1/25/2019 – Michigan 69, Indiana 46 – 19-1, 8-1 Big Ten

By halftime it was hard to tell exactly what Indiana fans were booing: the refs, their team, various Michigan players, their grandmothers. Could have been anything. What was clear is that 17,222 people were livid. And yelling. The sheer level of concentrated white-hot rage inside Assembly Hall leapt off the screen.

Michigan scores: BOOOO. Indiana does not score: BOOOO. Isaiah Livers may or may not step on the court before flinging an in-bounds pass to mid-court: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Any of a thousand real or imagined slights caused an entire arena's temples to pulse alarmingly.

And yeah, that'll happen when the opposition blows out to a 17-0 lead when you're already on a five-game losing streak and the sheen may be coming off yet another coach. The parallels between Indiana basketball and Michigan football aren't hard to draw. Aging glories, frustrating postseasons, superhero recruits failing to get the team over the hump—it's all there.

Michigan isn't falling apart bodily, at least. It's hard not to look at the various technical difficulties that befell the Hoosiers as symbolic. The shot clock doesn't work at one end so the PA guy has to call it out; there are no microphones at the post game presser; one message board guy asserted this was the third time in four games something went haywire with the clocks, necessitating a stoppage. Indiana basketball is twitching like a recently decapitated bird.

In contrast Michigan football fans seem to have lapsed into a kind of lizard coma. Assembly Hall got there in the second half after Indiana's push was blunted and Michigan extended the lead back out. Those that didn't bail didn't have the spirit to boo anything that moved anymore. They looked on dolorously, silently, as Michigan posted its biggest-ever win in that arena.

[JD Scott]

There wasn't anything else to do.

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Oddly, 18-1 Michigan kinda sorta needed that. They needed to pick someone up by the scruff of the neck and shake them until all the change fell out of their pockets. They needed the version of Michigan from November that obliterated Villanova, UNC, and Purdue from the drop to re-emerge. They needed to remember that they're the most miserable bunch of bastards to play in the country, give or take Texas Tech.

Check. Romeo Langford will be happy to see the back of Charles Matthews. After scraping out a decently efficient game in Crisler thanks to some missed switches and an unusual hit from three, Langford had nine points on 32 percent usage. Matthews hounded him. A couple of second half possessions saw Langford get about ten feet from the basket and put up awkward ducks. Matthews didn't bite on a pump; Langford went up to get fouled anyway. He got nothing.

This didn't even seem hard for Matthews. There were no last-second rescues where he got in a block from behind. Jon Teske was not called into action much, if at all, as help except when hedging on screens. He was not pulled to the action, and Indiana scuffled to four-count-em-four assists. Langford admittedly had one of them. High five.

Maybe you can get after Michigan's defense a bit if you roll three or four scorers deep, especially if one of them draws Poole or Brazdeikis. An Indiana team that's two stars and the Washington Generals, with those stars matched up against Jon Teske and Charles Matthews? Doom, only doom. I still have no idea how Indiana scraped above a point per possession in the first game. Offensive rebounds and an anomalous lack of turnovers, I guess. In anything resembling a normal shot volume environment there's going to be a lot of hopeless shots raised at the last possible second that clang.

They say defense travels, and that particular cliché certainly feels true after Michigan set a small part of Indiana on fire by proxy.

[After THE JUMP: Hello again Iggy]

BULLETS

[JD Scott]

Backstreet's back. Brazdeikis had 20 points and a 144 ORTG, facilitated by Michigan attacking a bunch of goofy pick and roll coverage from Indiana—I tweeted out that they hadn't changed their approach but what actually transpired was Indiana didn't know what their approach was—and Iggy getting to go after closeouts.

At this point I think we know what Iggy brings on offense. If he can get the corner on a guy he'll get to the basket and convert at a high rate. But he's not an elite athlete who can blow by a set defender on the regular; he's much much better at going after a rotation or closeout than creating offense entirely on his own.

Also he is a black hole: a 7.5 assist rate is something you pick up by accident. So you get folks collapsing on him with relative impunity. Rock bottom TO rate, though.

In conclusion, officer, Brazdeikis is more of a two-and-done sort than a one-and-done. Meanwhile, the Washington Post on Michigan's new hateable white guy:

“That’s probably my favorite,” Brazdeikis began, before correcting himself. “One of my favorite parts of basketball is shutting the crowd down. You know, I’ve got to make sure everyone knows I hit that shot. It’s a tactic I use . . . Yeah, you know, I don’t mind being the villain.”

[JD Scott]

Today in Argh. The bit of the first half after the 17-0 start came in for a lot of twitter grumbling about ugly offense, which I mostly disagreed with. There were some bad possessions mixed in there but the primary issue keeping Michigan from a 40 point half was Isaiah Livers having a rough go. He had three point-blank shots at the rim that he missed and turned down a wide open three for a worse shot.

On the other hand, Livers getting to the rim three times is a new and encouraging development. He's had five unassisted makes at the rim on the year—he should have had a couple more here. Getting there is half the battle, and hopefully presages an expansion of Livers's offensive game.

But also seriously just take the open three when you are a 42% shooter.

(Also in Argh: Teske missed a point-blank layup in the second half.)

Come back, Good Jordan Poole. Man, Poole's season has been a rollercoaster. He spent 11 straight games on the right side of 100 in ORTGs, usually by giant margins. The last five games: 84, 119, 86, 39, 71. I don't get it. I mean: Poole is taking a lot of tough shots and is one of the main culprits in my frustration with step-back threes off switches. So I get that he's coming back to earth after hitting 60% from NBA range for much of the season. But the guy who zipped through the lane for a series of spectacular layups in the first Indiana game went entirely away. Poole's barely gotten to the rim since and has spat out a bunch of turnovers trying to do so.

Such may be the tao of Poole, unfortunately.

Can we take a poke at DDJ? Eli Brooks has struggled immensely in Big Ten play: 76 ORTG and usage barely above 10%. A 26 TO rate, to boot. I don't think it's likely David DeJulius is going to do appreciably worse than that. Maybe he'd miss some rotations Brooks doesn't on defense but that's pretty thin. Beilein has been talking about putting DDJ on the floor instead of Brooks and justified Brooks with "well, we just went with Brooks." He hasn't pulled the trigger in a classic case of excessive personnel conservatism. It seems like now would be the time.

Today in statistical oddities. Zach McRoberts played 23 minutes without taking a shot, which says a lot about Indiana's predicament. But it also provided a Today I Learned: McRoberts had an offensive rebound, so now I know that getting one OREB in 23 minutes results in an ORTG of 195 and usage of zero. I know IU's down a few guys but I don't get what that guy brings.

It's strange that both of the Indiana programs are rolling out 6'6" walk-ons for 20+ MPG. At least Grady "His Brother Is In The NFL" Eifert occasionally takes a shot and grabs a healthy number of OREBs. McRoberts is the biggest statistical non-entity in the Big Ten.