South Carolina vs. Syracuse on Saturday at Barclays, SMU at USC on Friday.
Think both games will kind of give a perspective of how good those respective teams are. Obviously won’t tell us everything, but at least another data point.
At this point, we need South Carolina and smu to win. I’m more sold on South Carolina but I feel both teams will be dancing this year.
Yeah, always good for teams you play to win. I think SMU should do pretty well in the American, supposedly they really beat up on Texas in a scrimmage – which doesn’t seem as impressive now.
I guess I was surprised to see South Carolina picked so far down in the SEC, I think TV said they were projected 7th? That’s despite Thornwell being a first team All-SEC guy and finishing T3 last year. KenPom is a little higher on them, but overall they seem like a pretty good team. The young bigs seemed solid to me and I think that was supposed to be the ?mark.
I do hope South Carolina ends up being better than projected. Last night’s performance was more depressing than recent road blowouts at Arizona and SMU because unlike those teams, SC might not actually be very good.
I still hold out hope for the UCLA game – they don’t seem like a defensively-oriented squad and Pauley isn’t a very tough road environment – but with their size and talent, it could get UGLY.
Honestly UCLA is nothing like South Carolina. They can put up points, but they damn sure aren’t going to defend like that.
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Looking at our schedule, @UCLA looks to be the only game we may lose. i predicted we would lose one of the other games and as bad as Texas has looked, no reason we should lose that game. No way UCLA defends like South Carolina did, they can score a lot of points just like we can. Should be a fun game to watch.
Virginia Tech will be a good test, that’s another one to watch this afternoon against New Mexico – best opponent they’ve faced. Last year they got to the FT line more than anybody and were bad on the defensive glass. This year they are getting what appears to be layups and dominating the defensive glass, curious how they look against a better team.
I was bummed that a denying, extended defense didn’t get punished by beilein’s Princeton principles. That offense should back door cut spread defenses apart.
If we shoot 40/18/80 as a team vs scar though (which is not good) we might be in a different place today.
Why wouldn’t you hold hope for the UCLA game? Weird to lose hope already.
Virginia Tech is taking it to New Mexico. Ahmed Hill looks like he’s made some improvements. Winnable game for Michigan but will be a tougher test than South Carolina.
I disagree. I think we’ve played our toughest game of the year. No one we will play plays like South Carolina. There are better teams we will play but that matchup was not good for us at all.
The problem is they will still be facing teams with more talent eg. UCLA. Maybe Michigan will slow the game down but UCLA has a lot of options to score, push the pace and they don’t mind if you get some transition buckets because it will just push the pace. Lonzo Ball will be a tough guard for Michigan, Walton is giving up 5-6 inches so Ball can see over him and shoot over him. Maybe Walton guards Alford but he’s still not an easy guard. I am not sure if this is a narrative or not but there isn’t a single soul a month ago that would have said South Carolina was going to be their toughest game. If there was an individual that said that please find him.
What was predicted a month ago doesn’t really matter right now. South Carolina is a good team. People had Texas ranked top 20 and they may lose 15 games. Predictions don’t matter, how you play does. It may not be our toughest game but it’s definitely the second behind ucla then. I think that game at South Carolina will be the hardest non conference game we play.
Things change (much like your opinion on Aubrey Dawkins defense).
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Just as your prediction on Wisconsin last year going down the crapper. Might want to take a lap on that one.
Isn’t that the point here? Predictions are fun and all but the results of the games show a lot more about a team than predictions do.
No, hail’s was a prediction–everyone has hits and misses on those. Your’s was an opinion about a player which changed from when he was on the team (his defense sucked) to when he was off the team (he wasn’t so bad), apparently so that Beilein would look bad in both instances (he was playing a bad defensive player and couldn’t coach defense to he couldn’t keep his players).
And as to whether anyone would have said that South Carolina would be Michigan’s toughest test a month ago, no that might well have been SMU (assuming we advanced), you know, the team we beat by 22.
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Not even close to the same lol.
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I think saying South Carolina will be their toughest matchup is just a way to rationalize a horrible performance. Just as I said South Carolina game Michigan would need to close out on their shooters and the quick response I got is don’t draw anything from that because they played awful teams. So South Carolina plays awful teams and slams Michigan and we are ready to anoint South Carolina as a real good team? Seems like a leap maybe South Carolina will be better than the preseason 10th place prediction in the SEC that doesn’t mean they’re a real good team.
Real good team is a bit much but we will know more tomorrow when they play against Syracuse.