Podcast apologies. I had a family issue and Ace is dealing with a severe allergic reaction, so there's no podcast today. Back at it next week. Silver lining: text content will be novel instead of also on the podcast.

The whiplash game. An alien observer given an oversized baseball hat, trench coat, inconspicuous sunglasses, and tickets to Michigan's two most recent basketball games must think he watched two different sports. One is a game of furrowed brows and vicious close-quarters fighting in which shots are precious and points even more so. The second is superficially similar to the first, but apparently has dozens of subtle rule changes that make it impossible to defend anything. Also your worth as a player is directly correlated with the size of your eyebrows.

I wonder if there's ever been a bigger game-to-game swing in Michigan's offense than going from 0.65 PPP to 1.39. If it's been exceeded it's not by much.

ope just gonna grab this from you for a sec [Campredon]

Johns: hello. One game after I asserted Michigan hadn't changed anything from John Beilein's OREB approach Brandon Johns swoops in for five OREBs and Michigan grabs 44% of its rare misses. Johns also swished a couple corner threes en route to 12 points on seven shot equivalents. Also he had a nice assist to Davis.

That's a breakout performance, and now we're waiting to see if that lasts. It prompted an Athletic article from Brendan Quinn detailing Johns's confidence issues:

“It was a huge problem,” Johns said Friday night, arms folded, standing in the Crisler Center lobby. “It was kind of heartbreaking because people would say how good I am, but I just didn’t see it. I never saw it. I never believed in myself like that.”

When it comes to former top-50 recruits such as Johns, the issue usually comes from the opposite direction. They’re convinced they’re good and need to be broken down. Johns, after a freshman year spent lost in a playbook, confused on the floor and fledgling outside the rotation, was the converse. The picture didn’t fit the frame. He needed to be reminded of who he is and what he can do. He needed to be reminded that he’s 6 feet, 8 inches and 235 pounds of potential. He needed to be told that he’s an elite athlete who can do things others can only dream of.

Johns doesn't have to do a lot more than bring a Mitch McGary vibe and hit open shots to make a big difference as Michigan's primary bench guy at the 3 and 4.

[After THE JUMP: it's raining points]

Are we ready to call open Simpson threes good shots? I think I am.

He's 10/23 to start and while the shot is still a little odd it gets off quicker. Simpson's more comfortable in catch and shoot situations. He's never going to rise up when he's checked; he may have established that going under a screen is not a great idea.

Got a plan for zones. Michigan shredded Iowa's zone. You can chalk up that to "played Iowa," and that's fair. I still think there's a qualitative difference between Michigan's prep level against zones this year and how it was under Beilein. This Johns dunk stood out in particular:

Michigan has two cutters for Teske to choose from there. Livers is also flashing to the basket. McCaffrey's got a guy who needs checking who he can see, so he bites on that action and Michigan gets an easy baseline dunk.

Livers even has the "I'm open!" hand up.

The ways in which Michigan opened Iowa's zone were diverse and practiced; later Teske got a layup after a play on which four Michigan players touched the ball, with the threat of a Livers jumper off a DDJ pass opening up the space for Teske. You can say Iowa has a bad defense and I can say that crappy zones have long frustrated Michigan no matter who throws them out.

My default assumption is that most or all zone stuff is from Phil Martelli's brain, and that it's an easy way to see Howard's willingness to hire a guy like him pay off.

Re-learning the tempo lesson. The most frustrating part of Garza's output was the early duck-in stuff that used to burn Michigan against Michigan State. Michigan would get a bucket, because they always got a bucket, and then Iowa would zip down the floor and establish deep post position before Michigan could get set.

This style of play creates an interesting gap between Synergy and Hoop-Math numbers. Synergy, which is done by hand and files plays into bins based on what kind of play just happened, recorded just 10 transition opportunities for Iowa. Hoop-Math, which calls any shot in the first ten seconds of the clock "transition," has 28(!) FGAs in that bin.

Hoop-Math is spiritually correct in this instance. If "transition" is supposed to indicate a good shot gotten because you're getting it off fast, well:

There was a 23-point gap in Iowa eFG after makes between quick stuff and Michigan's set half-court defense, and somewhat incredibly over a quarter of Iowa FGA were in quasi-transition off of makes. Garza got 5 of his 13 makes at the rim in quasi-transition. That wasn't all of his game—he was an all-around offensive beast—but his volume gets a lot more acceptable if Michigan is better at recovering to defensive position.

