon got another for advocating for his player, and Michigan’s bench picked one up as well for reasons unexplained. Six free throws—four of them makes by Livers—later, Michigan led 55-34 with the ball. Another open look off a Hunter Dickinson double quickly made it 57-34, and the freshman departed again, his work done.

The rest of the game was academic, but there was plenty of it for the coaches to try different lineups and play out their favorite scenes. The best was a few possessions of exchange between Maryland’s Donta Scott and Michigan’s Franz Wagner, underappreciated two-way players who were given the opportunity to take a couple of possessions against each other. It came out a draw.

Zeb Jackson and Austin Davis continued to see the floor as much either has all year, and both distinguished themselves... on opposite ends of the court. Davis was an energetic monster down the stretch, feasting on the Terrapins’ small frontcourt while their shooters failed to do the same with his perimeter defense. Jackson looked long and annoying as hell on defense, though still a work in progress on the other end; his lone assist was more impressive than two more bricked threes.

It is too bad those missed because either could have led to an assist for Brandon Johns, who otherwise filled up every column in the box score with an energetic, albeit foul-prone night. His effect on the court continued to grow with his confidence as the weird lineups gave him an opportunity to showcase his buckets of skills.

While Dickinson only played 21 minutes, 14 of those in the first half, the Maryland native also picked up 3 blocks, two offensive rebounds, and a lot of talk about the hometown Terps’ failure to recruit him. It’s hard to argue he could have chosen a better supporting cast.

The Wolverines are now 12-1 and tied for first at 7-1 in a Big Ten that’s as much of a ball of knives as they are. Michigan travels on Friday to Purdue, who concurrently rode their own hot shooting night to a win over equally hot Ohio State.

[Box score and more photos by MG after the jump]

Marcus Carr and Mike Smith meandered towards a wayward pass when a maize flash appeared.

"Meander" isn't in Chaundee Brown's basketball vocabulary. Sprinting down the sideline as if fired from a cannon, Brown beat Carr to the ball, collected it in stride, and finished the play with a powerful two-hand slam in front of the exuberant Michigan bench. Brown's unstoppable hustle gave the Wolverines a 22-point lead, their biggest of the night to that point, and the Gophers were broken.

Michigan led by as many as 37 points, demolishing a Minnesota team that entered the game ranked 21st on KenPom. Twice in the first half, the Wolverines went on runs that put the game on a verge of a blowout, only for the Gophers to reel them back each time, riding an eight-point Marcus Carr outburst to keep within six at halftime.

The two second-half runs weren't as well-answered. First, Hunter Dickinson scored eight points in a 17-6 run to open the half. Little-used third-string center Sam Freeman hit two free throws for the Gophers with 12:46 remaining to briefly stem the tide and keep them within a plausibly coverable 17 points. So Michigan threw another haymaker, scoring 18 straight in under five minutes to blow away any doubt about the game and, for that matter, this team's status as a Big Ten and, yes, national championship contender. Brown's backbreaker occurred during the second run.

big dunkinson [Campredon]

Save for Eli Brooks losing a tooth after taking an elbow, which thankfully caused nothing but dental damage, the game went about as well as one could imagine. In Dickinson's first test against a high-level big man of his size, he dominated seven-footer Liam Robbins, outscoring the Drake transfer 28-5 and doubling his rebound total 8-4 while not committing a single foul in 31 minutes. The freshman center went 12-for-15 from the field and hit all four of his free throws; he's now #5 in the KenPom Player of the Year standings.

The offense posted a scorching 1.21 points per possession even though Juwan Howard emptied the bench for the last four minutes and had freshman Zeb Jackson manning the point for the four minutes prior. Michigan went 29-for-45 on two-pointers, scoring 46 points in the paint, and rebounded ten of their 25 missed shots.

Brandon Johns had two of those offensive boards, converting both for putbacks, and scored seven points with two blocks while looking not only comfortable but impactful as the team's backup center and occasional power forward. Franz Wagner's offense didn't take center stage like is has the past few games, but he still put up an efficient 12 points, pulled down five boards, dished out four assists against zero turnovers, blocked two shots, and got his hands on more passes than I could track.

zesty [Campredon]

Smith had six assists, including a highlight-reel behind-the-head dish to Dickinson, though his ball control issues continued in a six-turnover evening. His defense, however, looked improved. While Brooks and Brown—and hellacious team help defense—did most of the work in slowing Carr to a 5-for-16 shooting performance, Smith took a few turns without appearing out of place. Isaiah Livers had two steals that he took the other way for dunks on his way to 14 points, going 5-for-6 inside the arc to make up for an unusual off-night beyond it.

