Talked about Illinois not shooting it as well lately and of course Plummer goes 6-of-7 in the first half already tonight 
That was a horribly officiated game. I hope Ohio paid them well at halftime. Ohio also has the best floppers in the league.
I agree on the flopping and I think I mentioned it after our game. They are great at just slamming into a defender in the post all game but one bump on defense and they drop like a rock. Really annoying and I am sure Kofi agrees with us this morning.
That being said…I think Michigan should do a little more of it. We are often undersized in our defensive matchup so when they hit you with the shoulder…go down. B10 refs fall for that all the time.
Between Howard, Underwood, and Kofi, there will sure be plenty of subconscious and legitimate points of emphasis for the referee’s in Sunday’s game
Could not agree more with you guys on the aggressive 1-2-2 full court defense. Hope it gets shelved until a desperate situation.
Thanks for taking my questions!
On the Omoruyi lobs - I was apparently remembering his two other dunks as lobs, too, but one was the end result of the 1-2-2 press and the other was him running the floor on the break. The three lobs were clearly failures in execution:
- Johns didn’t switch on the back screen off the tip
- Dickinson didn’t drop far enough on either ball screen - he was much more concerned with the ball handler - and the help was ineffective (Johns not getting a solid enough chuck on the roller, Bufkin and Houstan virtually running away from the poster frame)
As for whether Collins could become as good as Simpson - Dylan echoes my recollection that X showed almost nothing as a freshman. He played about 20% of team minutes and paired an 18% assist rate with a 25% turnover rate. He did shoot better than I recalled - 71% on free throws and 26% on threes.
Frankie’s freshman numbers so far are 22% of minutes, 24% assist rate, 31% turnover rate, 44% on free throws and 14% on threes. So far, he looks like an even worse shooter than X…
My impression of Simpson’s career arc is:
Fr - injury insurance
So - defensive menace
Jr, Sr - ballscreen maestro
X became that maestro through his work ethic and ability to pick up every nugget of knowledge John Beilein and Juwan Howard and Howard Eisley could drop (I was misremembering that X’s career overlapped with Val Jordan’s time as an assistant; who was coaching guards in Beilein’s last three seasons?) It’s pretty much impossible to predict whether Frankie has the ability to learn as much, but he’ll certainly have the opportunity - though I don’t know how much longer we can expect Eisley to remain an assistant.
So maybe the only answerable question is whether Frankie’s physical attributes can enable him to become a defensive menace next season. Eric talked about Frankie’s straight-line quickness, which I gather is less important for defense than lateral quickness. His leaping ability is entertaining, but won’t move the needle much on defense. Maybe a summer of S&C will give him something like the core solidity and strong hands that Simpson had.
Of course the other thing that allowed X to thrive as a sophomore was not needing to run the offense all the time; if sophomore Bufkin can run ball screens as well as senior Rahk did, then having Collins as a defense-first point guard becomes a viable option…
X didn’t play much as a freshman, but even in that limited time it was apparent that he was going to be an all B1G caliber defender in time.
Thanks for this reply! Good information there. I think that Frankie should spend all summer (when he’s not shooting jump shots 100000 times per day) focused on defense. He was pretty good against Rutgers and I think he has the quickness, speed, and strength to be a very good defensive PG. Embrace that as your role!
The only issue with that approach is that Simpson got away with that because he didn’t really worry about fouling too much because they were only asking him to play a few minutes per game. It remains to be seen how much we’re going to need to rely on Frankie at PG next year. If there’s any possible way he can spend the summer in open gyms with X learning the ball screen game that would be fantastic.
I think they are going to go after a guard in the portal that hopefully can play with the ball or off the ball so he can run the offense next to Kobe or play off Frankie/Dug as a scorer. (This assumes someone leaves early obviously.)
FWIW
Freshman X: 100.6 ORtg, 14.6% usage, 21.6% of mins
Freshman Frankie: 78.2 ORtg, 23.7% usage, 22.1% minutes.
It’s difficult to compare the drastically different ORtg’s when they also exist under drastically different usage rates. As a possible explanation, Xavier Simpson’s two most common lineups per Kenpom had MAAR and Irvin, two respectable shot creators by 2017, alongside him. Frankie Collins, again per Kenpom, is almost always alongside Brooks with nobody else of note. And possibly more surprisingly, even including the previous Diabate suspended game he’s played more alongside Moussa in the past five games than Dickinson. So he’s playing a heavy load without the two best shot creators on the team.
this podcast is not on Apple or Spotify for me. Not sure if It’s just me.
I listen on Apple
Nevermind I got this confused with the moving screen.
Yeah, was going to say make sure you subscribe to both! Pin Down is all Michigan talk and we record mid-week.