2/8/2020 – Michigan 77, Michigan State 68 – 14-9, 5-7 Big Ten

Afterwards, Tom Izzo sat down for a classic Tom Izzo press conference. The Izzo standard is to complain about how his backup point guard has bunions immediately after saying he's not saying the things he's saying. Sometimes immediately before. You can see the U-turn in an em dash:

"Simpson goes 4-for-7 from the three. He hasn’t done that in weeks. That’s — give him credit. He’s a competitive kid."

I'm not sure how we are defining "that" but Simpson is literally coming off a 3/7 performance from three in the game before this one. He's shooting 36% on the season, and that number was above 40% early when teams were giving him the full Tum-Tum treatment. Simpson still has trouble when teams give him a modicum of respect. He can hit practice jumpers now. MSU gave him practice jumpers.

https://t.co/VQH3fWb60m pic.twitter.com/AnCNZ36DPC

— Scott Bell (@sbell021) February 9, 2020

And they kept doing it after Simpson hit his first two.

On the other end of the court Michigan had a similar gamble: they left Xavier Tillman alone behind the line. This worked out better. Tillman was 0/3; he entered the game a 31% three point shooter on extremely thin volume and left it a 29% shooter.

Leaving Tillman allowed Michigan to bottle up Cassius Winston by constantly blitzing ballscreens. Floaters were gone. Winston's two makes inside the arc were an off-the-dribble stepback from just inside the three point line and a layup Michigan gave him because they were up nine with 20 seconds left. He got one open corner three operating off the ball; every other one of his three point attempts was off the dribble and challenged except for a shot from the logo in Izzo Eats His Liver time.

Michigan won on the boards and gave up close to no transition. Against Michigan State.

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

[Campredon]

The recent history of this series has been unusually dependent on giant flashing red THIS IS COACHING signs. Moe Wagner against Nick Ward followed by Zavier Simpson against Xavier Tillman moved the series from "bust they ass on three" to a three-game season sweep for MSU last year.

The opening game this year was the first real one without Livers and the dawn of Michigan's month of horrendous three-point luck so it didn't feel like quite as coach-driven as recent events. It still featured a lot of MSU running off makes and another Winston/Simpson head-to-head matchup that Simpson lost, his fourth straight.

On Saturday, Juwan Howard gave it to Tom Izzo. MSU could not run; Winston had Eli Brooks shadowing him most of the day. Simpson was largely sitting in a corner, marshalling his strength, instead of running around four ball screens on every defensive possession. It's not a coincidence that his massively wide open shots went down. He was fresh. He outperformed Winston in the meeting right after the game in which I threw up my hands and said "he's Trey Burke, oh well."

Beating Michigan State is important for a lot of reasons, not least today's Mega Spartanfreude Monday. This early in Howard's coaching career, though, taking a bad situation against a hall of fame coach and flipping the script in a month noses ahead of the pack.

Tom Izzo's reduced to kicking a can and sputtering about how his players are "fatigued" a few months into Howard's Zack and Stu phase. Beilein's Zack and Stu phase lasted four years; Howard is one Josh Christopher away from having his phase last one year. Combine the fact that Howard has met every basketball player in America at some point with his player management and his clear coaching chops and you've got a hell of a stew cooking.

[After THE JUMP: stop asking Izzo to stab you]

go get paid plz [Campredon]

Get out of here. It's fascinating to watch Xavier Tillman play defense. He was the #1 reason Michigan got swept last year, and this year Teske put up ORTGs of 92 and 88 against MSU. In this game Teske had his flying one handed alley oop and one other basket. Last year he switched onto Simpson all game and crushed Michigan's offense. It is remarkable how Tillman is able to check both 7'1" guys and point guards.

In the vague hope Tillman's grandmother has not been abducted and put in an undisclosed basement by Tom Izzo I checked Tillman's draft status, which is either the tail end of the first round (Sam Vecenie) or not drafted (ESPN). Izzo always wheedles his guys into staying longer than they should; I would really appreciate it if Tillman could escape those clutches. It says something that a guy with his offensive skillset is a first round candidate.

Livers: sort of important. Livers had an efficient 14 points and provided the dagger when he spiked an MSU layup attempt on the backboard with a minute and change left. He went up for a dunk attempt in the first half that caused all Michigan fans to scream "noooooooo" in slow motion; he survived.

In the ten game span where he was (mostly) out Michigan was the #44 team in the country per Torvik's numbers. They went 4-6. Overall they're 22nd, so it's easy to imagine a fringe top ten team if Livers hadn't gotten injured twice.

We're just going to ignore the end of the first half. Let's not do that again.

These arms can do other things. Franz Wagner continued to scuffle from three, missing both his attempts. In all the ways you can do basketball without scoring this was the best game of his brief Michigan career. Wagner:

• used his crazy gumby arms to create two steals and two tie ups
• took a charge on Winston, also got switched on him twice and forced contested threes both times
• had two blocks, one of which fell victim to a dubious foul call
• had seven rebounds and probably should have gotten credit for an OREB that he tipped out
• had an assist and coulda shoulda had a few more on shots that didn't go down
• was 2/3 from two with an and one

This is part of a general uptick in off-ball stuff, particularly rebounding. Before the Iowa game on the 18th of January he had one game with more than 5 rebounds, that a 7-rebound performance (with three on offense) against MSU in the first game. Since: 6, 8, 8, 6, 11, 7. Eight of those were on offense. He had 10 OREBs in the previous 13 games.

