Basics:
Who: Minnesota (19-6) at Michigan (16-10)
Where: Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, MI
When: Thursday, Feb 19th, 7 PM ET
TV: BTN
Spread: Michigan by 3.5
Preview: Stat Sheet, U-M KenPom Profile, Minnesota KenPom Profile
Radio: MGoBlue, WWJ-AM (950), WTKA-AM (1050)
Opposition Blog: From The Barn
Just a quick preview for today but for more on Minnesota be sure to check out my interview with Jonathan Foster of From The Barn who breaks down the ups and downs of their season. This is a battle of two Big Ten bubble teams that both need a win to revitalize some momentum down the stretch. Both fan bases have been tormented by some disappointing seasons of late and are hopeful but not necessarily optimistic about their tournament chances.
Strengths
- Defense. Minnesota has a top 50 overall defense and they limit their opponents to an eFG% of 46.3%
- Forcing Turnovers. Minnesota is second in the Big Ten (behind Northwestern) in terms of forcing turnovers. They do a great job blocking shots and forcing steals. Their steal percentage ranks 7th nationally while their block percentage ranks first.
- Offensive Rebounding. This is the best dimension of an otherwise pretty mediocre Minnesota offense.
Weaknesses
- Turnovers. The Gophers turn the ball over on 21.6% of their possessions, worse than everyone in the conference but Indiana.
- Defensive Rebounding. The Gophers give up a surprising number of offensive rebounds, their opponents have rebounded 35.2% of their missed shots. To put that in perspective, they give up more offensive rebounds than Michigan.
- Shooting. Minnesota’s eFG% of 50.7% ranks 9th in the Big Ten and is ahead of only Michigan and Indiana.
This is a battle of two teams who are really struggling on the offensive end lately and it might be ugly, for our sake let’s hope its not as ugly as Penn State’s 38-33 win last night over Illinois.
Minnesota has a lot of guys on the offensive end who can step up, but no one who is a consistent threat. Freshman Devoe Joseph, a former Michigan recruit, hit 7 out of 8 threes at Penn State and has been stepping up his game lately. Lawrence Westbrook leads the team in scoring with over 12 points per game but he is the only guy that averages double figures on the entire roster. Al Nolen leads the team in minutes and assists but is shooting just over 35% from the field.
This is one of those that you just have to find a way to gut out at home. I think it is similar to Michigan State game where every point is going to be earned. Michigan has to do a respectable job on the glass and keep up the defensive intensity that they have played with of late. I would expect to see some zone looks from Michigan because Minnesota has struggled against Northwestern’s 1-3-1 (which is better than ours) so that is worth a try. Minnesota has the size to give Michigan fits but they have so many different options it is hard to tell just who is going to step up.
Bubble News. Penn State’s win was huge, but they still need to get to 11-7 or at least 10-8 in my opinion to deserve a bid. Northwestern’s win seems like a good thing to me, they are going to give everyone a fight down the stretch. There was plenty of other good bubble news across the country including losses by Miami, Providence, Virginia Tech, Davidson, and Notre Dame
With Penn State’s win the RPI situation is getting interesting down the stretch, here are the “bubble” teams in the Big Ten ranked by RPI: Wisconsin (27), Minnesota (35), OSU (37), Michigan (52), Penn State (59), Northwestern (78). Michigan has four games remaining against top 50 teams as well as a road game against a top 100 team. If they can manage to win three of them then their RPI would almost assuredly see a nice bounce.
Tickets are still available so if you are a student that just finished your midterms, make your way out to Crisler (free with M-card) and if you are in the area go buy tickets for $10 at the door. Pomeroy has Michigan in a 65-63 nailbiter and Vegas picks Michigan by 3 and a half. Let’s hear your thoughts, predictions, additionally commentary in the comments.
