Hunter ain’t beating out Murray.
Hmm…he does have a lead given all of his empty Iowa stats against cupcakes. It may depend on how both teams play down the stretch. If Hunter averages 20-10 and Michigan finds a way to make the tournament while Iowa keeps crumbling and Murray struggles against good teams it will be close. Lots of basketball left.
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Are voters supposed to take non conference into account?
They should, but voters should take into account the SOS of Keegan Murray. Not that I’m taking a side, it’s just something I hope voters would consider.
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I know everyone loves to post in game threads how Michigan doesn’t have a “bucket getter” or a pull-up guard. MSU is a pretty good example of how it is very possible to be a great offensive team without one (for the record, Michigan is too in a lot of ways).
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A little late to build the roster around transition offense and make that a core tenet of the program.
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Building a good basketball team with zero players who can make shots off the dribble is like running a 5k without shoes. Can you do it without them? Yes. Would it be a lot easier if you had them? Yes.
Last year’s Michigan team was a top-10 offense that was similar. I don’t think transition is the only way.
I just think it’s an interesting dynamic of how offenses are designed. Teams like Minnesota and Illinois shoot a ton of shots off the dribble. Teams like Michigan and Michigan State don’t.
Not sure what the results of this will be, but my real thing is that teams should try to shoot a lot more OTD 3s than 2s. I’m going to try to run those stats next.
Building off of this… MSU actually takes a lot more OTD shots than Michigan in general and has the fourth lowest ratio of OTD threes to twos.
That’s a stat that I think is worth tracking… No surprise who is at the top (Alabama, Oral Roberts) but in the Big Ten the top schools are Illinois and Purdue.
Also Minnesota is somehow shooting 47% on off the dribble twos. Thats’ a ridiculous stat.
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Last year, Michigan’s offense had so many different ways to do it. And also a defense to fall back on when none of those ways were working. This year, it feels like Michigan has two ways to do it on offense - Hunter goes crazy scoring or Hunter goes crazy passing - and no defense to fall back on when those aren’t working.
Yeah, last year Michigan had a top 5 defense and was a top 5 team in the country. This year it has a top-100 defense. I feel like that point is unrelated to the discussion about offense.
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I think you still need rim pressure if you don’t have off-the-dribble scorers. and there’s not enough of that. Franz could provide that with his long arms (esp going right.) Smith had some speed. Eli could do that thing where he starts to drive before the pass gets to him.
There’s players that could eventually provide that with more development (skill and athletic): Frankie, Kobe. Right now you have Eli, Devante and Caleb that are just okay when it comes to pressuring the rim.
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I think it never hurts to note (unless maybe you are Fran McCaffrey) that it’s not just about what kind of offense you run or what kind of offensive talents your players have.
Not following your response here.
I think last year’s Michigan team and this year’s MSU team are examples of how teams can build great offenses without a “bucket getter”. Both teams had a go-to staple (Michigan was Hunter, MSU is transition) and then both teams put 4 shooters on the floor that could beat you if you leave them alone.
Michigan this year still has a good offense in part because of Hunter and in part because of Juwan. But I think the closer analog is Juwan’s first team or maybe Beilein’s last team. There were some shooters, but not as many, and scoring was harder.
In other words, Dylan is right that you can have a great offense without a bucket getter, but that team better have more balance. If you’re going to put a group of non-shooters out there more often, having a bucket getter like Iggy or Stauskas or Burke may be needed. It is also true that if you have a good defense it doesn’t matter as much. These subtle limitations of the offense become apparent when your defense sucks.
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This is a great way to put it but I think it’s important to note that there are different ways to put pressure on the rim. Hunter Dickinson puts pressure on the rim. Zavier Simpson put pressure on the rim. The ability to get the ball into the paint and draw multiple defenders is the big key.
There are also other paths like someone with elite deep 3-point range off the bounce… that spaces out the defense so much that everyone can drive.
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These guys are all very different as far as how they scored. Iggy was not a create his own shot guy.
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NW taking it to Rutgers!
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Painful to watch NW melt down… can they hold on?
I really hate Tom Izzo’s guts
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