Sponsor note. Folks: sports betting is now legal in Michigan, and we've partnered with DraftKings Sportsbook.

You can place wagers on just about anything: Michigan to win, or for Not Michigan to flail aimlessly and never approach the bucket, or whether or not the noggin of Not Michigan's head coach will literally lift off his body at some point.

...okay, they're telling me the last two aren’t live bets. But they should be.

THE ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#3 Michigan (16-1, 11-1 B1G) vs #4 Iowa (17-6, 11-5)	herky!
WHERE	Crisler Arena Ann Arbor MI
WHEN	7 PM Eastern Thursday, February 25th
THE LINE	Kenpom: M -2 Torvik: M -4.6 Draft Kings: M -5
TELEVISION	ESPN PBP: Dan Shulman Analyst: Dick Vitale

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan in the midst of a span of three top-ten Kenpom opponents in four games. Michigan went to OSU and won 92-87 to put one hand on a Big Ten regular season trophy, and then Weird Illinois—now a thing since Illinois is a top ten team that does things like "go to OT against Nebraska" on the regular—lost to Michigan State. This caused Bart Torvik's computer to all but call it:

Michigan could lose twice and still have a winning percentage lead over the Illini. A banner is so close you can taste it. Beating Iowa would just about do it.

Iowa will have something to say about that, of course. This is the best Hawkeye team in the Kenpom era, currently ranking 4th thanks to the nation's #1 offense. That outfit is a couple points per 100 possession short of being the best of the Kenpom era, as well. Defense? Ah nobody cares about that. Garza vs Dickinson! Shooters shooters shooters! Let's go!

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

No changes.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

The badge for Toussaint is grading on a curve. He is a much better defender than the rest of the Iowa backcourt, but it's hard to say he'd seem badge-worthy if he played for Wisconsin.

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

THE THEM

These sections usually focus on offensive statistics, because there are many more of them than defensive statistics, and will therefore be effusive in nature. Iowa has the #1 offense in college basketball; they are 75th on defense. Something to keep in mind.

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

As they have for the past three years, Iowa starts with center Luka Garza. He is the odds-on favorite for the Naismith award and Kenpom POY because he combines usage, shot-making, and turnover avoidance at ridiculous levels. Garza takes a third of Iowa's shots when he's on the floor; he has a top-50 TO rate nationally despite being a huge-usage post player who is being doubled constantly; he is shooting 59/44, drawing more fouls than all but 12 other players in the country, and creating a large number of his own shots by being in incredible post position.

Hoop Vision on Garza:

Garza's maniacal devotion to running the court is a boon to the Iowa offense. It's one that shows up better in Hoop-Math numbers, which just assign any shot in the first ten seconds of the clock to transition, than Synergy, which doesn't count post-ups derived from Garza running his ass off. Iowa is barely outside the top 50 with 32% of their shots in those first ten seconds, and those shots have an eFG of 61%. It also has some costs. Iowa is slightly worse than average at preventing early shots despite being second nationally in TO rate and 19th in eFG—steals and rebounds being the best way to get into transition—and their eFG allowed is 57%.

Running the court is only a small part of Garza's game. He's 87th percentile as a post scorer on absurd volume (239 possessions!) and that doesn't drop off at all once you include pass out situations, which cover another another 111 trips down the floor. He gets a ton of offensive rebounds. He's 73rd percentile as a spot up shooter, 94th percentile as a roll man, and 89th percentile as a cutter. His offensive game has no holes.

Defense, well… yeah. He's a major reason Iowa has played almost as many zone possessions as man-to-man ones. He's slow to rotate, not much of a rim protector, and gives up on a lot of plays to keep himself out of foul trouble. These are costs well worth paying for the offensive upside.

Junior wing Joe Wieskamp is Iowa's second banana. He's a three-level scorer who's on the second round of a number of NBA mock drafts. Wieskamp isn't an explosive athlete but at 6'6" he has NBA size and his shooting has gone to another level this year. After shooting 42% and 35% from 3 his first couple years he's now hitting 50% on 113 attempts. That's 12th in the country, and almost everyone around him doesn't have the volume he does. (An exception: the Toledo Rocket who looked like he had a record out on Sub Pop.)

