Without Livers and with Brooks and DDJ offering no help in the backcourt against a team as goood as MSU? No I don’t think he could have aside from just hitting the wide open layup he missed and 1 more 3.
Big picture is that the role players for Michigan have to be able to play without hesitation. DDJ may not make all the plays but he rarely appears to be over thinking the situation. When Johns, Wagner and Castleton learn to do the same we are going to be a far better team.
And Brooks needs to move without the ball because he needs a little room to get his shot off.
5 Likes
In fairness, State closes out so well.
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Did other players play well? No, did Simpson play harder than anyone and try to will us back in the game? Yes, but he can finish better and play better in general because I know he is a better player than that. Anyone who wants to be offended by that feel free to be.
My only complaint with Simpson is that I think he gets tunnel vision in games sometimes and misses players that are wide open. I get he’s not going to be perfect, but his MO is being an elite passer and finding the open guy, so it’s frustrating when he does the opposite and forces a difficult two.
Just off the top of my head. At the end of the first half he drove and had the chance to kick out to DDJ for an open 3 on the baseline and instead missed a tough 2. Sometime in the second half he held up a transition opportunity to drive for a contested 2 instead of pushing in transition and maybe generating an open 3 for someone. Then towards the end of the game, after Johns hit a 3, he completely ignored Johns on a pick and pop at the top of the arc.
He’s the best player on the team by far. There’s a ton of pressure on him to basically do everything. I get that, so the above can be considered more nitpicking than anything, but I think it’s still valid.
3 Likes
X also missed 5 wide open threes and went 1-4 from the free throw line. I’m not putting the loss all on him or anything and I appreciate his effort, toughness, and leadership. He just didn’t play well today. He’d probably say he expects more himself.
Hence why I said he could have hit another 3. That would have made him 33% and would be in line with the caliber of shooter he is. He played well, maybe didn’t shoot well. To me those are different things, but maybe I’m being pedantic.
1 Like
Yeah I mean we just disagree. No big deal. Hopefully the game in Ann Arbor looks a lot different either way.
It was not a bad game bad game by X.
The problem here is Michigan will not beat Michigan State while Cassius Winston is around if at the end of the game we are debating whether Simpson played bad, okay or good. We need a great game from Simpson to win this game. Is that fair to him? No. But it’s the truth when the best player in the country is your positional matchup, and I believe Simpson is capable of delivering that type of performance, it just didn’t happen today or last year
This game is so soo soo far from having anything to do with Simpson.
He played well enough to win, trying to contain the conference player of the year isn’t easy for anyone; you hope to contain you cannot stop.
IMO this game highlights what losing Livers means. It’s means Davis at the 5 (which he played very well) it means Castleton gets back up 5 Minutes (not his position natural position, clearly) it means Brooks and DDJ have to offer perimeter shooting; which they didn’t show the ability to do today. It forces Wagner to do more than he appears ready to do.
Gabe Brown, Marcus Bingham, Malik Hall, Rocket Watts, all out played their counter parts, I thought Henry was just meh.
The 2 man battery of Tillman and Winston won this game, they matchup very well against Michigan for whatever reason.
Bitter pill to swallow but unless Livers returns, and even then, I don’t like Michigan’s chances against State. I just hope we don’t meet in the BTT. Not sure if I can handle losing 3 matchups with Tiny Tom 2 years in a row 
2 Likes
One of the biggest problems Simpson gets into, is that he makes great passes and people miss wide-open shots. When those threes aren’t falling it changes everything and puts much more pressure on him and Teske. And then, being the competitor that he is, he tries to take the situation into his own hands and make tough twos. Even if they fall, we will generally fall behind against any team shooting decently from downtown.
9 Likes
I definitely agree with this hypothesis. I still think he needs to continue feeding his guys though. Trust your teammates.
I don’t know! The second half he was much more aggressive. :))
Maybe its me but it seems as the season progresses there is less and less off the ball movement. It would be fine of we were loaded with guys that could knock down the kick out 3 but we are not. Ball movement and player movement needs to improve, if it does not wins against the top tier of the Big will be hard to come by.
3 Likes
The last interesting stats I will point out: Tillman and Cassius were 17/25 at the line and Teske/Simpson were 3/8. That’s all you really need to know to determine the outcome. Tillman did play nine more minutes than Teske though.
2 Likes
Man the biggest “problem” X had today was guys not making the open shots he got them, and in turn swallowing more shots because nobody else made any.
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Whenever I get salty that Winston ended up being a 4-year player, I daydream about if Trey stayed for 4 years - functionally equivalent program-changing luck in terms of decisions. Obviously Trey had a much easier decision to make, as a guaranteed lottery picky.
Would just love the smugness of getting to enjoy rivalry dominancy simply because we have the best player, who has no business still being a college player.
(I guess same goes for Nik, but I’d say Trey and Winston were better college players)
6 Likes
I wish! But unfortunately I don’t see that happening. I suspect he’ll be coaching on his deathbed 
1 Like
And if you play by D&D 4th edition rules, angry elves can live for 400+ years. Yikes.
4 Likes