Maize and Blue (Hoop Vision Weekly: 1/8/21)
The Juwan Howard era is pretty similar to the John Beilein era... except for the post-ups.
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly!
There are now four teams with an undefeated record and at least 10 wins: Baylor, Drake, Gonzaga, and Michigan.
Gonzaga and Baylor continue to distance themselves from the rest of the pack.
On Wednesday, Baylor held Oklahoma to a season low 0.93 points per possession. Then on Thursday, the Zags jumped on BYU right from the opening minutes. (Although, the performance simply wasn’t good enough for Swaggy P.)
Meanwhile, Drake will get its biggest challenge of the season in an upcoming back-to-back against Loyola Chicago.
But for today’s newsletter, we focus on the other team from the undefeated list: Michigan.
Before we get to that, some quick programming notes…
We sent out our Starting Five newsletter to Hoop Vision PLUS subscribers on Monday. The latest edition included:
Kansas’s offensive struggles
Purdue Fort Wayne’s out of bounds playbook
Oklahoma State’s adjustment to use Cade Cunningham as a screener against Texas Tech
Next week — in addition to The Starting Five — we have a special subscriber-only newsletter on a specific X’s and O’s trend being used throughout the country.
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The Juwan Howard Era
At first glance, it seemed like Michigan’s decision to hire Juwan Howard after John Beilein’s departure would bring immediate changes to the program. The two coaches have extremely different backgrounds.
Beilein was a head coach his whole career, rising from the high school level to junior college and beyond. Howard, on the other hand, won an NBA championship as a player and then became a Miami Heat assistant coach.
In the first season of the Juwan Howard era, however, Michigan looked surprisingly similar to a John Beilein team — both statistically and schematically.
There were a couple of big reasons for the similarities…
Beilein’s style of play — earlier in his career very Princeton-focused offensively and zone-focused defensively — evolved to a more NBA-friendly version over the course of his time at Michigan.
The Wolverines had roster continuity. With Zavier Simpson still running the show, Howard kept many elements of Beilein’s schemes.
However, one difference for the Howard-led Wolverines was post-up creation.
In Beilein’s final five seasons in Ann Arbor, Michigan averaged 2.9, 3.9, 3.1, 1.4, and 3.0 post-ups per game. Last season — thanks to Howard and Jon Teske — the Wolverines jumped to 8.5 post-ups per game.
Now in 2021, enter 7-foot-1 freshman center Hunter Dickinson.
Not only are the Wolverines averaging 11.8 post-ups per game this season, but they are currently the most efficient post-up team in the country (minimum of five games played) — averaging 1.35 points per post-up.
That efficiency — it’s pretty safe to say — is unsustainable.
Dickinson has overwhelmed weaker opponents with his size. Here, for example, against Toledo, a very simple duck-in clears #2 Setric Millner completely out of the way.
To be fair, the Big 10 hasn’t slowed down Dickinson yet either. Through five conference games, Dickinson is shooting a ridiculous 76% from two. Most recently, Dickinson shot 12-for-15 in a blowout win over Minnesota.
In addition to just Dickinson, Michigan also showed some strong signs of offensive diversity against Minnesota.
With Isaiah Livers and Franz Wagner, the Wolverines have two bigger wings with a rare combination of skill and height for the college level. Both of those two can: shoot off movement, use ball screens, set ball screens, and attack close-outs.
Using Livers as a ghost screener was effective against Minnesota. The clip below was my favorite Michigan offensive possession of the game.
Wagner clears out to give Livers room to pop into the corner. It’s not a horrible stunt or close-out defense from Minnesota, but the Mike Smith hesitation dribble creates an advantage anyways — ending in a Dickinson dunk.
Here’s another bucket generated off of a Livers ghost screen.
Michigan currently ranks seventh nationally in both two-point percentage and Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted offensive efficiency.
Even with some inevitable regression to the mean on those Dickinson post-ups, the Wolverines have a level of offensive diversity that should enable them to generate efficient looks in other ways.
Other Links
Baylor’s defense… still good
Twitter thread from Matt Norlander on the potential logistics and safety protocol for the NCAA Tournament
Ben Falk and Gibson Pyper released an online course to learn NBA X’s and O’s. Check out Ben’s free preview or Gibson’s YouTube video
I made a guest appearance on the Spot Up CBB Podcast with Nate Walroth. We talked analytics and this year’s college basketball landscape
I’ve been teasing a new long-form YouTube video for a couple weeks now, but it’s (slowly) coming. Please subscribe to the channel if you’re not already
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