Final Four 2018: Michigan vs. Villanova Discussion Thread

Teske will be fine. He is another kid who just needs time and to feel comfy. He can shoot and I bet he hits 20 or more threes s next year and develops nice offense. He just needs confidence. Not all kids hsfe the mental swag of wGner of Poole. ,

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I have been impressed with Teske’s development over the course of the season. I thought his last few games weren’t as clean as others, but he still did well.

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I wonder the same thing. He wasn’t playing poorly or anything, he was just so quiet on offense.

He never seemed like the same player after he sprained his ankle at Northwestern. He was much more active before then.

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Back from the game where I will eat some sad pizza I ordered from some sketchy place. The Days Inn smells funny in San Antonio.

Lots of thoughts on the game, just seemed like a bummer of a missed opportunity. 15 minutes in and the big takeaway is that we are right there athletically with the other team. We just couldn’t make any of the shots. Any of them.

Everyone was terrified to shoot at a certain point except Moe and maybe Jordan, who lost his mind in other ways. I can’t imagine what could be easier to defend than a team where Charles is like, not willing to pull up from 15 with lots of room. Duncan going out with a bagel really hurts.

Mostly, I want to say that if you’ve never seen a basketball game in a stadium, wow. It SUCKS. I’ve never seen a basketball game in that setting before. It’s a ridiculous setting. The baskets are in the middle of nowhere. The backboard has ZERO context. I think it’s awesome that you play an entire year to determine who gets to the final four under normal circumstances and then you play for the championship on the moon. It’s terrific.

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Complete disappearance. Absolutely zero threat on offense since then. No confidence to do anything but shoot that corner 3 and if the first one misses, forget it. Not mad at him, not down on him, it’s just deeply disappointing to think what might have been in that game if he had continued a normal progression during the season. He could have been a real piece in this matchup, but instead he’s just a total non option right now on offense.

I still think the 2 weeks off after the BTT tournament hurt us. Crazy we actually made it to the championship game when we honestly played sluggish in all but 1 of the games. We were playing our best basketball by far at the end of the regular season/BTT, much better than in the ncaa’s.

Yes, but I can’t convey what a beautiful setting MSG is for great basketball and good shooting and what a bizarro nether space the Alamodome is. Brutal. So I think the MSG team might have been able to just play through and kick some tail, but I can’t say with any confidence these shooters would ever have been able to cope with that shooting backdrop.

Livers hasn’t even really looked to shoot that much, it seems like in weeks. I know that he is doing other things and helping play tough defense, but the lack of a threat on offense probably doesn’t help overall.

Interesting. Never really thought too much about the game in terms of the context of the stadium, just from watching it on TV. Seems like something all the teams would gave to deal with, so any disadvantage would even itself out.

Honestly, it looks to me like a setting where the team with the most pros wins.

It’s not a setting for college basketball.

Makes it seem straightforward to me why we were ultimately able to overwhelm Loyola.

Just gonna dump some thoughts out bc I can’t sleep. Obviously still in the moment so maybe hot takish.

Still disappointed they didn’t go back to Robinson in the first half with two fouls. I’m usually ok with beileins auto bench especially bc I don’t think most people (mgoblog) who have a problem with it, don’t factor in that players with foul trouble don’t play defense the same way. However, tonight I thought going in Michigan needed to outscore nova to win. Defense wasn’t going to matter that much. Michigan needed it’s best offensive lineup on the court for as long as it could possibly have it.

Not sure it really mattered as Michigan couldn’t get Robinson a lot of looks. But do wonder if he gets that wide open three late first half instead of livers, and makes it, does that end of half play out differently? And is there some momentum going into the half? Just felt like Michigan went down without giving firing every bullet they had. Same thing goes for benching rahkman late in the first half.

I do think we saw some of the give back for the improvement on defense this season. It was clear that these guys gave everything they had to defend nova. And overall they did a terrific job. But it’s hard to get precision offensive play on top of that. Wagner was gassed for much of game. Matthews as well made a couple plays, particularly passes, where I think his lack of energy caused poor passes. It’s tough to score when you have to rely on a couple guys to make plays. You could see a big difference with nova where Brunson or bridges could take offensive plays off and let divicenzo or others make things happen. Unfortunately Michigan needed everything from Wagner, rahk, Matthews and got very little from anyone else.

I would say maybe Poole should have gotten more run in favor of Simpson but his decision making was awful tonight. Ultimately Michigan just didn’t have enough fire power from all five spots on the floor to hang in this game.

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I don’t buy that shooting back drop thing. I did notice both teams seem to struggle shooting from the corners but overall don’t think it mattered. Biggest difference tonight was that nova had threats to make plays all over the floor and Michigan only had threats at a couple positions.

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To each their own. I’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve been playing and watching basketball for around 40 years. They’re a million miles better than I ever dreamed of being, so who knows how it is for them, but that looked like an unimaginably terrible backdrop. In HS, we played at one or two gyms that had weird spacing and backboards that lacked context. I found it unbelievably hard to adjust to. Like shooting on the moon.

Yea I’m not saying it’s impossible it was a factor. Just that I think the biggest difference we saw was a team that had more playmakers than the other team. It’s not like this was a game where Michigan lost bc the other team had a bunch of huge, athletes that lived at the rim and Michigan missed threes. They lost bc nova had more offensive weapons.

That’s where my feeling that the most pros win in that setting comes in. Because they had more weapons than us and a much greater diversity of attack. I’m not sure, but I’d be surprised if anyone on Nova didn’t have a dreadful shooting night outside of layups besides DiVincenzo. We have guys who are nice pieces if their shot is going down and then they can do some other things, but if they can’t shoot, they’re not hard to defend. Admittedly, we’ve had other bad shooting nights this year, but the guys seemed pretty spooked and like I said, I can’t imagine shooting at a backboard with just acres of space around it. I mean, obviously, that’s what a blacktop is in some circumstances, but this is different as it’s inside and there’s just so much dead space around the backboard. It might also be something you really need to get used to.

https://umhoops.com/2018/04/03/photo-gallery-villanova-79-michigan-62/

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It was a great atmosphere. That building was 70% Michigan. I have zero regrets of making this trip. If there was ever an overachieving team at Michigan to make the run this was it. Such a pleasure to follow these kids. Zero points from the Duncan/Livers combo wasn’t going to cut it…not to mention having DiVincenzo coming off the the bench for 31 breaking the record of, guess who, Luke Hancock. Whether Wagner comes back or not Minneapolis in 2019 isn’t a crazy thought. Believe in Beilein.

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For some reason, Disqus isn’t working for me to comment on the game recap, but holy sh*t Dylan and co; you guys put out SO much amazing content the last month, and really the whole season. We know how much time, effort, and energy all of this work takes and I know I speak for all readers when I say we really appreciate it. The content has greatly improved, especially the past couple years, and the community here really enriches following this team. It also helps that the group was very easy to root for and follow, led by a world-class man and coach. We are all so lucky. Amazing season. Can’t wait to read and follow along for many more years to come. Go Blue!

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Seems like some sort of disqus outage.

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