Greetings from the lovely nation of hockey and the maple leaf. I am currently on a plant visit to Essex, Canada. So, while I have a few minutes at lunch I figured I would talk about some more Michigan basketball.
Like expected Duke cruised to a 10 point win last night, and the outcome was in hand for most of the 2nd half. They finished on an 8-0 run to end the first half, and never was challenged again.
Many people hate Duke for various reasons (always win, coach = rat, arrogance that pisses off our arrogant fan base, get top recruits, etc.. etc). But, I have had a chance to meet Coach K and listen to him talk about basketball to a room full of high school coaches, and the dude knows his stuff. I was very impressed with some of his views and ideas about defense and motivation. One of the things that I respect the most from Coach K is his ability to win despite what type of players he has. Yes, Duke always has a lot of talent, but not always the same kind of talent. Look back to the 1999 season when Elton Brand is tearing up college basketball. Duke played an inside-out system where the offense completely went through Elton. Fast forward just two short years and Duke is on top of college basketball again, but this time with Jay Williams leading the team as the point guard. One can argue that it doesn't matter the players on the floor if they are all 5 star talent, but I argue that you don't see Memphis or Kentucky really winning anything that matters in college basketball with all 5 star talent because they are not team oriented. On a small sample size, we saw what a team focused group does to a I focused team yesterday in Michigan v Memphis. It is the main reason why some teas are NCAA second weekend mainstays. So, now that I have given Coach K his most deserved respect (he currently has 904 career wins, first all time), I can begin to break down tonights game.
Was I the only one who got sick of the announcers constantly talking about how fast and good Memphis was, then when the final was not in doubt any longer they began to switch thei gears to say oh yea, Michigan has a basketball team too.. I thought this was just practice for Memphis v Duke. Then I think they talked about how Duke has never lost in the Maui, and showed their fans and team more in our game than our bench or fans. Blah. Sorry for the rant, I get sick of it. Anywho... lets jump into some analyzing.
Duke has a trio of giant brothers, also known as the Plum-trees. I couldn't imagine feeding all three of those kids in high school. The youngest one is a freshman, and will be redshirting, so we only have to wory about Miles and Mason. Mason is definitely the more talented on of the pair, but we will hear multiple times about how Miles has 5% body fat because that makes you a great basketball player. They have the 6'11" Dirk wann-be in Kelly, who if you remember seemed to never miss during last year's tourney game. But the team is led by their depth at the guard position. Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins are great shooters, and definitely have the green light to pull the trigger from wherever, whenever. Duke's biggest weapon though might be Austin Rivers (#1 recruit on most sites). He really is the only player for Duke that wants to get to the rim and has the strength and quickness to do so. Duke is not an extremely deep team either, so keep an eye on their foul problems as well. Duke likes to run a base man to man defense where one of the Plumlees will be around the rim for the rebound or blocked shot. They will not be as aggressive as Memphis was, but their wings will be susceptible to the back cut still. On offense, they like to push the tempo off of a rebound. This is where Mason Plumlee is so good, he will pull down rebounds with high efficiciency and start the fast break with a long outlet to a guard. Then, he will beat the opponent's big down the floor for a bucket in transition or a follow up rebound off a 3 point attempt. When in a half court set, Duke's offense is pretty standard, but they run it to perfection. The bigs will set lots of screens to get the shooters open off the pass, or Austin Rivers moving toward the basket with the ball. They will not use inside as much as I think they should, but they recognize mismatches well. So if Mason feels confident against Smot, Morgan, Horford, etc then look for Rivers to feed him the ball on the block for a hook shot. He has pretty good footwork, and is very athletic for how big he is.
What does this mean for us? The key to slowing down Duke's high tempo/ high efficiency offense is limiting the Plumlee long outlet pass to start the transition offense. If we keep Duke in a half court game, it can become very winable. While in our half court defense, I think Beilein will be hesitant to use the zone since Duke shoots so well from 3 (3 players shoot close to 50%). But in order to keep them guessing and uncomfortable, he will need to mix in some different looks. Again Trey Burke will have to guard well, stay out of foul trouble and keep Austin Rivers in front of him. I am excited to see how Austin Rivers plays defense on Trey because he showed some good speed and quickness yesterday vs a very fast guard. Also, if we can rebound with the same intensity as yesterday I think we will be very hard to beat. But, we are known for getting outrebounded, especially by bigger stronger teams (like Duke). If we can draw even with them in rebouds I think this game will be very close. On offense, we need to test Duke's depth. I think we should keep our bigs moving and setting ball screens to force Duke's bigs to play defense 25 feet from the hoop (It is tough for bigs to play defense in space). Like I said earlier, while Duke's wings can shoot lights out, they are not the same defensively as they were last year with Singler and Smith. Look for Hardaway to have another good game (if he doesn't, dont expect this game to go our way). Also, look for Trey Burke to expose Austin Rivers lack of defense with some hard drives to the hoop. Stu and Zak need to knock down the shots that are given to them at a higher rate than yesterday. It will be a good sign as well if we can keep our best bigs on the floor (Morgan and Smot), since they are a tough to defend.
This is getting long.. so quickly the key matchup is what I mentioned earlier: Michigan bigs vs Duke's bigs (especially Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly). If we can win this battle (fouls, points, rebounds) we should win the game. Also look for Trey to be aggressive again, since he knows how highly rated Rivers was... and I think Trey will want to make a statement.
Prediction: Well I thought Memphis would win last night, and I was joyfully wrong. So, lets try that again. Duke is the more talented team, but they are young and I dont think they are a top 5 team. I expect this game to be close, unless something goes horribly wrong (injury, ejection, foul trouble on our guards). I am not expecting us to have a +14 rebounding edge again, but I think we can be close to even. I think Duke will get hot from 3 at some point and win 68-62. But again, I can't root against us. So Michigan 71 - Duke 65.
Go Blue!
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