Wieskamp does split his attempts about evenly between twos and threes and is able to get to the bucket with some frequency. About two-thirds of his twos are at the rim, where he finishes decently (58%) and creates about half his own looks. Those are still preferable to anything approximating a catch and shoot look from 3, as he's one of three Hawkeyes who grade out as 90th or percentile or better spot-up shooters.

PG Jordan Bohannon is the conference's second-most extreme Just A Shooter with 147 threes against 32 twos; he's hitting the threes a hair more often than the twos at 38%. Bohannon shut down his 2019-20 just before the medical redshirt deadline with hip issues that required surgery, and nine games in it felt like he was still recovering. His three-point shooting was stuck down at 29% and his TO rate was elevated from his historical baseline.

Bohannon then went on an absurd tear. He's cooled off a bit since but his three point shooting in Big Ten play is at 43%; he's cut back down on the turnovers and is assisting on a bunch of Iowa buckets. Since Garza exists a lot of these are relatively simple entry passes, yes. On the other hand, 27% of his threes this year are unassisted. These tend to be brutally difficult shots, often from 30 feet or more. Those shots go down more than they should.

[Campredon]

The final two starters are relatively low usage, as someone must be when Garza is taking up so much air space. Junior guard Connor McCaffrey is out there to facilitate for others. He takes under 10% of Iowa shots when he's on the floor. Since a big chunk of that facilitation is an outstanding facility for post entries, Iowa's efficiency jumps significantly when he's on the floor:

A five point bump in 2P% from a guy who takes barely over 1 2PA per game is something. Coach kid? Coach kid.

Downsides: McCaffrey is a bad defender despite having solid size at 6'5" and is the least threatening shooter in the Iowa starting lineup. That latter isn't too bad, as McCaffrey hit 34% on ~100 attempts last year and is at 33% on his ~50 this year. You could gamble doubling off him and if there's a kickout off a double giving him an open look is your best of a not-great set of options. 

Meanwhile, sophomore guard CJ Fredrick looks like his usage has declined a few points in year two but not so fast, my friend. Two-thirds of this three-point decline is from a drop in TO rate from 16.3 (not great for a guard) to 3.8, which is second nationally. Frederick in fact has zero turnovers in Big Ten play. Combine always getting a shot off with 51% shooting from three and you're going to get some absurd efficiency numbers, and lo: Fredrick's 141 ORTG is third nationally.

As Ace has pointed out, Fredrick's presence is more important than his placement in the "limited roles" section of Kenpom implies. The updated Hooplens on/offs:

The efficiency gap has narrowed somewhat from earlier this year but Fredrick's presence still slashes Iowa TOs by 25% and allows Iowa to get off truly prodigious numbers of 3s they're is canning at a 41% clip .

As per usual, Iowa goes pretty deep. Six different bench players have gotten meaningful time:

Freshman PF Keegan Murray is a versatile box-score stuffer who looks like a future star. He's a 6'8" power forward shooting 61/38, has a double-digit OREB rate and provides shades of Wagner when it comes to filling up the block and steal categories. A lot of his buckets at this juncture are opportunistic, but he flashes an ability to slash to the basket and shoot.

Sophomore C/PF Jack Nunge gets the center minutes Garza doesn't and also plays next to the KPOY for about half his minutes. He is, indeed, a sophomore by eligibility but this is actually his fourth year at Iowa. After a promising freshman year (108 ORTG on 19% usage) in 2017-18 he missed all of the next year and shut his 2019-20 season down after five games. If he's so inclined he could be playing college basketball in 2024, making him a literal Brooks Bollinger Memorial Eighth Year Senior.

Anyway: Nunge is a stretch five who lacks Garza's great bulk and is stuck in that 30% three point shooting purgatory that means the shots go up and they're meh. Like Murray he fills up box scores with OREBs, blocks, and a plus-for-a-big 14 assist rate.

