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Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood Is 19 Feet, Nine Inches Away
They’re not making a ton of headlines this winter, but John Beilein’s team in Ann Arbor has quietly pieced together a very nice 15-5 (5-2 in the Big Ten) record. And a fair amount of the victories have come without the services of the team’s top player, Caris LeVert.
Some of the conference wins have been against the lesser lights of the league (Illinois, Penn St., Minnesota), but you play who’s on the schedule and to this point, this group has set itself up nicely for another NCAA berth.
Duncan Robinson
The key Wolverine in this run has been the super-surprising Duncan Robinson, a 6-foot-8 sophomore that made the jump from Division 3 to being one of the most accurate shooters in the nation at the highest collegiate level. When the ball gets rotated and winds up in the hands of Robinson, the scoreboard operator can more or less just add three to the Michigan tally before the ball begins its descent.
Mr. Robinson is over 50% from beyond the arc and a ridiculous 95% at the stripe (18-19). If LeVert is able to make a return this season (all indications are that he will), this resilient bunch could be primed for another unexpected jaunt through the March brackets -- thanks in large part to a three-point sniper that nobody had ever heard of just a few months ago.
Hard-Luck Detroit Titans
You’d be hard-pressed to find a team that has been unluckier than the UDM Titans over the last few weeks. Ray McCallum’s bunch has dropped five conference games in a row, but most every one has come down to the final seconds, only to see the final result tipped in the opposite direction.
They lost the rivalry game at home to Oakland by four. Then they went to Wright State, built a 14-point advantage, then got clipped by a dagger 3-pointer in the closing seconds. The Titans were within two points next at Milwaukee, but couldn’t get over the hump. Then last night, the tough-luck Titans battled Green Bay to overtime, ultimately losing by a bizarrely high college hoops score of 115-108.
The standings have Detroit at 9-10, 3-5 in the conference, but this is not a bad basketball team. The key is to figure out what the squad is doing to be successful in the first 90% of the game and get it to translate to those crunch-time moments. Easier said than done.
Allergic to the Paint
Speaking of Oakland, the Golden Grizzlies are flying high, winners of four out of five after sweeping the Milwaukee-Green Bay gauntlet in the last 72 hours. Kay Felder is a potential All-American, averaging over 25 points a game, but he’s getting quality help from his supporting cast, too.
The newest member of the Erik Kangas/Travis Bader “Oakland Sharpshooters Club” is Max Hooper, a long-range marksman that is quite literally a 3-point specialist. Hooper buried an eye-popping 16 triples in the last two games, but that’s not his most fascinating statistic. Believe it or not, Hooper has 79 made baskets this year, and every single one of them has been from downtown. 79 buckets, all threes. But it gets better. Of Hooper’s 168 total shot attempts this season, not a one was released from inside the arc.
This is a fairly high-volume player, having appeared in every game for over 25 minutes a night (529 minutes total). And not once has Hooper found himself streaking down the wing for a layup or had an offensive rebound tip out to him near the foul line for a short jumper. This is a man that makes sure if he’s going to shoot the basketball, it is going to count for three points. As a fellow gunner that’s never been fond of the flying elbows that inhabit the paint, I salute you Mr. Hooper and hope you can continue this improbable run for the duration of the year.
The Brick-Laying Elephant in the Room
It’s getting to be the oldest bit around town, but Andre Drummond’s free throw shooting is impossible to ignore. The Pistons scratched out a road win in Utah on Monday night, getting clutch hoops from Reggie Jackson in the final minutes to put the Jazz away. But the game never really needed to be that tight.
Of course, the reason it was a three point margin and not 12-14 is in large part due to the hard-to-stomach 1-for-10 effort by Drummond at the charity stripe. This is a major issue for the Pistons right now, a team that is teetering on the brink of winning and losing most nights of the year. This is not a tremendously experienced team that can simply overwhelm opponents with superior talent and smarts. It is a middle-of-the-pack squad with a very thin margin of error against most NBA teams. When you have one player attempting ten free throws and converting once, it’s a handicap that will often transform easy wins into gut-wrenching losses.
If you’ve watched the Clippers advance deep into the playoffs the last few years only to always come up a little bit short, you realize that a critical piece of their great-but-not-elite status is because DeAndre Jordan, a key cog in their unit, is one of the worst free throwers in the league. The future of Drummond with this franchise will be very interesting to watch. It is very difficult to see how you hitch your wagon to a guy that can become such a serious liability on the offensive end of the floor.
Other Hoops Notes
► It’s a sad byproduct of the bloated 14-team Big Ten conference that the Spartans and Wolverines will meet just once on the hardwood this winter. Michigan State will go to Ann Arbor on Feb. 6 and that’ll be it for the in-state drama.
It’s a bummer that the schedule organizers can’t find a way to ensure home-and-away matchups for the two rivals every season. Part of the fun of the fresh “Metro Series” between Detroit and Oakland is that they visit the other’s arena every year.
Only getting one game feels unsatisfying, but on the bright side, thankfully we are guaranteed at least that. Just wait a few years when the Big Ten has two dozen schools and MSU-UM will meet a couple of times each decade.
► One of the stranger losses took place in the MAC on Saturday with Eastern Michigan going down on a buzzer-beating trey at the end of double overtime against Ball State. The Eagles were in-bounding with about ten seconds left holding a two-point lead. Ball State proceeded to swarm once the ball was passed in, trying for a steal, but obviously settling for a quick foul if unsuccessful.
There were multiple players hacking at the Eastern ballhandler, though not a single whistle could be heard. Finally, the rock was wrestled (literally) away from Eastern, only the Ball State player that came up with it wound up taking several steps without dribbling after the “steal.” Again, no whistle came. The ball was zipped to an open man, the three was launched, and when it found nothing but net, Eastern Michigan was dealt one of the more difficult defeats of the college season.
The team got some hollow justice this week in the form of a suspension for the officials that worked the game, the MAC conference stating that the grossly mishandled final seconds “must be met with swift and firm disciplinary action.” I’m sure coach Rob Murphy would much prefer the outcome be overturned, but unfortunately, a short suspension for a couple of anonymous referees is all the Eagles will get to heal their wounds.
