That could be true, maybe their D is trending upward. Their record against tournament/high-caliber teams just gives me solace. I mean, our offense continued to trend upward as our schedule got more difficult. Can you imagine what gaudy numbers we would have if we had been playing TCU, Texas Tech, and the rest of B12’s basement?
No doubt they’re dangerous in the kind of erratic way that great offensive teams are, though, in that they could simply be invincible by scoring points faster than is possible to keep up with (I think of the UCLA game, as an extreme example). Seeing their high offensive-rebounding is also bothersome.
Yep I’m right there with you. I still feel confident we’ll get the W but the overall profiles, especially versus tournament teams, makes it seem like they have to get really hot to beat us. I see it more as “they have to get hot to get the win, while if we get hot we blow them out” type of scenario.
A few comments from orange power.com(ok state message board). Not a whole lot of intelligent basketball talk honestly.
My concern about Michigan stems from two comparatives: momentum and size.
They are on a tear, winning their conference tourney. We lost our last three games and looked like we lost a lot of the confidence that was driving us during our win streak.
Their advertised starting lineup has three guards and two forwards, which gave me hope. Then I saw that their two “forwards” are both 6’10" and 240 lbs. Guards are all tall.
I think it will again come down to whether or not we play brimming with confidence with our long range shots going down. Must regain our mojo we had a couple of weeks ago.
Would we be singing a different tune if we were on a hot streak and just ran the table in the Big 12 tourney? Yeah… I highly doubt we’d be worried about riding too high and fatigue after four to five days of rest.
I think we have a good shot, but we have little room for error against a bigger team that protects the ball well. It’s a good thing we’re a better scoring and rebounding team on paper, but Michigan is peaking at the right time. If Underwood can shore up our defense again, then we’ve got this, but gosh… our defense has been piss poor. It has to change now.
The CBS talking morons did not even discuss our game with Michigan, only talked about how far Michigan will go and match up with Louisville. Hopefully, MU players and coaches watched and agreed but unlikely (smart coach).
I watched a lot of the game. OSU looks good. They look confident. Their point guard seems very good. I am not sure if I should feel more sorry for UM, OSU, or Louisville because this is not an easy road to the sweet 16 for any of us. Jesus.
Jawun Evans has an interesting profile. Very ineffecient from the field (only shot 44% from 2 and 29% from 3 in conference play). But he’s near the top in the nation in fouls drawn/40, assist rate and usage percentage.
Their starting backcourt is 6-1 and 5-11, which matches up well for us with Walton and Simpson being the same size respectively. I think we’ll see Simpson matched up with Forte and Averette pretty often. Wouldn’t be surprised to see X get at least 15 minutes. On offense hopefully MAAR can take advantage of size mismatches to get some baskets. If he can beat their guys off the dribble we will destroy this team.
The rest of the team is pretty short compared to UM and we should have some mismatches there with Wilson and Wagner. They will have to pick their poison.
Also Leyton Hammonds fouls a lot and should be attacked. In most of their losses he accumulates 4 or 5 fouls.
Looking at lineups, their general rotation appears to be
PG - Evans - Averette
SG - Forte - Averette
SF - Carroll - Dillard
PF - Hammonds - McGriff - Caroll
C - Solomon - Hammonds
So they run a 3 guard rotation. Caroll is their Irvin who starts at the 3 but will swing down to the 4 when on the floor with Dillard (like Irvin with Robinson). Solomon is the only true big guy. Hammonds is the backup center, and then Hammonds, McGriff and Caroll all play the 4 depending on who’s out there.
So they always have a Duncan Robinson sized guy at the 4, and will have another Duncan Robinson sized guy at the 5 for the 50% of the game that Solomon is out.
The key to me seems to be to get Solomon in foul trouble ASAP.
I think there’s no question we will put some points on the board. Thus, my early three keys: (1) don’t turn the ball over – they will look for strips and to jump passing lanes; (2) box out, including the wings/guards; and (3) don’t foul. I’m most confident in 1 and 3, although we have had the occasional bout with both this year.
Sure hope Dylan puts their rank/percentage in ball-screen defense in the preview because, like you said, sure seems like the PNR with tons of slips and passes to the roller should be money in the bank, between DJ and Mo.
I watched the first half of their home game with Kansas from March 4th and they definitely appear to want to push the pace. Limiting transition opportunities by taking care of the ball and hitting shots will be key.
They also don’t appear very adept at stopping the ball in transition themselves. A couple of times in the half I watched they had 3 or 4 back and it still resulted in a layup for Kansas.
Twice it’s been regional flights so I don’t even have wifi to follow the game. I think we got to about 1,000 feet on landing before my phone picked up enough wifi to let me know we held on against Texas in the 2014 tournament.
The only one where I had in flight TV was the VCU game in 2013. Everyone sitting within 4 rows of me was well aware Michigan was playing by the time the game was 10 minutes old.
I watched a little of that game. This is a quick, athletic team, that really likes to run. They use their bench a lot: their highest usage players go 78%, 73% and 70% of minutes. Evans is really quick going to the hoop and what he lacks in finishing, he makes up for by drawing a lot of fouls. He’s third in the country in assist rate, 43%. Not sure what you would do to slow him down, he’s got a really good handle and can fly down the court. Maybe figure out a way to keep the ball out of his hands. He’s not going to play defense and he gets adequate rest during the game, so if you’re going to defend him aggressively you’d have to ease up on D yourself or throw multiple guys at him.
OSU is obviously a better team, and Evans is obviously a better player, but how great would it be if MAAR could give Evans the James Blackmon blanket-cover treatment? He did such a masterful job of making just about every attempt to get open/get the ball so uncomfortable for Blackmon. Cant quite do the same to Evans because he is faster than Blackmon, and will be starting each half-court possession with the ball already in his hands; but still, I hope MAAR gets the assignment. At least until Evans proves far too much to handle. Also helps preserve Walton’s energy for offensive wizardry.
OkSt surely can do a lot of things well, but one way to think about this match-up is from their perspective. Who would they like to avoid? Probably a team that can effectively slow down the game, doesn’t foul, doesn’t turn the ball over, and can effectively take advantage of transition opportunities. Sound familiar?
Now, they do have a couple things that Michigan would like to avoid – offensive rebounds and dribble-drive guards (and Forte will run around all day and test us that way). But if I’m Michigan, what scares me the most is a team that in addition to those things has a post presence (or two), will make us play a full 30 seconds of defense, and will try to make us take tough 2s. And, at least lately, Michigan has had the most problems not with the initial drives but with secondary drives off kick outs. I’m not sure OkSt will have the patience for that.
In sum, in my view, OkSt is scary because they’re good, not necessarily because they’re such a bad match-up. But we are scary to OkSt for both reasons.
