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If you have questions, e-mail them to me. Here is this week’s batch. If I didn’t get to yours I tried to reply over e-mail, if not shoot me another e-mail.

I noticed two M possessions in the 2H where we took a shot and did not have one single player inside the 3 point line to get an offensive rebound. Think about that, not one single person within 20 feet of the basket when a shot goes up. I was not actively looking for other instances of this situation, but wouldn’t be surprised if it happens more often. I understand that Beilein’s teams get outrebounded, but this approach is ridiculous and will start to burn us. We can’t expect to knock 3’s down at this clip against Big Ten teams on the road so we need people crashing the boards. An interesting analysis to look at would be number of times we take a shot and do not have anyone inside the 3 point line…..or anyone inside the paint. From my perspective, there should be 3 guys on the court assigned to crash the boards every single time a shot goes up, regardless where they may be.

I noticed these two possessions as well. I don’t think Beilein ever wants to have 5 guys outside the three point line but  here is a look at a possible explanation for our offensive rebounding woes.

The Big Ten Wonk first defined the perimeter oriented team or POT for short. Gasaway defined perimeter oriented teams as teams who shoot more than 38% of their shots from long range.

Gasaway’s conclusion was that teams of all different styles can be successful, they just have to do the right things very well. POTs don’t turn the ball over, they struggle getting offensive rebounds, and they don’t get to the free throw line much. His most important (and somewhat obvious) discovery was that to succeed as a POT you better make your shots. Any coach, certainly John Beilein, will trade offensive rebounds for three pointers.

As most of you would expect Michigan qualifies as a POT, 40.7% of Michigan’s field goal attempts this year have been three point tries. The only Big Ten team that shoots more three pointers is Iowa, who’s 47.7% ranks third in the country. Michigan also demonstrates the peripheral factors of POT, they rank 9th in the Big Ten in offensive rebounding percentage, fourth in turnover percentage, and ninth in free throw rate.

The worrisome thing is that their three point shooting percentage is only 34.8% which ranks 7th in the conference. Luckily Michigan has shot 44.8% from long range in their last three contests compared to 28.6% in their first 6. If they can keep shooting the ball as they have they should be in good shape.

I took a look at Beilein’s 2006 team which was arguably his best and certainly had the best regular season résumé to examine. They shot 45.9% of their shots from long range, 7th in the nation. Their offensive rebounding percentage of 21.3% ranked dead last in the Big East, their turnover percentage of 13.2% was first, and their free throw rate of 17.5 was last. They appear to be a prototype of a perimeter oriented team however they only hit 34.9% of their three pointers, ranking 10th in a 16 team Big East. It worked for that team though, they went 21-11 and posted an 11-5 conference record before being knocked off by Texas in the Sweet 16.

Overall I thought effort on the boards was lazy at times against Eastern but I think Beilein has proven that you can win while getting out-rebounded. I think the bigger issues for me are hitting our shots and not giving up too many offensive rebounds to the other team.

It’s a high risk high reward system so when we have cold days I would expect a couple questionable losses. However if we hold on to the ball and hit our three point shots at a good clip I think we can beat anyone.

How much do this season’s results affect next year’s non-conference schedule? If they have a good run this year, and Beilein knows he is essentially getting the same team back, do you think we will see a couple more marquee non-conference games?

I looked up West Virginia’s non-conference schedules for the past few years (not sure if it is more influenced by Beilein or Ed Pastilong) but it seemed like mostly cupcakes with the exception of 2005, when they played Texas, Kentucky, LSU, Maryland and Oklahoma.

The 2005-2006 season was when West Virginia played the loaded non-conference schedule. They were coming off of their Elite Eight run that almost had them in the Final Four and returned the same nucleus. They clearly felt they could compete against anyone in the country and went out and tried to prove it. Overall they went 9-9 against RPI top 50 teams, in terms of non-conference they beat UCLA (Final Four) and Oklahoma and lost to Texas (Elite 8), Kentucky, and LSU (Final Four).

I don’t think this years non-conference schedule is particularly light. We have already faced Duke twice, UCLA, Maryland, and will play UConn. That’s a pretty tough schedule, especially for a team coming off of a 10-22 season. The Big Ten/ACC challenge will happen every year and I think that Duke and UConn will be on the schedule next year. (gpsimms points out that Beilein mentioned UConn won’t be on the slate so they can include a road game) When you add up those games and the Orlando tourney next year that’s a pretty tough non-conference slate.

One of the things I’ve been trying to figure out this year is why Michigan scheduled a road game against UConn in the middle of the Big Ten season. The last week in January – first week of February are crazy enough with road games at OSU & Purdue and a home game against MSU, do we really need to fly out to UConn? Is scheduling a nonconference opponent halfway through conference play something we’ve done in the past? I can’t recall it.

