Harsh reality: that team could not play a full 40-minute game. Is what it is.
It just says youâre living through a worldwide pandemic and therefore have literally nothing better to do on Friday night⌠like us all.
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Some fun while we wait for KenpomâŚOther than that one fluky UConn national championship, the last 9 title winners have been in the top 11 in the country in both kenpom offense and defense.
Thereâs only three teams that currently qualify this year: Baylor, Michigan and Virginia
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Itâs really absurd to say a team that won 30 games couldnât play a full 40 minutes game.
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bUT thEy LoSt tO mIcHIgaN stAtE
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They underperformed in big games (3 times vs MSU and vs TT), mostly because of second half collapses, so I see where youâre coming from. But I wouldnât say they couldnât play a 40 minute game. That team beat the crap out of UNC and Villanova by playing 40 minute games.
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The MSU stuff was frustrating but that team to me was just the perfect case study for how much luck it takes to make runs in March. They could have easily been the 4th or 5th best team in the country behind UVA, Texas Tech, MSU, Duke but got no breaks and ran into a buzzsaw.
Itâs still weird for me to remember the Moe Wagner team as âbetterâ. More memorable or more lovable maybe. But if the 2019 team got a draw where they didnât have to beat a team seeded higher than 7thâŚtheyâre probably in the title game too. They destroyed average to bad teams all season long.
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Is Eli Brooks the new Stu Douglass?
(Eli is better, but similar profiles)
Eli is the new MAAR. MAAR could do more but itâs close enough.
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In my opinion, Rahk was an appreciably better offensive player and worse defensive player.
Stu was always our best defensive guard with aâŚfitful offensive performance level.
That was a very good team, especially defensively, but it didnât quite have the offensive firepower to be national title-caliber IMO. Poole had a streaky year shooting and when he was off, scoring could be a chore.
IIRC, we had the lead in the second half of all three MSU games but each time we hit a brutal scoring drought. And then against TT we couldnât get going at all.
Oops way off.
https://wolverineswire.usatoday.com/2020/02/16/michigan-basketball-jordan-brand-shoes/
Must be nice to have the perks of custom Jordans. They do look clean
Yeah not going to refute that. MAAR could get to the paint and finish really well which has been Eliâs weakness. But I think heâs improved in that area this year which is why I said itâs close enough.
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For yaâll waiting on KenPom, I think the own goal is the bug. 
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It never gets talked about but Mathewsâ injury in the first MSU game really stayed with him the rest of the year. I Iâm not sure that MSU team ever got our best shot.
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Oh boy, I did a deep dive on this earlier as Buckets remembered lol. Hereâs what I had (You can click the little arrow at the top right of the quote box to expand it fully):
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Yeah the blown leads got worse each game IIRC. Two of them were 10+ point chokes as well.
Felt bad for Iggy because he came to play in all three of those games and obviously he ended up winless vs MSU. The rest of the team just didnât play well, especially Poole. A Charles Matthews injury was a big difference in the game at Crisler too I think.
Just one win out of the three wouldâve gotten us a banner. Unfortunate.
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I thought it was pretty straightforward to deal with that, the offensive player who touched it last gets the bucket, right?
Well⌠They did
I got into too many arguments with MSU fans that year saying Iâd take Michiganâs team over MSUâs even after Michigan dropped the first two games, but after the 3rd loss it just started to sound silly. That was a very good Michigan team, but I do think it lacked some scoring punch when the going got tough. Iggy was the best scorer by far, but he had his limitations. Great defense is nice, but I think to truly be a legitimate title contender you need to have a guy who can go get you a bucket when the team is struggling and you really need it. Against MSU and TT, Michigan just went through too many awful scoring droughts for me to put them above a couple of Beileinâs other teams.
They didnât have a Burke or Stauskas. Give me the 2013 all day and twice on Sundays. Iâd probably take the 2014 team too. Iâll give yâall the argument that 2019 > 2018 despite tournament results though.
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