Game 11: Western Michigan at Michigan Preview

It seems over the last few games, that as our offense has picked up, our defense has slacked off. It would be nice to see the regulars perform at a high level in this game, especially in the first half.

Dugan finished with his right on every post-up in that clip. He is looking to finish over his left shoulder; I am sure Teske (and whoever else plays at the 5) will be very aware of that tendency and play him accordingly.

Beilein was pretty furious after the South Carolina game that they couldn’t follow that scouting report on Silva, FWIW.

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How can anybody be 3-40 from three? Wow.

Sorry – typo. 3-of-20 from three. He’s also 6-of-41 from the floor overall though.

Not a shooter.

Bigs haven’t followed that scouting report going back to at least Derrick Nix, save Senior Jordan Morgan

Impressive to get up 41 shots with that sort of inaccuracy though!

He’s a shooter…not a scorer!

Most of those misses were hoisted just to see if he was still badly off. The opposite of a heat check. A cold check.

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It would be nice to jump on them early so that we have a comfortable lead and Beilein feels okay about giving the young guys some real minutes and not just garbage time. I’d love to see Johns and Dejulius get some time with the rotational guys rather than just the disorganized mess at the ends of games.

Hoping Johns and DDJ can get some quality minutes in this one.

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And Davis, I would add.

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Yes, given that WMU plays a 7-footer, this seems like an important chance for Austin to prove he can provide some defensive resistance in the post without fouling and execute the P&R on offense.

I would be extremely impressed if Johns could defend the big Bronc - I don’t expect that at all.

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I wouldn’t expect it either, but hopefully we’ll be able to let him try. Sometimes it takes some getting pushed around to learn how not to get pushed around.

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After watching all of our defensive possessions against USC yesterday, I will be interested to see how we look on that end today, after a week of practice. In the second half especially, the guys were very sloppy; made some uncharacteristic mistakes, including botched switches, straight line drives, and poor post D. The post D was more about positioning on the catch, rather than bad defense once the post player caught the ball. That will be my focus with Dugan, as he doesn’t do any fancy once he catches the ball, but usually catches with very deep positioning.

Assuming Johns gets decent minutes (5-10) today, what is a good stat line for him?
Maybe 6 points, 3 rebounds, 1 block, 1 turnover, 0 steals, 2 fouls?

Six and three in five minutes?

I’m just hoping for him to not look like a baby deer again.

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I would not worry about the numbers one way or another… I’ll be watching to see if he looks like he knows what he’s doing on defense.

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