Michigan MBB now 6-2

Well, Michigan came out and played a lot better in the second half before trying to lose the game in the last minute.

They had no answer for Iowa State center Royce White who finished with a double double 20+ points and 13 rebounds.  We had nobody athletic enough to cover him.  Then when we double teamed him, he would consistently find the open man for a jump shot.  He also finished with 4 steals and 5 assists.  Not a bad game for him.  If his teammates helped him out more, he would have had closer to 10 assists.

Michigan knocked down more of its open shots in the second half.  Hardaway got his standard 20 points, and looked uncoverable at times.  Michigan is falling into a little bit of a rut though where Burke will score about 10 points in the first half, then only finish with 11-13 for the game.  While Hardaway will have 5-6 at half time then finish with 20.  It would be nice if they could just be consistent for an entire game.

Morgan looked very good at times today, and he has expanded his shooting range to about 15 feet which should help out our offense quite a bit this year. I thought Michigan rebounded very well today too.  There were multiple times that Vogrich, Novak, and Smot battled inside against bigger players to come away with the ball.  This will need to happen every game for this team to finish in the top 4-5 of the B1G.

Michigan's zone offense has looked really bad this year, and it continued again today.  I didnt see us attack the zone one time today, settling to just pass the ball around the three point line.  Future opponents should see this in scouting, and use a zone more often.  It takes Morgan completely out of our offense and makes us just settle for long 3s.  Michigan will need to continue to work on getting the ball into the middle of the floor (at the free throw line) to break down a zone.  The player that cut to this spot did not move quickly or with any aggression, and the wing player with the ball wouldnt even look at him. Once you get the ball there, the player can turn towards the basket and suddenly he has many options... shoot a tough free throw jumper, pass down to the blocks and hope that our big has good enough hands to catch the sharp pass, another option would be to pass the ball to either corner as both wings would slide down the 3 point line.  The defense will likely collapse onto the free throw line, and with a quick 2nd pass there will be multiple open options. This never happened today.

It was a good win to get back at home and settle back into the easiest part of our non-conference schedule, but there are definitely things to improve on if we are going to not be on the bubble come March.