Pre-Game Reading (updated throughout the day):
- Lee’s defense cuts Grady’s minutes at U-M
A few quotes from Beilein on Grady - Lineup is up in the air as Smith contemplates changes
We aren’t the only team playing with their lineup
We have to have this one at home. If we get this one it could get us on track, our shooters could heat up and we could make a nice little run to end the season.
Looks like we might need to throw both previews out the window. Tubby wants change.
http://www.startribune.com/spo....._Yyc:aUUsZ
BTW, Utah came back to tie the game and then crushed Colorado State in overtime.
Dylan….excellent stuff as always.
Other key bubble losses last night were UNLV, Northern Iowa (perhaps poking a hole in multiple bids for the MVC) and South Carolina and Tenn. Along with UK from Tuesday night, thats three of the 5 shaky SEC bid teams right now losing this week.
I dont think any of those clubs can afford a losing streak at this point.
Hopefully UM takes care of business tonight as their position was improved big time last night.
Go Blue!!!
Good call AG2. I think I took that out of your post last night (maybe not you but someone else?), I’m getting lazy.
RPI is a joke. Plain and simple, these computer based rating systems are just flawed. I challenge anyone to put Wisconsins schedule/results side by side with UM and tell me UW should have a lower RPI. UW best win in the out of conference was Virginia Tech a team with a RPI in the 50s and fading fast with consecutive losses. UM has WINS over Duke and UCLA!!
As far as schedule strenth, UW has played a tough schedule but it is not any tougher than UMs. UW played UCONN, Marquette, Virginia Tech and Texas compared to Duke, Duke again, UCLA, Maryland and UCONN for UM. Clearly UMs is more impressive.
This leads me to what I feel is the major flaw with the RPI. Its the fact that RPI seem to put a lot of weight and giving a lot of credit for beating terrible teams, so long as their higher rated than the worst teams. For example, UM is hurt by the fact that they played a number of teams with rpis in the 300s, as compared to the 150-200 teams UW played. This simply should not be weighted so heavily considering all of the teams in the 150-300 range are terrible and any major conference team should beat them 9 out of 10 anyway.
It seems as though, a school would be smart to schedule a bunch of lesse schools who are consistently competitive in their respective conferences, this would lead to a high RPI.
All this talk of “Tubby’s Twin Towers” has got me worried. Lets hope those two continue their subpar play…
PSU’s win has a large impact on seeding too which means right now we are headed for 8th place which is not where we wanna be. If we can finished tied with Minnesota we will get the tiebreaker over them and get 7th, which makes a big difference. We lose the tiebreaker to PSU although doesn’t seem like it will matter anyway.
Very good point about the BTT seeding…
If we get the 8 seed, we would have to play Northwestern in the 1st round (never easy to beat a team 3 times, especially a decent team like NW), then MSU in the 2nd (if we can’t beat them at home, could we on a neutral floor?).
If we get the 7 seed, we would play Iowa in the first round (clearly a big step below NW), then Illinois or Purdue in the 2nd round.
I knew that we would lose the tiebreaker to PSU and always figured we might be tied with them, but I never really thought about a tie with Minnesota until now.
i don’t like our chances in this one, the only thing giving us a chance is we are at home. Key player is novak. Can he hit some big shots and box out a big guy….we shall see
JB might have to dust off Eric Puls tonight. This game is very important, and we might have to have Sims, and Gibson out there at the same time. I know its not the time to be experimenting but it could get ugly if Novak starts to get destroyed down low.
What exactly would “dusting off Eric Puls” do? Eric is a great shooter but it’s not like he is the answer to bang in the paint.
