You guys know that college hoops referees aren’t specific to conferences, right? Like Bo Boroski or Teddy Valentine will call Big Ten an Big 12 games.
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Your bigs are most certainly better. Someone mentioned attacking Solomon to get him in foul trouble. Mitch Solomon was a four star recruit out of Bixby, OK and has looked to have the physical tools to be a great 4/5 player. Ford squandered Solomon’s talent his first two years on campus, but the light has finally come on for Solomon with Underwood coaching him up. It took 2.5 years, but back to the fouls… that poster is right. Once Solomon is in foul trouble we are going to struggle. We have a true frosh 7 footer on the bench who might see a few minutes, but the Big 12 ate him alive. He was set to red shirt until our promising JUCO big, Tyrek Coger, past away due to an enlarged heart during summer workouts. So, we only have one true big who is getting minutes and that’s Solomon.
Please see and enjoy this link for our plays. The magic tends to start with the 5 at either elbow. http://coachingtoolbox.net/brad-underwood-ok-state-man-to-man-plays
As for our defense, yes, we’ve abandoned the press because we don’t have the horses to run it. Although our defense has slagged back to protect the lane and avoid easy baskets, we will still pressure in the half court from time to time. Jumping lanes and pressuring from sideline to sideline burned us some after giving up on the press. So, we won’t do it the whole game. You’ll see us in zone if it’s called from the side line or a side inbounds and certainly on inbounds plays under the bucket.
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I noticed it’s a lot of stuff out of the high post. Evans takes the handoff so quickly that it takes a while for defenses to adapt.
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Thanks for the info and link. What’s nice for UM is that it doesn’t look like our bigs have to worry too much about being bullied inside. But what concerns me is communication off all the screens/handoffs and keeping solid on assignments, including so as not to allow offensive rebounds. Thanks again.
Forte too looks ready to shoot or go off those handoffs. We’ll need to be in position, do our work early.
I don’t agree with that source’s opinion in regards to the Big 12. Some pretty good defense has been played there and still does. We have some of the pretty tough defensive minded coaches when you’re talking about Self, Huggins, Underwood, Kruger, Drew, Dixon, Weber, etc.
This year has been particularly great for defense in our league, but just look… there are some really talented offensive teams in our league. I think we’ll get much better defensively over the next few years once Underwood brings in the players he wants. The Travis Ford basketball player is much different from the Brad Underwood basketball player.
Hey Michigan fans! Hope you guys are doing well. Just wanted to join in the convo here.
I think you might be underselling the quality of the Big 12 this year. It’s not like the Big 12 teams that were left out of the tournament were the dregs of college basketball. In fact, if you look at their KenPom ratings, several are as good as or better than teams that made the field:
K-State - 29
TCU - 41
Texas Tech - 46
Oklahoma - 65
Texas - 73
Compare those to certain Big 10 teams:
Wisconsin - 23
Minnesota - 33
Indiana - 42
Michigan State - 43
Illinois - 70
There were certainly no Big 12 teams in nearly as bad as Nebraska (107) or Rutgers (133).
(Also - FWIW – you left our our non-conference win over Arkansas during that stretch, who is in the tournament as an 8-seed)
All of that is not to say that OSU had more impressive wins down the stretch than Michigan…they didn’t. My only point is that the Big 12 is no cakewalk, and even the teams at the bottom of the league were at least decent.
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Yeah it’s clear that THE KEY for disrupting us both offensively and defensibly is to get Solomon into foul trouble. We are completely different on both ends of the court when he’s out.
Welcome to the board. Based off of rpi, having 3 teams ranked 123, 157, and 171 out of 10 total teams in the conference is pretty bad. I start by looking at record vs top 50. You guys were 3-10 in those games. My original point was that I didn’t understand how you guys were seeded wrong and looking at vs top 50 and the teams you beat during your 10-1 stretch and I understand a 10 seed. Rpi is 40 I believe so that puts you guys right at a 10. We are ranked 25th in the rpi and that puts us at a 7 seed. Should be a good game but like I stated before, I’d give us a comfortable advantage.
welcome Cowboys fans. I think that you guys are playing some high level basketballs even with 3 game losing streak, and is clearly the best 10 seed out there. I am excited about this match-up, it will be a great game. The key for both teams is to control the tempo of the game.