The other frustrating part of this approach is that the director came straight from the Indiana #chaosteam era. He'd be showing closeups of the guy who just hit a shot as important basketball things were going on. He cut to one Livers three with it already in the air. Cumong man.

Anyway: Michigan got a wake-up call or three from MSU when they were doing this a few years ago and got it fixed. Hopefully they manage that again.

[Campredon]

Franzwatch. Wagner had his most assertive offensive outing on Friday, finishing with 18 points thanks in large part to 10 FTAs. He earned eight of those on drives or cuts to the basket. Prior to the season I sold him as a guy who might attack some closeouts but wasn't likely to generate a ton of his own shots. Early indications are he's farther down the Stauskas path than I thought. Every game you see the potential, and it's beginning to translate a bit.

Franz also picked up a steal by anticipating Iowa's tempo post up. So far his defensive performance has been the occasional ugly blow-by marring otherwise quality D:

*Although just a freshman, Franz Wagner has displayed preternatural defensive instincts: pic.twitter.com/lENF43LPx9

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) December 9, 2019

He got posted once but the other shots hit against his on-ball defense were both tough fadeaways.

Get his shooting back to last year's levels and gradual all-around improvement should get him to a star level, although that's probably more a year two or three thing.

Small margins. A number of people looked at Michigan's four factors profile and worried that once the shooting slowed down the other three—at that point all below-average—would bog Michigan down. Fast forward a week and Michigan has cracked the top 100 in TO rate at #90. This is because Michigan's put together a few low-TO games (Gonzaga: 15.7 TO rate; UNC: 15.2; Iowa: 12.1) but also it's because the margins in the middle of the pack are so thin. For example: if Michigan averaged ~1 extra turnover per game they'd be about 75 slots lower.

Once you get to Beilein levels where you're top 10 every year then you're talking about multiple possessions per game. Being in the broad middle means you get talked about a lot differently depending on where exactly you fall, despite the actual differences being minimal.

the first Howard ref face was incredible [Campredon]

Great job, Terry. This game would probably have been a 20-point demolition if you flip two obvious calls. One was Colin Castleton getting hammered so hard by Garza that he started bleeding on the court. The other was Teske getting a phantom call when fighting for post position. Castleton missed several minutes of game time getting his face put back together, so instead of the end of the first half being a Teske-Kriener matchup it was Garza-Davis. Also Castleton bent over—because he was bleeding—so instead of Livers saving the ball to him on an OREB Iowa got a 5-on-3 transition opportunity they converted.

They went to the monitor! I cannot get over the fact that the referees went to the monitor, watched Garza club Castleton in the face, and didn't bother calling a flagrant. After the stuff we've seen called flagrant this year, the mind boggles.

The above shot isn't from that incident but rather the offensive rebound that was temporarily removed because the officials missed a shot very obviously hitting the rim. Howard's kept his referee demeanor impressively even-keel so far but that was a bridge too far, and it was amazing. Strong Uncle Phil vibes.

They did get that other one right. The foul on Garza that got reversed into a hook and hold on Davis was correct. Unfortunate, too, as Davis had pushed Garza under the basket and was likely to get an offensive rebound without the arm grab.

Also Garza did eat a preposterous blocking call with about 3 minutes left.

[Campredon]

Blocking shots just isn't working out for us. Second straight game in which Michigan has blocked a shot only for it to go directly to the guy who just got packed so he can score a bunny. Brooks also blocked an attempted Toussaint meep-meep shot only for Garza to get it for an and one. That's four incidents in the last couple games in which a clean block has backfired into an easy score.

[Campredon]

Weird guy sighting. Davis did decently for himself in his 10 minutes. An elbow jumper was a bad idea. Simpson threw him an alley-oop that either of Michigan's other bigs likely converts; it went over Davis's reach. Otherwise, eh, not bad. He had a couple of offensive rebounds. He was able to turn and finish off a nice high-low play between himself and Johns, and then there were back-to-back dunks in the second half. Davis singlehandedly crested the E-Line.

Davis has 32 possessions against high-major opponents and while the sample size here is ridiculously small, Michigan hasn't gotten killed on them.

Obviously Michigan is not 0.16 PPP better with Davis on the floor, but maybe this is a sign that he's a viable emergency guy.

E-Line check in. Appalachian State remains the only team to crest the E-Line on Michigan this year. Iowa was 0/1 on dunks, with Ryan Kriener missing a contested one.