For us, this is the second round of a double elimination tournament. We get beat twice and we’re out. We get beat today and it’s a tough up-hill climb in the losers bracket. I think that Michigan wins this game with more heart and another big game from Manny. 68-61
This game is not as tough as some may think. We actually match up pretty well in this one. Any game where Zack Gibson is the most athletic player over 6’10, is a good sign for UM. The “Twin Towers” are 2 slow, unathletic, offensively challenged wastes of heigth. Michigan struggles when they play big teams that are athletic…i.e. UCONN, OSU, MSU. The only thing that worries me is if they take Manny and Peedi out of the flow, which is a realistic possibilty, who will step up? We need a big game from 2 of the following: Stu,Novak,LLP,Grady (if JB comes to his senses and realizes he brings just as much and probably more to the table than Merritt), and Gibson. My prediction: Michigan 58 Minnesota 46
We will see whether Novak steps up and scores a bit and if he steps up on defense. If he does we should win the game, if there becomes matchup issues then it might not turn out so well.
Also if we play like we play when we are at the Garden, or in Storrs, then I feel very confident. We have to come out with emotion, and intensity. Play like the season is on the line. Which it is.
We really should win this game going away but again its all about the intensity we bring on defense. We win this and get back to 7-7 in the conference and we’re right there. One game at a time. I think we take this one by ~15 points.
I look for the starting 5 to be Sims, Harris, CJ, Stu and Novak.
If your going to the game be loud and be proud.
In other news, that PSU win really hurt us last night I feel. It makes our Illinois win look that much worse and it probably eliminates us from the #6 seed in the conference tourny which is where we need to be.
Great points by Avery Queen and Giddings on BTT seeding implications. However …
We shouldn’t assume Sparty will be the top seed. State is only one up on Purdue; Purdue can erase that (and own the tiebreak) by winning at Breslin. Which isn’t impossible, given how their first encounter went.
As much as it pains me to say it I feel like M wins this game if Gibson plays well and lose if he doesnt, particularly with regards to rebounds. The Twin Towers are clumsy and offensively challenged but if they get offensive rebounds by the basket even they can put up significant scoring numbers. If Gibson can step up rebounding the ball in his minutes tonight and Deshawn, Manny, and Novak hit their normal numbers Michigan has a much better chance of winning this game…not to mention grabbing some offensive rebounds (as defensive rebounding has been an issue for Minnesota)
I wouldn’t use terms like “slow”, “clumsy”, “unathletic”, and “offensively challenged” to describe Ralph Sampson.
Maybe not Ralph Sampson but definetely Ralph Sampson III. If you disagree you must not have seen him play yet. He makes Eric Puls look like a banger.
I’d like to see Gibson and Sims on the floor at the same time a little more tonight. I thought at times Gibson was the best player on the floor in the Northwestern game (i. e. when Manny and Sims were on the bench, but still) and I think we need both of them out there to have a chance at rebounding with Northwestern.
Hopefully LLP got a little confidence by making a few shots against Northwestern, we could sure use double figures from him too.
*rebound with Minnesota
Disclosure: I’m a Minnesota fan, so I’ve seen him play plenty. He’s certainly not a banger, I’ll grant you that.
anyone know if the game will be streaming online somewheres?
I’ll be tweeting (http://twitter.com/umhoops) and posting here during the game.
Anyone know where this game is streamed online?
Based on all the info Dylan has provided it seems like we should win this game. Weak rebounding compliments our weak rebounding. Turnover prone is good news for the 1-3-1. And although they have size it seems like we have learned to cope a bit recently. Plus if their big guys aren’t that talented/physical I think it won’t be a big deal.
We’ll see what we can do on the offensive side. Really need to be more careful with the basketball than we have in the past 2 games. And I think everyone can agree on this: lets see Grady get one more chance and do the right things on defense.
looks like the game will be streamed at: http://www.justin.tv/zagman_in_philly
Hightower And burr. You have got to be kidding
sims goes off for 20 plus points. Manny keeps up the good play from the 2nd half of NW….and maybe, just maybe we shoot the ball well from 3 point land….I like big blue 62-53.
