Michigan gets defensive in final non-conference game

Michigan finished off its non-conference slate (well, they play UConn in a couple months, but you get the idea) with a 77-57 win over NCCU. It was Big Blue's 2nd best defensive performance this season, which I guess illustrates what kind of team the Wolverines are - offensive. NCCU ranked dead last in the Pomeroy Ratings entering the game, and losing by 20 to this Michigan team actually bumped them up a couple of spots. The Wolverines were led by Manny being Manny, scoring 29 points on 18 shots, grabbing 16 rebounds, and dishing 7 assists (1 turnover). Even if you're a die hard Buckeye fan, try to catch a few more Michigan games this season if only to see this guy play. I have a feeling he will be wearing a ridiculous suit in New York this June. Box score.

So it's finally here. Conference play. And it's fortuitous that we should see the two most efficient teams square off in the opener tonight. Since we last bragged about the strength of the conference, the Big Ten has slipped, all the way down to #5 out of the 6 BCS conferences. Still, a lot of that is Indiana, who remains the worst BCS team in the country. Looking at the other 10 Big Ten teams, and every major conference has at least a couple of teams worse than all of the Indiana-less Big Ten. Will the Hoosiers deny the Big Ten a spot or two in the NCAA Tournament? It's plausible enough to consider.

And that leads us to our first major storyline to look out for this season - will Indiana win a Big Ten game? We predicted they would win two, and to tell you the truth, I thought that perhaps we were being a little hard on Crean's crop of new faces. Now that prediction looks optimistic. I don't think it's because IU has played especially poorly this season, but rather because the rest of the Big Ten has played really well. But 18 games is a lot, and the odds are better than even that Indiana will spring an upset somewhere along the way. They'll have a night where they just don't miss, and the other team does, and all the turnovers won't matter. The real battle will be for the fans, as I can't imagine there are many IU supporters who have ever gone through a season like this in their lifetimes. Hopefully they don't punish this team for just being young and inexperienced.

KJ over at Spartans Weblog has put together a nice tempo-free aerial of the non-conference numbers of all the Big Ten teams. The key point, as he mentions, is that everyone is playing a different schedule, so there's a big grain of salt that should go with these numbers. But I think we can try and pry a couple of conclusions out of this thing. The first thing that pops out, at least to me, is that we can expect some decent scoring this year. The number of strong defensive teams appears to be less than the number of strong offensive teams, and the only team that looks especially good (keep in mind, the aerial is not centered on 1.00 points per possession) on both sides of the ball right now is Illinois.

But don't get too carried away with this graph. I think the list of team-specific conclusions we can draw at this point are at the caveman-speak level ("Michigan offense good. Purdue defense good. Indiana offense bad.").

And that sort of highlights the fact that this season has a high potential to surprise. Indeed, although the Sans-Indiana Big Ten has an impressive "bottom" (the lowest Pomeroy Ranking is 73, belonging to Penn State), the "top" (Purdue, at #16) is not nearly as impressive (4 out of the 5 remaining BCS conferences have at least 2 teams higher than that). So if you were to sum up the Big Ten in one word, that word would be parity. If anything makes our predictions especially silly-looking at this point, it's that we projected 2 teams would have at least 15 conference wins. I don't feel too good about that projection right now. Thirteen wins might be enough to win the conference title this season. But beyond who wins the conference, there are a lot of other great storylines to look for. Will the Big Ten get 6 teams in the Dance? 7? Is 8 out of the question? Will Northwestern make the Tourney for the first time in school history? Can Illinois really win by being a POT, without the "perimeter" part? Can anyone challenge Manny Harris for Player of the Year (that Raymar Morgan character has looked pretty good, as has Robbie Hummel)?

It should be fun.

Speaking of fun, tune in for tonight's Purdue/Illinois opener. Defensively, both teams are very good, especially with respect to forcing turnovers. Purdue also locks down on the inside, and Illinois shuts you down on the perimeter. Both of these teams have also gotten off to strange starts on offense. Neither is a POT in the strict sense - Illinois attempts 3s only 27.1% of the time, and Purdue only 33.2% of the time. But everthing else about their games screams "POT." Purdue takes excellent care of the ball, and while Illinois does not (just so-so in that department), the reason they do not differs from say, the reason MSU does not. Illinois' roster is not full of big men with TO Rates in the 20s. No, it's the TO-prone guards, Chester Frazier, Demetri McCamey, and Jeff Jordan most notably, who are coughing up the ball. The big men have not been a liability (outside bench player Richard Semrau). Both teams also have pretty ho-hum offensive rebounding this season, which is also something you expect from a POT, and they both sport pretty awful free throw rates - which is expected of teams who hang out on the perimeter and don't draw contact.

But if they aren't shooting threes, then what's happening? Well, I have a pet theory, which I absolutely cannot prove without some game data. I think these teams are shooting a lot of mid-range jumpers. That would provide all the ancillary effects of a POT, but without the extra point you get with a long-range bomb. From watching the games, this makes some sense. E'Twaun Moore, for example, sure has been shooting a lot of those this season, and Illinois' All-Mike Frontcourt have been feasting on jump shots.

There are reasons to be pessimistic about this approach. It's not a stretch to say that the 15-18 foot jumper represents the worst shot in basketball. An offense that includes an abundance of those is likely not going to see sustained success. But maybe conference season will provide more clarity, and show us how these teams "really" intend to play this season, not just how they play against the likes of Directional Cupcake University.