~2017-18 Big Ten Basketball Thread~

[847badgerfan]

The most impressive thing about Michigan Basketball is that Beilein does things the right way. 

Someone needs to teach Simpson how to shoot free throws though. Jeez. That could have hurt a lot last night.

[Anonymous Coward]

The most impressive thing about Michigan Basketball is that Beilein does things the right way.

It's my favorite aspect about him, too. When the FBI investigation began, and even a few weeks ago when reports leaked many more big schools were implicated, including half of this tournament's sixteen teams seeded #1 through #4, it was enjoyable knowing that there is a serious chance that NCAA basketball will be cleaned up and that Michigan has a 0.00000% chance of involvement.

Someone needs to teach Simpson how to shoot free throws though. Jeez. That could have hurt a lot last night.

Amen. We are lucky, though. It's obvious that FTs are Michigan's Achilles'. And yet...Michigan still hasn't lost one game this year where the missed FTs would have given them the game. Knock on wood that this continues.
Simpson's FT form has changed in recent weeks, though, and it seems to help. He used to be a ~45% shooter. Matthews was around there, too, as of February or so. It's not fully fixed, but it's better, and maybe(?) good enough given their contributions elsewhere. To prove that, they'll need two more games.

[HailHailMSP]

You can get away with poor free throw shooting with some positions on the court, but your main floor general and PG isn’t one of them. 

Simmons isn’t someone they can throw in for Simpson at the end. The ball handling and defensive drop offs are too significant

[Anonymous Coward]

Simpson's FTs haven't yet cost us a game for good reason, though. Because his defense, assists, and ability to drive to the basket are off the charts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, I hadn't until this afternoon seen this article from The Athletic about Rob Gray trash-talking Jordan Poole just before...well, you know. It's not the best trash talk I've read, but it is karmic nonetheless.
https://theathletic.com/283370/2018/03/22/you-dont-know-jordan-poole/

Opening verse:
MILWAUKEE — Moments before Houston’s Devin Davis attempted the first of two free throws to seal an NCAA Tournament win over Michigan, Rob Gray, the Cougars’ high-scoring star, approached Jordan Poole. He smirked. Poole, a Michigan freshman, had just checked back into the game with 3.9 seconds left and his Wolverines trailing by two. 

“Yo, Poole, where you from?” Gray asked. 

Poole winced, gritted his teeth and spit a response. 

“Milwaukee.” 

“That’s nice,” Gray said. “You ‘bout to go back to Milwaukee.” 

This moment, if the forces of nature allowed, should be paused and captured in a bottle. A freeze-frame. Poole glaring at Gray. Gray staring back. Both unflinching. Because this moment, and the one that soon followed — amid the reams and reams of stories that surround the character that is Jordan Poole — represent the marriage of Poole’s split personalities. 

The shot itself, as you all now know,...

[ELA]

Gray should have opted to play his college basketball for one of the 99% of coaches and 95% of fans who know to put a man on the ball there.  I don't feel bad for him one bit.

[ELA]

The odd effect of this tourney is because the left side of the bracket devolved into essentially the caliber of a mediocre preseason tournament.  I never thought I'd find myself rooting for Duke, Villanova, Kansas at this time of year, but the left side of the bracket has so cheated us out of marquee matchups, at what is supposed to be the marquee point of the season that I find myself with weird rooting interests in the Friday/Sunday games, just to give me one day of big matchups and at least one marquee Final 4 game next weekend.  I need to go shower now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we are already guaranteed a marquee FF matchup on the right. 

[ELA]

I think we are already guaranteed a marquee FF matchup on the right.

Yeah, I more meant on Friday night.  I found myself pulling for Villanova, Duke and Kansas surprisingly.
As sports czar I would have given UM Syracuse's place, cancelled the left and had that be the Elite 8.  The right side + UM.  As I said, I like a couple of upsets in thrfirst round, but I like the second round to correct things and it to be a heavyweight fight.  I'm happy for Sister Jean, but I have no use for her at this point in the tournament.

Sacrificing a great regular season in favor of one toirnament feels really lackluster when you get to this point and you have a pair of teams ranked outside the top 35 playing for a spot in the Final 4.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of...the following proposal isn't realistic but I agree about disliking huge tourney upsets, and even worse when they are concentrated in regions. (That's as an uninvested bystander, of course; when it favors Michigan I'm up for anything.) 
My strong-strong-so-strong preference is for every national champ to be that *season's* best team. And those odds shrink quickly as you (1) step into a single-elimination tournament and (2) increase the field larger than 2 or 4 teams. 
Assuming that The Madness(TM) is so culturally important that I can't even have a theoretical discussion about it if I start by proposing a 4-team CoFoPO format, I'd say that my next best recommendation would be for a 16-team tournament with either no auto-bids or auto-bids only for P6 schools (the football P5 plus the Big East). 
Teams with resumes less than that make the current March Madness fun but they also degrade the odds that the champion is deserving. A truly serious tourney would be helped by not extending deeper than what we call 4-seeds.

[ELA]

What about this?

32 team tournament, instead of 64, comprised of all conference champs.  Change all conference tourneys to only permit the top 4 with a best of 3 semifinals, followed by a championship.

Then, since you've gone from 64 to 32, that first weekend is all best of 3 series on the home court of the higher seeded team.  Then proceed from there with the Sweet 16 as is.

FWIW, the fist two Final 4 participants are equivalent in composite computer ranking (#11 and #40) of Washington and Texas in football.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fair. Though I think this was always the kind of season where a mucked up tournament was the most likely. Teams like UVa and Xavier technically earned the right to be 1-seeds. For UVa, they even looked the part (whereas most fans seemed to think Xavier was a paper tiger). But that doesn't change the fact that no one in the Top 10 had a truly dominant season. This was a high-parity season where the top tier was clearly less toppish than normal -much closer to this and past seasons' second and third tiers.
I pointed this out before the tourney with a group I met at the bar. And said, I don't know if it'll ever happen in the next 50 years, but if a 16 is going to take down a 1, it's going to be after a season like this. That wasn't really a prediction. So I can't take credit. But it does underscore the dilemma of this bracket.

[847badgerfan]

Anyone in favor of expanding the CFB playoffs?

[ELA]

I also said (on this board) the only team on the entire left side of the bracket I would pick UM to lose to was UNC, it was a terrible matchup.  But that if Providence or Texas A&M could upset UNC, UM was going to the national title game.  So while it's looking to be true, its the weird prediction that could never actually be proven right.  It could be proven wrong by UM beating UNC, or UM losing to someone other than UNC.  But it could never be right.  Because, like this, it will not prove UM couldn't have beaten UNC if given the chance, and if they had lost to UNC, it could never have been proven theybwould have otherwise beaten anyone else.  But that's how I felt, even without the total.bracket meltdown.  Even if they had been forced to go through Xavier and Virginia or Cincinnati, I would have picked UM.  But with a road of Montana-Houston-Texas A&M-FSU-Loyola, nobody here wouldn't have picked them.

I do feel bad for Purdue fans.  I think they were the best Big Ten team, and with nothing to show for it.  They lost the conference title to MSU because MSU had an easier schedule, they beat UM 2 of 3 times, but the one loss was the one that cost them a banner, then they were given a path that would have required beating 3-1-1/2 to get to a championship game, while UM will get there playing nothing higher than a 6.  You have to be both lucky and good, and Purdue had both Matt Painter and zero luck.