Watching Walton over the last few games, it’s really shown that is struggling shooting. When Walton and Irvin start settling for contested long 2’s or 3’s, everyone suffers. I thought UM had something last night when #1 for Tulsa was covering Irvin after he rolled his ankle. They went right at him numerous times and scored. They then went away from that. I don’t know what the thinking was behind that. Once Zak gets hot, does everyone else?
It was clearly a confusing game from an offensive perspective. Some of it had to do with Tulsa’s switching in their man and the occasional zone defense. The team HAS to get into the paint for the offense to be effective. Hopefully that happens in the ND game.
Regardless, a win is a win is a win. At this point of the season, that is all you can ask for. Survive and advance.
Irvin’s percentage coming off screens with a couple dribbles and a pull up has to be very high. It is weird that he gets good elevation on that shot but not when he drives to the hoop. Last night I was saying that is all he should be doing! Not an easy shot, but he made them look easy.
Its because he has momentum when he’s coming off the dribble for a pullup. When he drives he comes to a jumpstop which negates his momentum and then he has to jump with a stangnant vertical. Zak is not a quick twitch athlete…he’s not going to over athlete someone from a standstill position.
Agree, he has no explosion off of one foot. Due to the back, I don’t think so. Seems he has always been like that. Michigan really needs him to play to his strengths, not his weaknesses.
When you’re a subpar athlete you essentially have 2 choices to finish…get into the chest of the defender (Walton tries) or develop a floater. Zak does neither
Going back to the original post, I saw this too…and actually stewed on it for a bit.
I think it goes back to shortly after Caris’ injury, and JB publicly (and obviously privately) started saying that Walton needed to be more aggressive and want the ball in those situations and shoot more often, etc. The bright side, I think Walton has taken what his coach told him and ran with it. The downside is that he doesn’t seem to care how the flow of the game is going and adjust (i.e. last night making sure MAAR was involved and deferring at key moments).
I think Walton believes he is the alpha - and at that is good to an extent. He WANTS to be the leader…but sometimes its just not who you are. Its been noticeable, especially the past few games when you watch him interacting with Mo on the court after whistles, that Walton can be the “coach on the floor” that JB’s offense needs. Whether he has the bball IQ to be that guy is a different argument.
I just wish, at times, Walton would get on Zak for some of his decisions. Zak seems to have a free pass from everyone IMO.
To get back to the original point of tension between MAAR and the juniors: I cant attest to whether or not there was on that specific play. But, in general, I still think Walton is right to think that he should be running the offense, when he is on the floor. As much as everyone seems to be infatuated with MAAR’s playing style, MAAR ISO after ISO isn’t a reliable offensive scheme. He did great, when Walton was stuck to the bench. But, until MAAR becomes a more capable passer, Walton and Zak will continue to run the majority of the offense. Also, I can think of many games where it seemed like Walton was mentally and physically a step ahead of the rest of the team, with good passing ideas, but his intended recipient wasn’t ready.
As for Zak’s decision making, I cant figure that one out. I agree that Walton should dig into Zak when he is taking bad shots, but that really seems like something that Beilein should have caught and fixed early on. Maybe Zak’s mid-range jumpers are considered a valuable part of our offense, but I wish that wasn’t the case.
Lastly, I would love to see MAAR capable of running actual offensive packages, because both Zak and Walton are better at shooting off of catches. If Walton could spend more time running off of screens, I think the offense would be better off. I actually like Duncan’s potential to feed our shooters, too. He has shown good vision.
They are spirited competitors. Anyone who played competitively knows what it’s like. You’re closer with these guys than you are family sometimes. Sometimes you snarl at each other and then you move along.
I’d like to say I was glad we win yesterday in a not so Michigan way. Lots of twos and to the rack and solid defense particularly eArly. Glad to see they are developing and getting a more well rounded game. I really liked the way they played besides the outside shooting. More to the rack. I wouldn’t mind isolating Wagner more and letting him work. Get him done touches on the block for once. He’s shown good up and under/ post moves before. Add that wrinkle to our attack and it could help us a lot.
Maybe tension is overstating it. I forget the exact possession and would have to go back to my DVR. It was simply one possession where the shot-clock got down to 11 or 12 seconds and MAAR was running action toward the ball and Walton essentially waved him off to the corner so that he could run the standard late clock set. MAAR’s body language showed a bit of frustration.
This probably spurred the rest of this conversation of whether its in the best interest of this offense to always defer to D-Walt in those situations.
The biggest thing I noticed was in the 2nd half when Walton went out because of fouls Coach B moved Irvin to SG and didn’t bring in the walk on. Irvin should of been moved to the SG position when Levert went down with injury.
MAAR needs to accept that he’s our third option. If he was frustrated at all, which I didn’t notice, it wouldn’t be merited because he was pretty cold from the floor and was taking questionable shots all night. The last 3 wins we have are because of Irvin and Walton. People need to slow their roll on giving the ball to MAAR more. He got up 16 shots yesterday, that’s more than he needs.
The simple fact is Irvin and Walton can do more things with the ball. MAAR gets to the rim and that’s close to it. Walton and Irvin need the ball late.