THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

Sometimes you eat the 58% three-point shooting and sometimes the 58% three-point shooting eats you, I guess. Michigan's home loss to Iowa puts them on the bubbliest of bubble seats, which I guess is appropriate when you can neither win nor lose more than one game in a row for a solid month.

Michigan's destiny has flipped to W, and boy howdy are they going to need it. A loss at OSU likely demands a three-or-four game run at the Big Ten tournament to make the field. Get another quad 1 win and get to 11-9 in conference play, and you're feeling pretty good. Michigan's tournament starts Sunday.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

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No changes.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

Zed Key and Kyle Young both missed the Michigan State game, leaving Joey Brunk to pick up 33 minutes (and go 7/10 from two!). Key rolled his ankle against Maryland and has been in a walking boot; Young left the Nebraska game after eight minutes with an illness. Seems like Young is more likely to be available than Key.

We gave Branham a star.

THE THEM

Updates from the first preview:

• EJ Liddell's shooting has regressed a bit; he's shooting 52/38 in Big Ten play and also racking up tons of FTAs. Moussa Diabate was able to force Liddell into a lot of tough fadeaway jumpers in the first game, but Liddell made ~all of them. Liddell's third in the Big Ten in block rate, so don't underestimate his defensive presence despite a relative lack of size.
• Malaki Branham has blown up of late, torching Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and MSU with a combination of pull-up shooting and the ability to get to the FT line,where he's hitting 83%. Now shooting 54/47 in Big Ten play and beginning to show up in the first round of NBA mock drafts. Branham had middling performances against Maryland and Nebraska in OSU's inexplicable losses to those teams. He was relatively quiet in the first game between these teams.
• Eugene Brown returned to the starting lineup in the Michigan game and has started since. He is ice cold from three and picking up only the odd bucket on a cut or putback inside the arc. Extremely low usage implies he's in there mostly for defense.
• Zed Key's minutes had been dwindling to 16-18 for recent games; he still starts when healthy but Kyle Young had been getting starters' minutes over him. Joey Brunk, as mentioned, got 33 minutes against MSU in their absences and put up 18 on 12 shooting possessions with a couple TOs and steals. That was his first meaningful time since 2020, when he was at Indiana. Brunk is a relatively capable finesse big on offense who has a reputation as an extremely bad defender, though the last time we checked was in 2019 when Brunk's on/off splits at Butler featured an eyepopping ten point boost in opponent twos when he was on the floor.

THE TEMPO FREE

Conference numbers:

OSU is proficient shooting from inside, outside, and at the line; they are relatively iso/post-up heavy and don't rely on a playmaking guard to generate shots. Their PNR usage is pretty low for a modern college team. They're pretty slow on offense; Synergy has just 10% of their possessions in transition, which is half of Iowa's rate.

OSU is really good off the dribble and 98th percentile at the short jumpers that Liddell and Branham are proficient at. For the Nth consecutive game Michigan's general lack of back-court athleticism is going to result in a hope-they-miss kind of game.

THE KEYS

as per tradition here is Zavier Simpson against opposition player Joey Brunk [Campredon]

I mean, hope they miss. OSU's going to take a bunch of (semi) contested mid-range jumpers and they're either going to fall or not. These are now good shots against this Michigan team. This season has completely warped my understanding of basketball and I'm going to go live in a cave.

Thunk Brunk. OSU would be operating at a deficit against Hunter Dickinson even if their two center-type guys are available. If it's 33 minutes of Brunk, Dickinson needs 40 shots, or at least 40 combined shots and kickouts to open threes. If I had to guess I'd say Young is probably going to be available, but even if he is that's probably 15-20 minutes of The Brunkening.

You might want to think about hedging. Sort of hate myself for suggesting this but OSU has moved much of its PNR initiation from Jamari Wheeler (not scary) to Branham (very scary). The prospect of a 6-foot-nothing guy chasing over screens and trying to affect Branham as he either attacks the rim or pulls up is not appealing. Mixing up your screen coverages could help. Or it could result in getting split and dunks.

The other option is zone, and that's probably going to get a run out at some point too. But this is a potential area where drop coverage is not goin to do it for you.

Paging the mercurial Mr. Diabate. Diabate went from making Keegan Murray work for his points and stuffing him in a trash can on the other end to Murray putting up 23 on just 12 shooting possessions and going 2/9 from the floor despite five OREBs. He got pulled a bit more than usual. Now he's got EJ Liddell again. He did reasonably well for himself in the first game, NBA-level shots notwithstanding. More of the same here or Michigan's going to be in trouble.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

OSU by 3.