Five takeaways from Michigan's open practice

That’s what i’m saying. He was a stud from the BTT to the NCAA championship game. Divi lit us up, oh well.
Simpson was still a MAJOR piece why we got there.

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Ah, so after the “irrational shitting on Iggy” thread from awhile back you’ve returned to lead the irrational shitting on Simpson thread.

a) Nobody has a 0% chance of playing in the NBA. Duncan Robinson made it to the NBA. Duncan Robinson.

b) I’d understand where you were coming from with the NBA stuff, but to try and diminish his role in leading Michigan to the championship game is flat out absurd. What got Michigan there? Defense. Who carried the defense by consistently shutting down the best perimeter players we faced? Simpson.

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After last night’s practice I came away pretty convinced that Simpson’s not going to need to be a key offensive weapon at all for this team to be successful. His distribution looked good, his drives were nice as ever, and he found Teske well, the defense is going to be there, and there’s going to be three players on the court at all times that are able to get their shots. Does he have an improved jumper? Honestly, not really that I saw. Does that fill me with great confidence? No, not really. Am I super concerned though? No definitely not. Brooks offers a change of pace. If Simpson can hit his free throws, that is what I would appreciate more than anything.

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Basketball is about mismatches. Unfortunately Simpson has numerous vulnerabilities that get exposed when “locking down” physically superior athletes. This is not news.

DiVincenzo ate him up every time he was on him in that game. He also gets physically overwhelmed consistently by stronger guards on straight line bull rushes to the rim. Just overmatched.

I love how he competes and plays passing lanes that result in many deflections and steals. This leads to run outs that are productive for us.

I’m not in the camp that he is even remotely a lock down defender, but he is a bulldog competitor on the team I support. I like that.

As Dylan has often said, it is nearly impossible to quantify defensive statistics individually. Defense is inherently dependent on help and reliant on the whole.

I admire your dedication to “Simpson Stats”, but unless you’ve broken down every individual Simpson defensive possession and others when someone else is on “his opponent”, is it really that reflective of him as an individual defender?

I root for him and my team religiously, but it’s not like the kid doesn’t have warts. If he can’t improve his offensive production this year from three and the FT line, then we’re at a disadvantage nightly going forward.

He shot .154 from deep in the tournament and lead us in turnovers.

Our offense during the tournament was horrible. What would it have been without Wagner’s threat?

Teams are going to pack it in relentlessly this year, negating our slashers. If we can’t space the floor successfully it’s going to be really tough.

JB’s has had 3 years to “fix” Simpson’s shot. Hopefully it manifests itself into results this year.

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He was on a cold streak and obviously led in turnovers as the team’s primary playmaker. Neither of these things seem relevant.

It’s hard to quantify individual defense. That said, when you have a 26 game sample, and the guy Simpson is principally tasked with guarding averages substantially below his efficiency rating, that’s not just help and reliance on the whole, especially given the roster of guys he played and their overall performance. That stat is significant. If you want, take Simpson (and even Michigan) out of this and substitute Cassius Winston–Winston’s defensive stats under the same formula were significantly worse than those of many/virtually all of his teammates. It isn’t that they helped others more than they helped Winston, or that the whole of the same team was somehow better for others than it was for Winston, it’s because Winston is a crappy defender. Period. Stats aren’t a be all and end all, but you can’t just ignore a significant game sample because it doesn’t fit with where you want to go.

Simpson has plenty of warts, mostly related to shooting. He can’t shoot from the perimeter, can’t shoot off the dribble, and can’t shoot from the line. If some/all of those don’t get better, they will harm us offensively going forward, and did so last year. However, that doesn’t have a thing to do with whether he can play defense. Nik Stauskas couldn’t guard me when he was at Michigan. Our defense suffered from it. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t the best offensive player in the conference as a sophomore.

I would love to have a PG play offense like Stauskas and defense like, well, Simpson. We don’t have that–in fact, the only PG in the league who even approximates that kind of balance at a high level is Cowen of Maryland. We don’t have him either. Until we get someone who can do it all, you find the guy who has strengths, play to them, and try to minimize his weaknesses.

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Let’s hope his offensive ineptitude has improved, and his lock down defensive abilities expand.

@chezaroo I respect a lot of your takes, you keep our fandom grounded at times which is necessary. I’m with you that Simpson is a lackluster shooter, but I do think that you underrate (or go out of your way to not discuss) the leadership that X brings to the team and how important that will be this year.