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No argument here, I think it has a serious claim to the 2nd best conference. But I do think it’s more top heavy than the Big 10. But I am definitely not happy about you guys being our 10-seed matchup.
8 Seed's Avg. KenPom Rank: 33
— Drew Hallett (@DrewCHallett) March 13, 2017
9 Seed's Avg. KenPom Rank: 44
On avg., 7 seeds have a tougher R64 matchup than 8 or 9 seeds. https://t.co/N1q1cE0tP7
This is the committee’s incompetence at its finest
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Here’s my question after reading the opinions this week and Dylan’s write-ups, what did Ok St do wrong in their losses?
We’re the #5 offense and a 7 seed. We know our team’s story and what led to those losses. What’s Ok St’s story on being the #1 offense but a 10 seed?
Was their offense racking up stats against bad teams and merely above average against the top 50 teams? Was Evans or someone else in a slump during their rough start to the conference? Basically, what was their key determining factor that led to being a bubble team despite the great offense?
It’s easy enough to say the Defense. I think everyone here knows that’s the cause, but you would think with that offense that they would’ve beaten some better teams over the course of the year.
I guess it depends on how you feel about RPI versus more comprehensive measures of quality like KenPom or Sagarin.
I personally believe KenPom is the best measure for judging relative quality/strength, so that’s why I was citing it. RPI is not designed to be a predictive power poll, it’s designed to simply rate winning percentage weighted against opponents’ collective winning percentage. It doesn’t take home/away status or margin of victory into consideration, which are two big factors in determining the relative strength of teams.
I don’t think we were seeded wrong in that it’s clear that the committee totally ignored the more advanced metrics and just relied on RPI. You can see that with Wichita State, which is a 10-seed despite being a top 10 KenPom team.
Like I said earlier – you guys are not a great match-up for us because your profile is almost identical to Iowa State’s albeit you play at a slower pace. Our biggest advantage point is offensive rebounding. We are one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country and that is one of your key weaknesses. But then it was also one of Iowa State’s weaknesses and we lost to them 3x. (Although two of the three were basically one possession games.)
I did pick you guys to win, but I think it’ll be a close game.
Our offense has been pretty consistently good all year, in that we’ve basically been a top 10-15 KenPom team in OE all season long.
The thing that has gotten us beat was our defense. Early this season, Underwood was running a “all-press/all-the-time” defense that worked OK, for the most part, during the non-conference… we had a few decent wins, including drilling Wichita State on their home court.
But as the conference season started, the first several Big 12 teams basically chewed up our press. We were giving up tons of dunks and layups. So, after the 0-6 start, Underwood switched our defensive footprint to ease up on the press and the perimeter pressure to stop the bleeding in the paint. That’s when we took off and won 10 of 11 before dropping the KU/ISUx2 games at the end.
So basically the difference was that we improved our defense enough to where it was still not really all that good, but wasn’t god-awful… and the offense continued to get better and better and so that led the win streak.
As for the last 3 losses… well one was to KU. It turns out they are pretty good, you know? 
But I think the two losses to Iowa State come down to the fact that guarding the 3-point line is problem for us and Iowa State has about 4-5 guys that can kill you from there… and they did. That’s why I think Michgian is a bad matchup for us.
I picked Michigan in my bracket. I think you guys will win…oh… I’ll say something like 78-75 or something like that.
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Thanks for the insight! It kind of goes with @johnmiller and his competition thoughts, that even after the defensive philosophy change, it didn’t impact your defense against the better teams.
Kansas and Baylor scored more points in the second game. Iowa St held steady in the point range in all three matchups.
It looks to me like 80 is the magic number for this game. If we hold you to under 80, we’ll win. If you hold us to under 80, you’ve got a shot. If this game turns into a shootout, it looks like advantage us.
Great stuff here!