quality shots

2/21/2021 – Michigan 92, Ohio State 87 – 16-1, 11-1 Big Ten

At some point I realized that I had not had this particular feeling for a long time. Michigan was locked in a battle with a top five team. The game was incandescent. The importance of it left the realm of the practical—this is a Q1A game against a B10 title contender named Ohio State—and entered the realm of the madeleine.

For people who don't live with a humanities PhD and are subject to a process of involuntary weird smart stuff osmosis* that includes a vague understanding of elaborate weirdo Marcel Proust, the madeleine game is one that burns itself into your memory immediately and permanently. Anything that triggers a memory of that game brings along a flood of other memories and resets your emotional state to your state at the conclusion of that game, just as Proust wrote a FOUR THOUSAND PAGE BOOK based largely on memories triggered by encountering a traditional small cake from Commercy and Liverdun.

I'm going to do it to you now. I apologize in advance. Hey, remember that game when Jabrill Peppers got his first college interception?

…

Sorry sorry I'm trying to delete it. I chose the worst one for the strongest effect, but therse are other, nicer ones. Here's one: the game where McGary got cup-checked. The game where the point guard had a man bun. The game where Tom Izzo fouled at the end for a solid two minutes.

At some point the wider context fades out and the thing that is important is to win this game solely because you will remember Michigan winning or losing this game. From the Kentucky Elite Eight game column:

As the game went on and the temperature rose, the building knew. There is an odd shift in the dynamics of an arena once it becomes clear to everyone present that they are watching an out-and-out classic. The stakes, already astronomical, ratchet ever-higher as the imperative to not lose this game, to win this game, to have this thing in your heart forever for cold nights and funerals, reaches critical mass. I mean, what if Michigan loses in overtime to Kansas last year? It does not bear thinking about.

Michigan of course lost that game. We have just had a Slack conversation about an upcoming podcast segment that will run down the top 10 barnburners of the last 20 years; Seth brought up the Kentucky game because it was a 1.32 vs 1.26 PPP fireball in the Elite Eight, and Ace had an aneurysm expressed via text. Madeleine game. It will never leave you.

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

The madeleine is asymmetrical. It has a bump in it. When they made them on the Great British Baking Show, the dimensions of said lump were important. One side of madeleine is a sine wave; the other is flat. You can flip it over and it's a different thing.

What you won't think about when you think about this game is Isaiah Livers, a 90% free-throw shooter, missing both, and Franz Wagner, an 85% shooter, immediately missing the front end of a one-and-one. Flip a couple buckets the other way and your particular memory configuration for this game would shove those right to the front of the line, ready to be triggered by someone who says "Duane" and "Washington" in close proximity to each other.

Instead you might think of Hunter Dickinson dunking a meteor through Ohio's throat.

Ohio State fans—poor, benighted Ohio State fans—will probably snap to Justice Sueing's audacious behind-the-back pass to two centers who aren't looking for the ball.

You may also remember that. I don't make the rules. Go for it.

This is the source of that odd and urgent feeling. You'll rewrite history in your head based on the outcome, so every shot missed or made ratchets up the tension until you're dropping an f-bomb in proximity to children. Until each tiny movement of the ball is scrutinized, each screen set is a potential offensive foul catastrophe, each shot causes the hairs on your head to levitate slightly further from your scalp.

When you're done it's time to lay down and think of paint and grass, and maybe Hunter Dickinson putting a basketball in the earth's core.

*[Ask me for a funhouse mirror version of something Foucault may have said one time!]

[After THE JUMP: shot quality is discussed]

The locations. Five Fifth Factor Plots, Michigan's shot locations against the Badgers:

Now delete five of those midrange shots (one of them was the long Zeb Jackson make) because they came from the Kenpom Kids. Hot damn. UW entered this game forcing midrange shots at a top-20 rate and allowing just 52% at the rim. Michigan hit 70% at the rim and got to the rim 23 times.

As I've said before, the really exciting thing about this team is the sustainability of the things they're good at. They get to the rim against everyone and convert there; they force a ton of horrible shots. They are currently 8th at forcing long twos and eighth at defending them. Wisconsin: 6/12 at the rim, 5/25(!) on farther twos.

That's how you can have the best 2PT in the country and a top five FTA/FGA rate.

[After THE JUMP: charts of less auspicious character]