THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

Well: at least Wisconsin is bad. The Badgers are coming off a loss to Nebraska that seriously dents their tourney hopes; those hopes are largely because of a bunch of extremely narrow wins. The Badgers slid by Dayton 43-42,—ugh—beat USC by five, pipped Marquette, Iowa, and Penn State in OT, and have three-to-five point wins over Minnesota, Penn State (again), and Ohio State. They've also lost two OT games and four other games by four or fewer points. What I'm trying to say here is that Wisconsin is playing an inordinate number of really close games and winning a bit more than their share. They're just inside the top 100 in Kenpom's luck stat.

Let me just put my hairshirt on before I check Michigan's number… ah. Yes. A nice, round 300. Seppuku for everyone.

Anyway: this version of the Badgers is very good defensively, ugly offensively, and plays the slowest possible version of the game, like prime Virginia slow. This is another reason for the close games. You could probably not watch this game and your appeal in front of the Fandom Endurance committee would be upheld. But you're here, so let's get some Badgers in your face.

Not like that, Brad Davison! Go sell insurance!

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Same, same.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

Wisconsin is healthy, but in this case the last two guys on the bench are bit players to the extreme.

THE THEM

Wahl isn't as skinny anymore but also not exactly a lead dog [Campredon]

You don't see this often: Wisconsin's highest-usage player has the worst ORTG amongst the starters. That would be 6'9" power forward Tyler Wahl, who's sort of a slasher but doesn't have the quicks to actually beat people to the basket and ends up taking a bunch of heavily contested layups. Almost half his shots are at the rim and he creates most of them; he's only hitting 59% once there. Since his midrange game is trash—25%—he ends up hitting 43% of his twos. He is also 61% from the line and 25% from three. That adds up to an 89 ORTG, which is three points worse than Dug McDaniel.

This situation says volumes about the rest of the team and their ability to generate shots. IE: they can't.

Wahl is a mobile, lanky guy who contributes a ton to Wisconsin's excellent defense and will likely draw Jett Howard. Wahl's the rare collegian who has the size to bother Howard's shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWyfD1f8MI

Center Steven Crowl is a paint big who has the size to contest Hunter Dickinson at 7'0, 245. He's been relatively successful defending the block. Synergy has just 47 possessions and while opponents are hitting 51% on post-ups they're also booting the ball out of bounds a quarter of the time. That may not have a whole lot to do with Crowl, but Wisconsin is clever about doubling and will come from unexpected spots. FWIW, Synergy now has a shot quality metric that believes Crowl has been unfortunate to give up as many buckets as he has.

Offensively, Crowl lives in the post, where he's been reasonably effective at 0.94 points per possession. He's had no dropoff against higher level competition and will no doubt be given a healthy diet of post-ups early as Wisconsin tries to make Dickinson work on defense and possibly pick up some fouls. Crowl is not much of a shooter. The large bulk of his other twos are post hooks; he's 61% at the line and a career 29% three-point shooter.

Point guard Chucky Hepburn is on a crazy heater from outside, hitting 46% from deep with a third of those pull-ups. He's the rare kind of player who has a three-point hit rate ten points higher(!!!) than his work inside the arc. Hepburn is Travis Trice. Wisconsin point guard, super-dangerous shooter, turns into a pumpkin if you run him off the line. Or guard him. Hepburn has a massive gap between his unguarded catch and shoot opportunities (1.6 PPP), his guarded ones (1.0), and his pull-up game (0.8).

The bad news here is that Michigan's defense has been frustratingly prone to falling asleep and giving Hepburn types looks they absolutely should not get. Michigan left Miller Kopp open three times and was fortunate to only suffer one triple. The trick for Michigan is to run Hepburn off the line such that he doesn't have a straight line drive to the basket, because if Michigan lets Hepburn get free buckets that's hugely damaging. My man is 41% at the rim. Make him work for it and you're probably going to have a good time.

Freshman guard Connor Essegian is Just A Shooter; he's hitting 43% from deep. His 2:1 ratio of threes to twos is not extreme but also he's hitting the exact same percentage inside and out: that makes you Just A Shooter.

Finally, Wofford transfer Max Klesmit is more or less the same as Essegian except he's a little more effective inside the arc and a little less outside of it. The lack of assists, TOs, FTs is all Just A Shooter material but Klesmit takes more twos than threes. He gets to the rack some and is not good once there. These guys are background radiation types.

The Wisconsin bench is two guys, more or less:

• Jordan Davis is sort of like Kris Murray, in that he went to college with his twin brother and his brother is now in the NBA while he plays in college. In other ways he is not like Kris Murray, because Kris Murray is very good at basketball. Davis is… ok. Davis gets about 60% of Wisconsin minutes and operates as the fourth or fifth option when he's on the court; his notable statistic is that he's third in the country in TO rate. He's shooting 50/32 with a small majority of his shots from deep.,
• Carter Gilmore plays half of UW minutes and gets up about 11% of UW shots. If it's at the rim it is a good idea. If it is away from the rim it is a very bad idea. Gilmore should have an earth-spanning brick on the chart above. He's mostly there to play defense and occasionally catch a sleeping defender on a cut.
• Markus Ilver, Isaac Lindsey, and Kamari McGee may make cameo appearances of 1-4 minutes.

THE TEMPO FREE

This is kind of always Wisconsin, but yeesh Wisconsin:

Even more yeesh: they're way down in the 300s at 2P% and FT%, which is weird for a team that can shoot from deep. I guess only two guys are responsible for the shooting from deep and neither really gets to the line. As you might imagine, they get off a lot of threes. They get fewer looks at the rim than any Big Ten team except for Penn State.

Defensively, Wisconsin plays the same style of hands up, no easy ones, responsible rotations, etc., that they've always played. No individual numbers jump out other than blocks—Wisconsin gets none—and assists—the opposition gets few.

THE KEYS

OBVIOUS ONE. For the love of God, do everything you can to prevent Essegian and Hepburn from launching threes.

Dug bait. Wisconsin ends up forcing a lot of PNR ball handler possessions with drop coverage. This is generally good for any defense since PNR ballhandler shots are usually pull-ups or floaters or runners or contested layups; it is consistently one of the worst PPP options in Synergy. Michigan has a PG who is shooting 37% from two. If McDaniel ends up taking PNR ballhandler shots that means Michigan has run out of ideas on a possession.

Can they check Jett? Howard has been excellent at creating something out of nothing, whether it's via pull-ups or swooping "I'm six eight" layups. Here he gets a test against a very good defensive team that has a player the right shape and size to bother him in ways that a 6'5" guy will not.

Has Crowl caught up at all? Last year's game against Wisconsin was a Badger blowout because Michigan was 4/25 from three, on largely excellent looks. Dickinson was 9/14 against Crowl, who did not take many twos (just five). If Dickinson's gone backwards, Crowl seems to have progressed a bit. Evening that out will help Wisconsin significantly, particularly if Crowl is able to D-up Dickinson one-on-one.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

Michigan by 1. Boy do I hate this gimmick now, because predicting Michigan to win a one point basketball game is some kinda crazy.