We need a floor general this year, more than ever, and I am more than comfortable that he is that guy - shooting be damned. I don’t think he is so detrimental that it becomes 4-on-5, because he can drive and dish, and I think he does see the floor well in the halfcourt even if he can’t execute as a scoring PG. You’re 100% correct that, if I’m an opposing defense, I’m packing the lane and making UM beat you shooting the ball (never thought I’d say that!!). But I do think he’s an above average finisher at the rim, and if the FT% increases to that 65-70% range we all hope, he’ll provide a lot more value than you’re giving him credit for.

I think he’s somewhere between Rondo and Tum-Tum during their college years, and that probably leads to being a non-NBA player. But I don’t think we can underscore how important he was to our change in philosophy last year, or how important he will be to our success this year.

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I never underestimate leadership as a variable in developing a team. In a lot of ways Z reminds me of Mateen Cleaves in that regard. (Another non shooter)

I just gotta believe he improves offensively this year. How can he not realistically? He was so bad last season.

He’s brought a mindset (along with Matthews) that is infectious on the defensive end of the court.

Do I think he is capable of consistently locking down an opponents best scoring guard? No I do not.

I think he is very vulnerable to physical mismatches that expose his limitations. Whether this edition of the B1G is equipped to do so is unknown.

I’m sure my skepticism will have people playing close attention to how his individual defense plays out game by game. Activate Simpson D Meter!!

It’s good that our forum conversations spawn debate and differences of opinion. There are a lot of passionate knowledgeable posters here.

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Looking forward to the Simpson D Meter.

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We didn’t get to the championship game with great shooting, that’s for sure.

We won a National Championship with a starter who played great defense and seldom attempted a shot.

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We also led the nation and set the Big Ten record in FG% that year.

There’s no Glen Rice on this team, unfortunately. The man shot 52% on 5 3-pt attempts per game.

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I think the 1989 Championship team not only led the nation, and set the Big Ten record for FG%, but shot the second highest FG % for a season in NCAA history!

I’ll have to rewatch it, but I honestly don’t remember him guarding DiVencenzio once during the title game.

I also recall very few examples of guys “bullying” Simpson. That happened a few times his freshman year, but I don’t remember it much last year. I do remember him coming into the UCLA game and completely locking down Holliday, who had been scoring at will before Z started guarding him. And he did a very solid job on Brunson, too.

But I am looking forward to seeing how your negative views on Iggy play out. All the early news is that he’s playing very well and has a good shot to start from the outset.

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I believe M Go Tweeters comment back in the Villanova open thread was:

“Unfortunately DiVincenzo lit him up like a Christmas tree.”

Having a twenty post argument about whether someone loves Simpson sufficiently seems pretty silly, especially when the initial offending comment is to state a sub-6 foot guard won’t make the NBA. (Yes, all sort of things can happen - I can win the lottery). I’m not sure what invoking the 6’3” Eric Snow - a defensive stopper in a wildly different stylist era of the NBA - is supposed to say.

He’s a good college PG. We all like him. But saying “he’s not as good an offensive player as Jalen Rose”, “Mo Wagner was our best player”, “Simpson is too short to be a pro”…are we seriously arguing about this?

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I mean it seems pretty clear this thread took off when Simpson’s role in the tourney run was way undervalued and that the discussion surrounding that makes up the majority of comments.

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I feel like it’s very misleading to view Simpson’s role in the tourney run in a sense of “he led us to a national championship”. Yes he was the starting point guard, is a great team leader, and the team played in the national championship. But if you made a list of individual factors that led to that occurring, Simpson’s individual performance is not high on that list.

If Jordan Poole air balls that game-winning shot, the narrative on Simpson instead is:

Zavier Simpson averaged 4.5 points, 4 assists, 2.5 turnovers, 50% from FT, 20% from three and 30% from the floor in two tournament games, while the opposing point guards he faced scored 15 points (Montana) and 23 points (Houston).

I would put the factors of why this team made the title game in this order:

  1. Incredibly easy draw of Montana, Houston, Texas A&M, Florida State and Loyola
  2. Phenomenal team defense (Simpson was a big part of this but not the only part)
  3. Moe Wagner’s presence and performances
  4. The best string of performances we got from Charles Matthews all year
  5. Poise and experience as a team

So yes, Simpson “led us to national championship” and obviously had an important role on a big ten champion, national runner-up team. He also is a player with some extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses, and I would argue not close to the top point guards in the conference or in JB’s tenure at Michigan. It feels like for some reason he is too polarizing of a player for people to find middle ground between the two.

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