A larger trend. Speaking of offensive rebounds: Michigan won the battle on the boards, grabbing 33% of their misses while MSU grabbed 26%. On the podcast I wondered how long it had been since Michigan had won a rebounding battle against MSU; the answer is very very boring since it's last year and the first game this year was a dead heat. Saved me some Kenpom clicking, at least.

That's not to say that Michigan's recent OREB surge isn't real. Set aside guarantee games. Michigan's best OREB performances this year are the win against Iowa—a giant outlier—and then three of the four most recent games:

Naturally the bad game in the most recent set of four is the Rutgers outing where Michigan got pounded 26-6 on the offensive boards, because hooray small samples.

Still feels like there's been a more concerted effort to generate second chance points of late. Michigan is sending Wagner or Johns to the basket frequently; in recent years Beilein got everyone except the center back.

Limited costs to the above. Transition defense was vastly better in this game despite Michigan's increased focus on the offensive boards. MSU managed to get a few crossmatches that led to awkward defensive possessions and got some points off those. Their only fast break points of the game came on a Simpson turnover.

After the first game Howard said that Michigan had practiced against the MSU tempo but didn't execute; here they did. Having Livers back helped a lot, I'm sure. Still a good sign that Michigan got better at something they needed to be better at.

I wonder what a home whistle is like. At one point in this game free throws were 17-2 in MSU's favor. It was 24-7 before Tom Izzo Eats His Liver time. Michigan is not a team that should expect free throw parity with just about anyone since it shoots a ton of threes, gives up fewer than almost anyone in the nation, and has a crew of sub-six-foot guards who rarely challenge defenders at the rim. That doesn't mean that Michigan never gets fouled.

There were a few incidents that stood out. On one Simpson got his shoulders past Malik Hall and Hall bumped this situation…

…into a contested shot he ended up blocking because Simpson wasn't able to jump vertically after winning on the drive. That's a senior Simpson against a freshman averaging 5.3 fouls per 40 and he still can't get a call.

The second was Tom Izzo losing his mind after a hard hedge from Davis and then Johns getting a horseshit call underneath about three seconds later. I will never understand officials rewarding that kind of behavior.

And then of course there was Winston getting Pretty Pretty Princess treatment, first on a possession where he committed a travel by bumping a ball to a teammate after he'd lost it and then got fouled by Eli Brooks's chest. Then in Izzo Eats His Liver time he got called for reaching towards but failing to touch Eli Brooks. This cost Michigan a very satisfying dunk.

in the midst of finishing through Marcus Bingham's chest [Campredon]

Keys to victory: Austin Davis? This site veritably grabs your shirt and shakes you, screaming "NEVER GIVE UP ON A BIG" but even this space is uh I mean just look at it

This is obviously not a sample size useful for anything other than novelty tricks but Davis looks like a serviceable backup big over the course of the full season, guarantee games excluded:

Context is important since Davis's minutes are sheltered relative to Teske's. Davis gets more backup bigs and is almost never out there without Simpson. These numbers absolutely do not suggest he's on par with Teske. That said: that's a breakeven 200 possessions despite some bad FT and 3P% luck.

We've fiddled around with some other on/off splits that get into lower possession numbers that suggest the OREB bounce is mostly driven by Johns but that defensive rebounding is actually better when Davis is at C—about 50 of those possessions have Davis and Teske on the floor together.

Part of the breakeven is Teske's unfortunate regression (or at least failure to progress) on defense.

Johns emerging as a shooter opens some doors [Campredon]

Let's get big. Twice Michigan put out giant lineups featuring Wagner, Livers, Davis, and Teske. These were brief periods that treated Marcus Bingham as a second big. They were viable in part because MSU doesn't play a real shooting guard much. They start three wings; Watts gets some time but has been pretty awful as a freshman.

I'd like to explore some lineups with all three of Michigan's wing guys (ie replacing Davis in that lineup with Johns)since it seems like there are a fair number of teams in the league Michigan could check with Livers or Wagner guarding the two. Rutgers puts out a bunch of giant wings; I'm comfortable with Wagner or Livers checking Brad Davison; Maryland is another team that puts out 6'5" and 6'6" guys at the two.

Most of the time the backcourt is going to be Brooks and Simpson but after this stretch without Livers it feels like the big lineup is worth exploring. Johns is 15/35 from three in Big Ten play after going 0/5 against nonconference teams. I'd like to keep his personal momentum going.

That's a shame dot gif. Preseason #1 to out of the poll is not common.

Michigan State becomes the second preseason No. 1 team since 1968 to drop out of the poll entirely...in case MSU fans needed more good news today https://t.co/IHH7EeUjM9

— Kyle Austin (@kylebaustin) February 10, 2020

If you know a MSU fan who's having trouble with recent events it's important to talk to them. Otherwise they may not understand how richly they deserve it.