I saw Jay Bilas on Mike and Mike this morning and he made some very good points regarding college basketball officiating. He basically talked about how physical the college game is compared to nba due to the fact that the officiating is so inconsistent. The reason for this is that college requires a ridiculous number of officials to do all the games for 340 teams compared to 30 nba teams. Therefore there is no way for the college game to ensure uniformity and monitor all those officials with any consistency. Plus the fact that frequently college refs are doing 6 games a week. I think I have seen a game every day this week in which Hightower has been an official. It is just too much to ask out of these guys to great officials every night. I don’t know what the answer for this is, but it would be nice if we could see an improvement in the quality of officiating. Particularly in the big ten where hand checks seemed to get called with random frequency (hmm, not sure that makes sense), yet guys get mugged at the rim and nothing is called. Bilas also pointed out an interesting stat regarding the big ten and how games are called (particularly that they allow teams to be over physical). This was that Ohio St during their run to the title game with Oden, Conley, etc., averaged only 60 points a game in Big ten play yet in NCAA tourney play they averaged 80.
Wow, Hightower and Burr?
I think Tubby actually looks like a gopher
4 missed layups in 8 minutes.
Im trying to figure out why Douglass has such a hard time shooting at Crisler but lights up the nets at Uconn. He has done it on more than one occasion. You would think you would feel more comfortable at home and on a court you are comfortable on.
Anyone else having issues with BTN basketball audio? All the games the past couple of nights have had no commentator audio. There’s background noise (crowd, announcer, etcetera), but no commentators. All the commercials have their normal audio, etcetera. I just don’t know if it’s a problem with my particular cable company or if others were experiencing the issues as well?
Thanks guys and Go Blue!
I think this is another reason Novak finds plenty of minutes next year!
We might be missing layups but Novak is hitting threes.
Does Tubby remind anyone other than me of Al Roker?
My BTN audio is just fine……other than the announcers themselves
One more thing, it’s the HD broadcast only.
Defense has played really well to this point. Here’s hoping we keep it up.
MNB2: I’m watching BTN HD on AT & T U-Verse and it’s fine, no problems…..
Grady with a rather silly behind the back pass that leads to a Devoe Joseph 3.
Kelvin hits a three… Then turns it over on the 2 on 1. The threes are falling though 30-21 Michigan.
Thanks Kevin in GR. Insight Cable in Southern Indiana here. I noticed it last night too, but it’s just strange. It’s only the commentator audio that’s missing. Commercials are fine and I can even hear the background noise (students, band, announcer, etc.)
Anyway, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. LOL.
This is Grady’s chance to work his way back into the rotation.
My BTN HD is fine.
What do you mean turns it over on the 1-3-1. On the fast break?
Grady went over a screen!
The 3′s be fallin…
I believe he meant 2-on-1.
Thanks Avery.
And all of a sudden my commentary audio is on.
It sure is strange how shooting the 3 seems contagious for this team! Looking good tonight!
Kelvin didn’t do much to earn his pt back there… Big finish to the half though. 40-25 and we are shooting the lights out. Gotta keep it up.
Would not want to be in Al Rokers lockerroom right now!
I will take a 15 pt lead over a potential tournament team whenever I can get it…Grady looks much better tonight than the last few games. The behind the back pass was idiotic, though.
maybe the first time both stu and novak have been hot in the same game. and not to take away from us but minnesota looks not good.
Thanks maiZenblue. Meant 2 on 1. Typing on my phone. Speaking of the 1-3-1, it looks good and Minnesota really looks uncomfortable against it.
Is this the first game Zack and Stu both have multiple threes? We may finally be getting that game where they’re both hot.
Kevin in GR…. as bad as the announcers on BTN usually are, we can NEVER complain when Gus Johnson calls one of our games. I honestly believe he’s one of the best in the game. Wait till you hear him calling tournament games this March and I hope you’ll take back that comment. Now if it was directed toward Jimmy I’d understand, because he’s pretty bland.
I am a bit dissapointed in the crowd however. Its weird to see Assembly Hall in Indiana filled for every home game for a team predestined to lose a boatload of games. Anyone agree, disagree?