I agree that the UConn game is rough, especially sandwiched between OSU, Purdue, and Michigan State. I don’t seem to remember Michigan scheduling in the middle of the conference season but Beilein did it a couple times at West Virginia. West Virginia played Marshall in the middle of the conference season and the last two years Beilein was there they played UCLA as well.

UPDATE: Readers point out that Michigan has played non-conference games in the middle of the Big Ten season before. Notre Dame and St Johns in the 90s, as well as teams like Kansas, Marquette, Syracuse, UCLA and others in the 70s and 80s. Thanks to everyone who emailed me or left a comment.

I know this has been covered in the past, maybe when Beilein first arrived. Are there any plans for expanding the Maize Rage in the upcoming seasons behind the baskets, ala the Izzone *gulp* or some other student sections? I was skeptical going into this season about how much of an impact the crowd, students in particular, could have at Crisler, but the Duke game really opened my eyes.

Plans about expanding the Maize Rage have been thrown around but you have to remember we only sold a few more than 500 tickets for this season. If this team finishes as well as they have started I think you would start to see large numbers of bandwagon students who want to buy tickets next year. I don’t know any sort of time frame but I think if the tickets start being sold the A-D would look to do something. Some other ideas could be extending a section of students (even if they aren’t in bleachers) to the corner section that connects the Maize Rage and the band/Beilein Bunch.

What are your thoughts on our fastbreaks this year? I live in Florida so I have only been able to watch three or four games but in those games we just seem awful at finishing fastbreaks. I know that isn’t a big part of the Coach B system. Just wondering what you think.

I think we have had a problem finishing fast breaks since last year and I have trouble putting my finger on why. Kelvin has issues with layups, and this makes him very hesitant to take the ball all the way to the hole. Manny generally likes to keep it himself on the break and try to finish and get the foul. There are some guys like Dee Brown who were just naturals running the break and I think a lot of that is instinctive.

I think fast breaks have generally looked better this year but it’s really painful to leave easy points off the board. Another dimension that has been added this year is kicking the ball out for open threes. Kelvin did this really well versus Duke when he hit Novak on the wing. This is a strategy that I think you will see more of especially because guys like Novak and Douglass are not very strong at finishing in transition.

One other note, I think our secondary break looks very good. When Manny can get a rebound and push the ball we generally end up with pretty good looks by forcing the tempo.

Random recruiting question (not sure if you’ve already covered this anywhere)- does JB have a history of recruiting European players or do the difficulties in getting Europeans declared eligible by the NCAA make this a waste of time? Was the Robin Benzing situation a one-time deal? I ask because his system seems to be pretty ‘European’ in style and I thought he could find some good players to fit what he’s building over there. The recruiting services seem to only deal with US players so I haven’t seen much info on this. Can expect any more clandestine trips to Germany like Beilein pulled last year?

I think he tries to recruit in Germany a little bit. Johannes Herber was his second recruit that he landed at West Virginia. Herber was from Germany and actually played for the same youth club that Robin Benzing did. So I would guess that he has some kind of connection over there. That was the only Euro guy that Beilein landed at West Virginia but I imagine he could have recruited a couple others.

On this side of the Atlantic Ocean it’s really hard to follow anyone that Beilein is looking at though. The Benzing situation came out of nowhere and seemed to be more of a secret operation. I would guess that the eligibility and other NCAA problems that arose with Robin’s situation would be a bit of a deterrant in the future though.

-If Michigan is much better this season (esp if we make the tournament), dont we get more interest from more, and more higher skilled players?
-What is the protocol in basketball recruiting? First commit, first scholarship? If Lubbick wants to come back to the fold, do they get rid of one of the others?
-Belien seems to have made a career of getting guys to play his system even though they were lower rated, do you think he will still find gems in the rough? Is it scary to think what he might do with higher rated?
Thats a goooood nightmare.
Appreciate all the info, great to have the program back!

I think Michigan’s two early upsets have already got them more attention on the recruiting trail. People are taking notice and as long as Michigan keeps winning they will have chances to land big time recruits. Guys like Trey Zeigler, Moses Morgan, and Will Regan are the big time prospects Beilein would like to land at this point and he has to go seal the deal.

The protocol is that if you have an offer and you commit you get the scholarship. The gray area is when an offer is “official”. So far with Beilein it appears that recruits typically get an official offer on their visit. I think the coaches have ways of prioritizing things and ending up with who they want, especially in a class where scholarships are tight.

I wouldn’t worry about Lubick, that ship has sailed. He is in a good situation at Georgetown and both parties will be OK without the other. Not to mention that Michigan’s 2009 kids have already signed and right now there are no available scholarships.

Overall, I think Beilein will keep recruiting kids with similar skill sets whether they are highly rated or not. I think you need a couple star players — Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims — in order to be successful though. The 2010 class is absolutely key because it can really point us toward to future, we need some star power at the wing. A guy like Trey Zeigler could come in and either replace Manny after he heads to the NBA or get a year to get his feet wet before stepping up.