I wish Teske displayed more ability to drop step on the inner baseline, using his size to seal off the defender. That’s potentially an extra 6 points per game, inpacting the scoreboard, if he could incorporate that before end of season.
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You’re right about Livers but when Johns plays like that we don’t miss him nearly as much. It will be interesting to see how Howard carves out more minutes for Johns after Livers comes back, assuming these last couple games weren’t a mirage. Would imagine he’ll be first off the bench for either Livers or Wagner, with Livers sliding down when Wagner comes out. There could be some additional minutes there with Johns at the 5 or Wagner-Livers-Johns at 2-3-4 if Howard wants to cut into Davis’ or DDJ’s minutes. I’m not sure Johns is good enough yet, at least consistently, to make those lineup combos worth it unless there is a really favorable matchup.
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Its great to see a young player loaded with talent and athletic ability finally figure out how to play with freedom. If Johns Jr can figure it out maybe Wagner and Castleton can do the same?
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I don’t think finding minutes for Johns will be a huge issue even with a healthy Livers because Michigan is so short on reliable bench options.
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I would imagine Brooks could lose a few minutes depending on the matchup and you play a lineup of Simpson, franz, johns, livers, and teske. You could do that against most big ten teams as there arent too many elite sgs that would expose Franz lack of elite foot speed.
6 of them were on that tip-a-thon where they failed to score.
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Here’s a DeJulius stat that shows just how far he’s fallen off:
In Big Ten play, DeJulius ranks 81st in effective FG% among 83 players (34.7%) who have played at least 45% of available minutes. -
There are way too many reviews in college basketball and in the game last night, if you are going to review that out of bounds call with ~35 secs left and still get it wrong, I just don’t see the point. The review pretty clearly showed it was off Rutgers and at a pivotal time, obviously, and the refs still missed it. Rutgers needed a basket down 5 and no longer had a timeout. So not only did you get the call wrong, but you let Rutgers draw up a play.
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The blessing in disguise of this Livers injury is that it was going to cause people to step up. We have seen some growth from Franz and if this Johns breakout is for real then in the long run this could be a positive.
As far as where the minutes come from, it may look like Beilein last year where its a 6 man rotation, with spot minutes for Davis/Castleton and DDJ
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Replay is pretty much a debacle across all sports, but especially here. I think back to the 5 minutes Steratore review against Purdue a few years back and in the BTT against MSU where the ball went off a fingernail and got overturned. Here I thought it was pretty obvious off Rutgers and no overturn?!?!?
In light of issues like this and the UNC/BC game, I think you need to go one of two ways…either get rid of replay completely or expand it to include egregious errors that pretty much decide the game like UNC/BC. Either way it can definitely get streamlined so it doesn’t kill the flow of the game.
If you can’t tell within a minute, the call on the court stands.
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It’s obviously not surprising that success breeds confidence but you could see with Brandon that just seeing the ball go in the hoop a few times allows his brain to give him license to do all sorts of new things.
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- whispers * Davis has better/more variety post moves than Teske
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There was one play yesterday where Davis had an impressive set of low post moves he put on display all in one play against 2 defenders. It was beautiful. It surprised me. Happy for him. It is fun to watch these guys develop.
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Yeah at the start of the season, when I was iffy on Eli as a starter the two versions of the starting lineup I could come up with were X/Franz/Livers/Johns/Teske and X/Eli/Franz/Livers/Teske depending on whether Eli or Johns proved themselves more reliable.
Eli is obviously still winning that battle but I think that at least on the short term we may want to see how the big version looks in a few minutes. It could not only be a way to get Eli some extra rest but X too.
I think Castleton has gone to garbage mintues only unless another injury were to occur. He needs to hit the cafeteria and weight rooms.
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I just don’t really see the Wagner/Livers/Johns lineup working. Maybe very situationally. Zone?
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That could force Teske to actually play the 5 and not shooting 3s. Simpson needs to be the facilitator not a scorer. Livers and Johns at the 3 and 4 with Wagner at the 2. That lineup wouldn’t work against every team but having the 2 short guards on the floor last night was difficult at times.
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Can Livers defend SGs? Seems a number of people talking up his defense before the season suggested that he could. If he can cover the more dangerous 2/3 on the the other team, then maybe that lineup works on D without going to zone.
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Livers definitely can not guard a dynamic 2. I wouldn’t really want him guarding any guards besides a switch. Livers best defensive trait is he positions well and talks and holds everyone together. He’s not anywhere near an elite man to man guy
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29 career neutral-court wins for Simpson is incredible.
And only five losses IIRC:
2016-17 : Oregon
2017-18: LSU, Villanova
2018-19: MSU, Texas Tech
So we have basically been a #1 seed playing on neutral courts these last four years.
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