Redshirt freshman Patrick McCaffery missed almost all of last year with complications from cancer treatment. He's recovered enough this year to get about a third of Iowa minutes, which he makes efficient by not turning the ball over despite a lot of drives into heavily trafficked areas. He's not very good at converting yet, but like Murray he will occasionally turn in an eye-opening play.

The guards are a bit dicier. Sophomore PG Joe Toussaint is a lightning bolt in the open court who'd have a top ~50 steal rate if he had enough minutes to qualify for Kenpom leaderboards. He's also got a 31 assist rate, which would also be around 50th nationally. The catches are multiple and significant: Toussaint  has a sky-high TO rate and is even more of a non-shooter than he was last year, just 2/9 on threes. This lack of gravity has major knock-on effects:

Threes drop from 44% of Iowa shots to 29% and they lose 11 points of efficacy. Since there is a major drop in threes launched and there's a clear mechanism why this is happening—opponents double Garza off Toussaint and stick to everyone else—that's a three-point  gap your author puts stock in.

Toussaint just about offsets the offensive collapse by being a vastly superior defender to either Bohannon or Fredrick. Just look at that TO spike on D, and a three-point 2P% gap chips in.

Freshman Gs Ahron Ulis and Tony Perkins aren't likely to see more than a handful of minutes. Neither has seen enough time to draw much in the way of conclusions but they, too, seem like non shooters as they're collectively 0/4 from three.

THE TEMPO-FREE

This time we'll go with national numbers because that's the best way to put this Iowa offensive in perspective:

Left: offense, right defense

Here is a good recipe for having the best offense in America: be good at everything. Iowa's combination of assists—4th nationally in A/FGM—and rock bottom turnovers is remarkable. They get a lot of threes they can at a 40% clip, are a top 50 OREB team, and get to the line a lot.

Defensively there's a lot of zone influence in the numbers. In league play Iowa's last at forcing TOs, 13th at allowing 3s, and last at preventing assists. They're also poor on their defensive boards. It should be noted that Iowa's defense is surging:

That is adjusted defensive efficiency from Torvik, so it accounts for the fact that those last five games are against Indiana, Rutgers, MSU, Wisconsin, and Penn State—all teams that are scuffling offensively. This surge has corresponded with a de-emphasis on zone. Wisconsin and Penn State both faced about 25% zone. For portions of the Big Ten season zone was a majority of Iowa possessions.

THE KEYS

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Can M defend Garza reasonably well with sporadic-at-best doubling? Iowa opponents face the same kind of dilemma Michigan opponents do. If you let Garza go down low he'll put up numbers on you. If you double him so relentlessly that he gets eight points, like MSU did, Iowa will rain hellfire on your head. The Hawkeyes shot 13/25 from three en route to a 30-point win.

I'd at least try letting Dickinson sink or swim against Garza since he's got a size advantage and has had decent results defending post ups so far in his career (0.75 PP, 64th percentile, on 32 possessions). Also Dickinson spent much of the offseason going nose-to-nose with Garza and should be less shell-shocked than a freshman going up against Garza normally would be. You probably have to send some occasional doubles just to put a seed of doubt in his head. I'd rather deal with Garza posting than guys with 75% eFG rates on 3s, which Iowa has two of.

And also vice versa? Garza's never been a good post defender and exposing him to repeated Dickinson post-ups threatens foul trouble or the occasional vaguely contested bucket. If there was ever going to be a moment where the Big Ten thought to itself "maybe we shouldn't auto double Dickinson" it was the first half against Ohio State.

Iowa does have a couple of long options for doubles if that's their path. Nunge plays the 4 for almost half the game and both Keegan Murray and Patrick McCaffrey are 6'8"-6'9" power forwards. Getting those skip passes around Iowa will be tougher than Dickinson chucking bullets against a 6'7" C and someone probably shorter.

Transition and secondary transition. Michigan has a fairly large eFG gap between transition D (50%) and half-court D (43%) but that transition number is quite good; Michigan goes up against an Iowa team that tries to do a lot of work early in the clock. Having the ability to get back on Garza dives to the basket will be a source of final margin.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 2.

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

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Gambling Disorder Help-line at: 800-270-7117. 21+. MI Only. Eligibility restrictions apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for full terms and conditions.