Michigan 66, Illinois 57
DJ Wilson led a blue-collar effort for Michigan today. [Marc-Gregor Campredon]
After Illinois blew out Michigan in Champaign ten days ago, Illini center Maverick Morgan described Michigan as a "white collar" team.
When the Wolverines arrived at Crisler for today's rematch, their blue road uniforms were hanging in the lockers—a request the players made, according to John Beilein. If the message weren't already abundantly clear, Billy Donlon made sure it hit home.
"He wrote 'street fight' on our wall with a sharpie," said DJ Wilson. "We were like, 'you know you can't take that off,' and he was like, 'that's the point.' His energy was contagious and I think it showed in the first half."
Wilson, in particular, took that message to heart. He scored 19 points (7/10 FG), grabbed six of his seven rebounds on the offensive end, immediately finishing a couple with emphatic tip-slams. He also broke down the Illinois zone with five assists and contributed a block and some more altered shots to Michigan's strong defensive effort.
"He's got to get in there," Beilein said of Wilson. "One of our zone things was he was not leaving the paint so he could rebound, and stay in there instead of stretching [out to the perimeter]."
"He can really shoot, but he's got to understand that if we're going to win, if he's going to play at another level, he's got to mix it up inside. He's very receptive to that coaching."
This afternoon, it showed. Wilson attempted eight of his ten shots from inside the arc after shooting only four two-pointers over the last two games. His six offensive boards matched the career-high he set in the conference opener at Iowa.
Wilson, Walton, and Irvin all produced at the rim. [Campredon]
Unlike the first Illinois game, when he also had 19 points, Wilson got plenty of help. Derrick Walton posted 13 points and 11 rebounds, all on defense, for his first double-double of the season and sixth of his career. Zak Irvin wasn't exactly efficient, needing 15 field goal attempts to get his 15 points, but he repeatedly broke down the Illini defense and got to the basket. Most importantly, the team-wide defensive effort was a night-and-day contrast from the last time around: after allowing 1.42 points per possession in Champaign, Michigan held them to 0.89 PPP at Crisler and forced 17 turnovers.
After Michigan followed up their awful defensive showing at Illinois with a shootout win over Nebraska in which neither team could stop the other, there was good reason to fear that this team would embrace having to out-gun every team they faced from here on out. Today's win, however, marked the second consecutive game in which the Wolverines played much-improved defense. The final score isn't indicative of the flow of the game, either; Michigan held a comfortable lead throughout and led by 21 with 5:57 to play before packing in the offense a little prematurely.
Morgan, who scored 16 points on 8-for-9 shooting in the first game, mustered a six-point, three-turnover performance this afternoon; in 22 minutes, he had a +/- of -22, the worst mark of any player by 13 points.
"We won't have a painter come in until next year, at least," said Beilein.
January 21st, 2017 at 5:39 PM ^
"He wrote 'street fight' on our wall with a sharpie," said DJ Wilson. "We were like, 'you know you can't take that off,' and he was like, 'that's the point.' His energy was contagious and I think it showed in the first half."
Best thing ever. Leave it up there.
Been wating for some attitude to show up. Love the "Blue Collar" uni thing.
January 21st, 2017 at 5:46 PM ^
Reminds me of Bacari Alexander's pregame routines. I wonder if we've missed those a bit this year.
January 21st, 2017 at 5:48 PM ^
Still remember the Jayhawk in a cage. Good times.
January 21st, 2017 at 6:49 PM ^
been missing the fire until the Wisconsin game. This team is plenty long and athletic enough to play good defense with effort and focus and it showed the last two games.
January 21st, 2017 at 10:30 PM ^
I actually think we do. His stuff was cornball, but it injected some energy into the team during a long grinding season.
January 22nd, 2017 at 12:40 AM ^
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January 23rd, 2017 at 1:18 PM ^
They need to play like this the rest of the year.
January 21st, 2017 at 5:49 PM ^
I had a sense we'd take care of business today.
Had to run errands, got caught up, & didn't get to tune in... but glad to come home see / read we did.
Next: building endurance (&, for me, better scheduling).
Go Blue! (gives a whole new meaning to)>
January 21st, 2017 at 6:24 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:28 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 8:28 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 5:47 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:11 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:32 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:54 PM ^
The point is that we can't predict what those humans are going to do. They might step up their intensity on defense, they might not. We don't know. Systems like Kenpom account for this uncertainty. Humans do a notoriously bad job of doing the same.
January 22nd, 2017 at 12:37 AM ^
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January 21st, 2017 at 7:07 PM ^
Of course! Effort plays a huge part of it. No question. But after Illinois and Nebraska, was anyone predicting that we were suddenly gonna step up our defensive effort and play vastly better on defense the next couple games? No. Was anyone predicting that our defense would sink to the depths it has after our performance in NYC? Also no. Even though effort is completely under the control of the team, we as fans aren't privy to know what kind of performance we will get on a night-in, night-out basis.
The truth is that teams exhibit natural variance in their performance all the time. In hindsight, we can always find reasons for it, but it's impossible to predict. Is our defense going to revert to dogshit next game? Maybe! Are going to keep up this level of intensity? Also maybe! People were acting like the team we saw in NYC was definitively gone for good. Seriously. After these last couple of games, you can see how that team is still in there (even though these last two performances weren't quite on that level). Will we see it again? Can we take it up even another level? We don't know. That's why it's so inappropriate to overreact to short stretches in any sport.
Basketball then makes it even worse than normal by adding the extreme randomness of shooting to the mix. There's no question that teams were hitting shots at an unsustainable level against us, even though our defense was frighteningly bad. We were still good enough to beat Iowa and Maryland depsite that atrocious defense, but they hit shots at an incredible, unsustainable rate.
