… more than Davis?
Castleton hasn’t really shown signs that he knows what’s going on defensively. He’s played a bunch of minutes at the four recently. I find it unlikely that adding another guy who hadn’t played rotation minutes was going to be a fix for a defense that was struggling to communicate.
Understood. I just thought Davis was the wrong match up – he’s okay in drop coverage but not against shooting bigs …
Yeah, I would have gone to Johns sooner as a small five… but again it is tough to get there without Eli in the rotation.
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A few thoughts on the game. I thought the entire bench played pretty poor defensively and it really cost us. People on the boards have been prone to call out Teske lately but his post defense has been phenomenal lately and Davis just cannot cover against athletic teams. This got exposed again tonight and as Dylan said was magnified by his poor offensive play. Give me castleton as a shot blocker or Johns at the 5 earlier. DDJ took all the progress he had made on defense recently and completely reverted for one game to playing with his hands. Johns (started but usually bench) played what I thought was his worst defensive game of the year. Weak closeouts that didn’t bother 3 point shooters yet left him off balance and unprepared to handle the drive. We cant hold Nunez accountable for Howard’s decision to play him ha.
With Brooks out you can have one bench guy play down but not your entire 3 man rotation. I think it speaks to our lack of depth and inability to have guys play well outside of their comfort zone. Let’s pray/hope for health the rest of the way. This teams needs it!
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This one’s on me. My +/- when I was watching the game was abysmal.
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Any loss sucks, but the team just didn’t get the job done. Think the rotations were bad and we didn’t adjust in time.
That said, I think Eli would have been a huge piece tonight, particularly since he’s so good at tracking guys through screens/probably would’ve matched against Trice.
Overall though, think you just tip your cap and move on to Ohio State. Wisconsin played an exceptional game on both sides–this felt like a game that they won rather than one that we lost. Not saying we didn’t have our chances or couldn’t have done things better, but was super impressed with the Badgers last night.
I thought we played well. We played hard. Wisconsin played better. When a team shoots great from 3 they usually win. They won.
I loved what I saw from X. His leadership is elite.
Wagner is coming around big time as he starts to assert himself.
I think we need to take the going small with Johns seriously against certain teams. Teske and Davis are a liability in certain situations.
If we would have had Eli we probably would have won.
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I’m with you. The other worrying this is that we have only 3 functional guards who can play any minutes at all and be passable. I love the rotation when everyone is healthy, but having a guard who could give you spot 10-12 minutes in a pinch, would have allowed DDJ and Simpson to start together and maybe avoided the massive hole we dug ourselves.
10-3 in games with a fully healthy roster (Majority of these are Quad 1/2 games). 8-7 when missing a starter, and four of those 8 wins came against UMass-Lowell, Houston Baptist, Elon and App State.
Success in March could very easily just come down to health.
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Oh yeah, I understood that you were illustrating how well Simpson played. I was basically just disagreeing that it was a good gameplan by Wisconsin. I think at some point, they probably should’ve made some adjustments to stop Simpson, just like we probably should’ve adjusted to stop Garza when we beat Iowa at Crisler. But because they got the win, I think it’s easy to say that they had a good strategy.
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I think they might have changed something if Michigan could get stops. It was a bit like old Purdue games where Haas would score inside but Michigan would hit threes.
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What a lousy crowd. Simpson was playing is heart out in his second-to-last home game and the Maize Rage was standing still for most of the game. That was like a neutral site game. Unreal.
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I’m disappointed about the loss, but whatever. Team wasn’t fully engaged defensively for whatever reason. Just gotta hope it’s a blip and not a regression of sorts.
Bright side is that Xavier’s play is encouraging for future matchups. I presumed any team playing drop-coverage would probably hold us to a bad offensive performance, but Xavier was able to generate shots at the rim one-on-one vs bigs in a way he wasn’t able to early in the year.
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If I have this right, this was our best offensive performance in conference by PPP, excluding Iowa and the game IU basically quit playing defense 10 minutes in.
As a Michigan grad I remember the mental fatigue associated with mid term exams, especially for sophomores. The sophomore year at Michigan is the hardest academically. I suspect the mid terms played a roll in the game energy.
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I wouldn’t say I totally disagree, but I also didn’t understand Juwan’s explanation. On the surface, if one of your two primary ballhandlers gets into foul trouble, then you still have your other primary ballhandler. One primary ballhandler is all you need against a defence that isn’t too into forcing turnovers. I wonder if, more than anything else, it’s just Juwan’s preference for playing a big lineup over a small one. We’ve seen that at other times this season.
Yep. If you think last night was no fun, wait until next season when they’re all seniors.
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I’m very encouraged by the fact that we topped 1.1 PPP against a defensive scheme that has largely given us fits over the past two seasons.
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This is the key for me. Juwan takes heat for his rotations etc. when we aren’t at full strength, but he/we tend to look completely dialed in when we are at full strength. I’m sure that some of it is valid criticism, but really, is Juwan all of a sudden a smarter coach when we are healthy? The lack of quality depth beyond the starting 5 (on some nights) is a consistent killer for this team, and it would make any coach look bad at times.
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