Carr led the Gophers with 14 points; nobody else on their side finished in double figures. Robbins had a particularly rough go, finishing 2-for-9 from the field with no free throw attempts and one block. Both Gach didn't record a point until well into the second half. An offense with an excellent lead guard, a dangerous scoring center, and some decent surrounding pieces was totally shut down, scoring 0.84 PPP with some help from garbage-time minutes.

Michigan played their best game of the year against the best team they've faced so far. They remain the only undefeated team in the Big Ten. With Saturday's game against Penn State canceled due to COVID-19 positives within the Nittany Lions' program, the Wolverines now have five days to prepare before facing Wisconsin in the biggest Big Ten game of the season thus far on Tuesday. They couldn't have warmed up for it any better.

[Hit THE JUMP for more photos and the box score.]

12/31/2020 – Michigan 84, Maryland 73 – 8-0, 3-0 Big Ten

Hunter Dickinson got the ball on the outer edges of what could be called the left block, patiently waited out a dig-down, and put the ball on the court for a couple dribbles before spinning back to his right. Then he launched Tim Duncan's shot.

This is not an analogy. That is literally the thing Tim Duncan—one of very few NBA superstars in history to have bank shot compilations floating around Youtube—used to do, except Dickinson is left-handed. The first clip of this, yep, Tim Duncan bank shot compilation is exactly the above:

I laughed in the same way Ace and Adam did in the press box after Jourdan Lewis's interception against Wisconsin. Encapsulated therein: relief, disbelief, happiness, the feeling of reaching in your coat and pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. Michigan may have pulled Tim Duncan But Angry At Maryland out of Juwan Howard's first recruiting class. Michigan State pulled a guy who can't beat out Thomas Kithier for minutes. Cackling is authorized.

Dickinson finished 10/11 from the floor. He's shooting 77% in Big Ten play and has cracked the Kenpom Player of the Year leaderboard*. Despite reports from the Maryland side of things that Dickinson was never particularly interested in the Terps—not a surprise since they haven't gotten a DeMatha player in 18 years(!)—he managed to inflate minor perceived recruiting disrespect into a reason to Kubrick stare at Mark Turgeon every time he scored. This was found to be so intimidating that Dickinson was assessed a technical.

On one level this was an outrage. On the other hand, yeah, I kind of get it.

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Michigan just had this game against Nebraska, except Maryland is not Nebraska and the level of unconscious Maryland shooters reached was somewhere between nuclear and… uh… I had something for this… really nuclear. There is one thing to do when your opponent hits 59% of their threes: bitch about randomness and take the L.

Except when you shoot 75% from two and 90% from the line, and the opposition doesn't quite crack 42% inside the line. Only good teams can survive strategic bombing outta nowhere games. Teams that have a lot of slack against a top 50 team. Michigan gets that slack in one line on Kenpom:

Michigan is a top five team inside the line at both ends of the floor, and conference play has not yet cracked that number. Michigan's actually better in conference play so far. (Against three lower-end Big Ten teams, granted, but this is a no-days-off conference.) They have the #1 eFG defense in conference play despite opponents hitting 44% from deep.

I entered the season with modest expectations. Two transfers, defensive question marks, the #1 recruiting class coming in next year: I was prepared to take a bid as enough and anything else as a win. Every time a tall guy does something against Michigan's backcourt I feel the "ah well" re-emerge. And then Michigan wins by double digits against increasingly good teams.

I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out of something and it hasn't yet. Maybe Northwestern and their five-out offense will be a problem. Wisconsin rather looms in 11 days. At this point it feels like those two games are inflection points between a top 25 team and a top 10—maybe top 5—one. This is encouraging.

It's especially encouraging because Juwan Howard did this by leaning into his wheelhouse. He grabbed the closest analogue to himself in the most recent recruiting class and has coached him—and his teammates—up to a point where he's a top ten player in college basketball eight games into his career.

Michigan's good at the repeatable, sustainable things. Being good at them also feels repeatable and sustainable. The program itself sort of has a Tim Duncan vibe right now.

*[Notable for a couple different reasons. #1: Big Ten players (Garza, Dosunmu, Jackson-Davis) are currently 1-2-3. #2: Loyola-Chicago center Cameron Krutwig is #5. Yes, that Cameron Krutwig. He was just a freshman during their Final Four run.]

[After the JUMP: is 90% good?]