Again, this is why you need systems like Kenpom to try to account for not only the randomness from things like shooting, but for the natural variance in teams' performances as the season goes along. When Kenpom doesn't immediately plunge us to #300 after the Illinois game, it's because the system is accounting for the fact that the team might step up its effort the next game. You know, or it might not. Kenpom doesn't know, and we don't either, but as humans, we let our bad feels influence our outlook, and Kenpom doesn't.
January 21st, 2017 at 7:44 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 8:57 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 7:53 PM ^
Especially young ones. And their bad feels/feelings can influence their output. New coaches, new players, not knowing what to expect. Brooklyn was a surprise, then it seems like a fluke. The players start doubting themselves (and their coaches), just as we doubt them (and their coaches). They start thinking too much (white collar) until whatever magic (or coaching, or handwriting on the wall) changes things around, makes things fun again and lets them play (blue collar).
Fun to watch when it works.
January 21st, 2017 at 8:39 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 11:26 PM ^
You're totally right, that it's easy to let it become an excuse. And the last thing I want the team to do is think that their performance is out of their control, since it'll just make them play worse. But I think the point that he's making is that from a fan perspective, it's easy to overreact to outliers in performance when in reality there are tons of things that we, the fans, don't know. That's a big part of the randomness from where we're looking.
But you know, what could have led to the bad game at Illinois? A bunch of the guys might have had a bad night's sleep. A few of them may have done badly during finals and were smarting from it. We don't know.
January 22nd, 2017 at 12:55 AM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 11:17 PM ^
defense is effort and focus to a large extent and we've played with a lot more of both the past two games. Sure, some of it is randomness, but that doesn't account for a 25 point swing in the outcomes of the two ILL games. Forcing 17 TOs and only allowing 23 percent of misses to be rebounded accounted for a significant portion of the swing. We're not great at guarding the dribble, and we'll never be with these guards. But effort and focus will get us closer to NYC than the early B1G stretch.
January 22nd, 2017 at 12:26 AM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 5:51 PM ^
Shut Morgan up! Nice win by Michigan. I don't know if we'll make the tourney but that game was a turning point.
January 21st, 2017 at 6:02 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:17 PM ^
We've had some tough players under Beilein:
January 21st, 2017 at 7:43 PM ^
January 22nd, 2017 at 11:09 AM ^
I don't know. I think Wagner's got a chip on his shoulder - which sometimes leads to bad fouls.
Walton's a pretty tough kid - look how he rebounds.
Wilson showed he was willing to mix it up inside yesterday too. Hope to see more of that going forward.
January 23rd, 2017 at 1:45 AM ^
has fire, he doesn't know what do to with it yet, because he lacks focus. Lot of potential there though. Walton rebounding is just a strategy that we tend to play. The bigs box out so their guys don't get the offensive rebound while Walton goes and snags the board to start the break/bring up the ball. It's not like he's banging with the big boys, ripping rebounds away from them.
Beilien has always recruited offensive skill first with the expectation/hope that he could get them to play defense or come up with a scheme a la the 1-3-1 to attempt to mask defensive and rebounding deficiencies. So I wouldn't say "finesse" but he always has valued offensive skill over defense and rebounding in his recruiting.
He happened to also get some tough kids early on in Stu, Novak, Jmo and Trey, but he has for the past few years not gotten the same toughness - mental toughness. The toughness to not take a play off, not lose focus like Walton did in a killer spot on Tuesday against Wiscy.
January 21st, 2017 at 6:24 PM ^
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January 21st, 2017 at 7:41 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:36 PM ^
Methinks 7-4 from here out and a decent BTT would put us on the good side of the bubble. Still an uphill climb, but not
January 21st, 2017 at 9:09 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 6:27 PM ^
2. Donnal Donnal Donnal. I am still scratching my head when he enters the game after he's done fucked up 2-3 times prior. Beilein just needs to roll with the Tesk. It's come to the light that Donnal has reached his ceiling and is starting to fall back down.
3. Beilein should have used his bench more imo. He's going to run the starters ragged and they will have nothing left in the tank for the final stretch. When you're up 15-20 points, Teske, Watson, and Simpson need to be sprinkled in more than they are.
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January 21st, 2017 at 6:27 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 8:45 PM ^
January 22nd, 2017 at 8:23 AM ^
FWIW, I don't buy the luck angle but having watched some of those games and seeing how many ridiculous threes other teams were making I get the temptation. What I saw was what happens when D1 level players do when they are left blitheringly wide open, which is what Michigan's D was allowing far too often.
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January 21st, 2017 at 7:16 PM ^
Illinois and Groce = soon to be departed.
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January 21st, 2017 at 7:28 PM ^
brief concise wrap up. nice ace
January 21st, 2017 at 7:40 PM ^
I hope they'll wear blue as often as allowed the rest of the way, to keep this in mind.
January 21st, 2017 at 10:35 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 7:57 PM ^
He was holding his left hip most of the game. That being the case, he was amazingly physically into the game and did not back off from anything. Terrific effort and heart.
January 21st, 2017 at 8:49 PM ^
January 21st, 2017 at 9:54 PM ^
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January 21st, 2017 at 11:17 PM ^
the refs stopped play so much that this game was almost impossible to watch
January 22nd, 2017 at 12:04 AM ^
"We were like, 'you know you can't take that off...' "
These kids are awesome and all class.
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January 22nd, 2017 at 8:22 AM ^
Seeing a Wolverine get multiple offensive rebounds in one trip and points in the paint is so refreshing. Also was a big fan of Wilson's D and team's overall.
Beat IU!
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