Michigan Basketball: A Roller Coaster
Posted at 8:00am — 12/6/2010
Michigan Basketball: A Roller Coaster
By now most or all of you have witnessed this year’s version of Wolverine hoops. There has probably been a roller coaster of a ride already for fans since this team has already run the gambit in such a short time period.
As mentioned in a previous article, this group should be fun to watch, that is, if you like basketball and winning a ton of games is not important. This is a young team and is playing as such. But there have been times that over a 20 minute stretch the collective group makes you say wow, very underrated. And there have been stretches where a good observer wonders what takes place in practice.
The Clemson game was very well played in the first half. The Tigers had no answers and Michigan built up a big lead playing very impressive basketball. This lead was needed as Clemson applied pressure all over the floor causing the hard won lead to evaporate.
The UTEP game on the other hand looked like a Saturday Y game where everyone throws structure out the window. The young Michigan team seemed to enjoy running back and forth with the Miners, but this did not work one bit. Bad threes, bad ball handling, and letting UTEP get easy buckets led to a defeat that may be harmful to any tournament chances.
Harvard is triumphed by some as a great comeback, but Michigan refused to take care of the ball and take good shots, including getting the ball in the paint, for most of the game. Yes, Harvard is decent, but OSU or MSU takes these guys out by 25 or more.
One troubling observation is that regardless of the new cast of characters, Michigan is displaying the same previous deficiencies. The shot selection for three pointers needs to be much better; just because you can does not mean you should. Harvard was a great case in point, where the maize guys threw up several before hitting one. Yes, Stu Douglass nailed some threes that without Michigan looses. But the team did not work the ball in against the one and only big guy for Harvard and settled for 22 footers that were reasonably guarded. Guarded or not the three point percentage is hovering around 31%, far short of the 35 percent needed to even consider threes a viable offensive option.
This team is not good at handling the ball and dribbling for an extended amount of time. Morris is ok and that is that. Many unforced errors from passing or ball handling placed Michigan in jeopardy of losing to Harvard. There are two ways to beat backcourt pressure: dribble or pass over the top. UM passes to the side and the dribbling is insufficient against good defenders. Two one-handed, non-fundamental passes created turnovers that almost doomed Michigan against Harvard.
Michigan should be a good foul shooting team, better than the 67% currently demonstrated.
On the good side, I believe Michigan is playing better defense. The reason is the man-to-man. Having all these freshman play the 1-3-1 is a recipe for having the defense broke in half for easy baskets. Morris and Novak are playing pretty good defense. One explanation for Novak’s poor shooting is that the guy is banging on bigger people, putting a hip check on guys down low, rebounding with the trees, and running all over the place trying to get open. That can take the legs away quickly. I believe even at 6’4, it may be better to post Novak and let him get offensive rebounds and garbage points. After all, there is no shortage of 3-point shooters on this team.
For the same reasons, the rebounding is a little better. Still, some of Michigan’s guys play soft and easily have the ball taken away.
How good can this team be? Good enough to play tough teams close, or on a bad night bad enough to lose by twenty. I still stick to 12-16 as the window for wins. Anything over 18 and Coach Beilein gets well-deserved accolades. Will age improve this team down the road? Yes, such improvement is a real possibility. But the great inside player may do more to help than maturity.
The hunt for the inside game is still in progress, as is the hunt for a true center assuming Michigan wants one.
Written by GBMWolverine Staff
Go Blue — Wear Maize!