If you want a quick explanation for iu’s crowds it is the fact that they are iu. The big house was full this year and we were 3-9….
Dre: Yes, I was referring to “TO$U” grad Jimmy Jackson! Gus Johnson is good
Also….I was referring to BTN announcers in general too….there are some good one’s though!
Sorry….I should have clarified.
We better keep in mind how far this is from over. People saw the Wisconsin game I’m sure.
Dylan, do you think UM fans will ever truly embrace UM hoops? Maybe if we go undefeated?
its all good.. ha
Let’s keep this up in the second half.
I’m looking to see Michigan keep up the defensive intensity in the 2nd half, and hopefully ride the freethrow line to victory over an RPI Top 50 team.
And it’s gone again. I give up.
OT: Did anyone just see Barkley on TNT during halftime? HOLY CRAP!
man come on. somebody stop westbrook.
Wow, the refs missed an intentional foul. Unless the refs think Minnesota mistook Sims’ foot for the ball.
What did Chuck B do or say now? I assume most people here are just watching the M game!
we are seriously the worst alley oop team i’ve ever watched
We must not practice many fastbreak drills.
“Bada bing, Bada Boom”? C’mon Gus!
If we play like this the rest of the year, we’re going to make the tournament. That’s for sure.
agreed. wouldn’t hurt if this is the demise of minnesota too.
Funny what home court can do for a team. Also what playing on the road can do to another team.
Our man to man still needs to get tougher.
Thats what we have to look forward to with Grady! Adam you should like that one
Ray McCallum and his dcd crew are here, including amir I believe.
Im sorry but Grady has to play more. At least more than Merritt.
Its nice to know that even as sloppy as they’ve played down the stretch that they still have their entire first half lead.
KG for THREEEEEEEEEEEEE! Gotta be impressed with him tonight after sitting the bench the last few games. Pride of EGR!
What’s encouraging about this game is that Manny really hasn’t done much…..A LOT of guys stepped up!
great, much needed win. good to see some others really step up. only problem i had was we seemed pretty flat footed in the second half giving up alot of drives for points
In other news, nothing would give me more satisfaction than watching Wisconsin lose to IU.
Grady!!!!!! Merritt should never play a minute ahead of KG. Lets see here, Broke the press effortlessly, made 3 3s, had some nice PENETRATION(its not a myth) and some good dishes.
Wow some accurate predictions above, from Raiderfan, JayRich, etc.
Great win for M!
Dylan, after Gradys play tonight will you now agree he can penetrate and score? Or would you have liked to see more Merritt?
Great game; bad officiating
Grady definitely came through for all of his supporters hear at umhoops.
IU giving the Badgers all they can handle…keeping my fingers crossed.
So what did Charles Barkley do??
Beautiful, love everyones EFFORT tonight. Yes, they were hitting shots, but I felt like they all had the intensity that we’ve been missing in some of their losses. Grady played well, still a few break downs, that behind the back pass is unacceptable, but he made up for it. No reason merrit should play over him from here on out. Dylan, can you or anyone else find out if this was the first game Stu and Zack hit multiple 3′s. This is how they should play every game, when we are hitting 3′s we can beat anyone in the country. Lets hope Illinois finishes strong, and we can get a W against Purdue. If that happens I love our chances. Also-thought Puls should have got a few minutes in there at least get him a touch or 2, he can’t be that bad. And maybe the difference was Grady with no headband? Go blue!
Also, i dont know how McCallum is feeling considering were pulling in D. Morris next year?
Barkley started crying and talking about loyalty. Look it up on youtube, probably will be up there later tonight.
I was shocked to find out that other than this game, the Norfolk St. game was the only other one in which Zach and Stu both hit a three (2 each). I seem to remember games in which they’ve both played pretty well, but I guess not too well (at least three point shooting). Going into tonight, they had each taken 108 threes with Stu hitting one more (36). As of now, both of their game highs is six. Zach tonight, Stu against UCONN.