(No caption)
Watching the Big Ten Tournament, it’s as if the Purdue Boilermakers were one team on Saturday and an entirely different version on Sunday.
The difference? In one game, they were defended ferociously, the paint protected by a slew of hard-working, legitimate, Division-I big men. In the other, they were permitted free access to the basket at almost all times, with little to no interior resistance offered at any point during the game.
The Saturday game was Purdue throttling Michigan. The Sunday title affair was Purdue getting rejected rudely by Michigan State. And therein lies the major difference between the two basketball programs; Michigan State recruits strong, physical players with height, and Michigan simply brings in guys that are just sort of tall.
Year after year, the Wolverines suffer from the same deficiency, that being strength in the post. Of course, John Beilein is an accomplished college coach with plenty of success to his name. He got Michigan to the doorstep of winning the whole enchilada, and almost had them back in the Final Four the very next year.
All of the above were more or less done with Beilein sticking to his small-ball approach, combining a quartet of guards and taller wing players with one “big guy,” though that big guy was often just an outside shooter that happens to be 6’8 or above.
Unfortunately, other NCAA teams have more traditional post players, some even with real, live, seven-footers. And when that happens, as it did Saturday, Michigan begins to look like a high school outfit trying to hang with a team ranked three classes higher.
Beilein’s club simply had no chance in guarding the large gentleman from Purdue, A.J. Hammons. He poured in a mostly stress-free 27 points, many of which came from being opposed one-on-one in the post by severely overmatched Mark Donnal or Moritz Wagner. Purdue would enter the ball in the post, Hammons would spin left or right, then lay the ball in, sometimes while being fouled, as well. This went on for the entirety of the 40-minute affair.
On Sunday, against Tom Izzo’s Spartans, Hammons looked utterly human. His moves seemed to lack any creativity, he was ineffective when pushed out of the paint, and did little to impact the game until a couple of slam dunks late in the second half.
He was just 4-of-10 in tallying a meager 11 points. It’s not some great coincidence. Michigan State recruits and plays muscular players inside. Matt Costello worked his tail off, Gavin Schilling bothered Hammons just enough, and a host of others contributed to the championship game struggles for the Purdue center that had appeared a lock for the basketball Hall of Fame just 24 hours prior.
The philosophy of Beilein to stay away from the traditional bigs and instead opt for the ones deemed a bit more versatile is, for the most part, understandable. The game of basketball has been trending toward speed instead of size for some time now. But you can’t take it to extremes like we saw on Saturday. As a Big Ten program with one of the most prominent brands in the sport, it is inexplicable that you could enter a potentially NCAA Tournament bid-deciding game with no ability whatsoever to negate an opposing post player.
It’s one thing to be a bit unconventional -- to stray a bit from the norm and create your own style of play. But at a certain point, you have to respect basketball’s long history and acknowledge that defending the goal is an important aspect of the game. Rebounding the ball after defending said goal is a fairly essential step, too.
The strange thing in watching Michigan play a team like Purdue is the absence of any kind of admission that this inherent weakness exists. Throughout the game, Hammons was defended straight up. On a couple of occasions, there would be something in the form of a double team, but Beilein’s message was clear; Hammons would be guarded with one man and one man only. You’d think that a team composed of dribblers and shooters would have to swallow its pride on defense and bring help when necessary, but Michigan bucks that logic and plays as if Charles Oakley and Dikembe Mutombo are starting in the frontcourt.
The maize and blue are fortunate to enter the Big Dance, even if it does come with the requirement of a semi-depressing “play-in” game that takes place before the real festivities begin. And they were fortunate again to have been matched up with Tulsa, a guard-dominant team that won’t beat you up inside.
The tenure of John Beilein at Michigan has been an inarguable success. He took over a program that hadn’t been relevant in years and took them to the brink of national stardom. But being close to 40 years into a coaching career doesn’t mean you still can’t find little ways to change. Beilein has molded Michigan into an annual conference contender despite their yearly limitations in the paint.
Michigan never had a chance to win that game against Purdue. And should they find themselves tangled with another capable inside force at some point in this tournament, the same result is likely to occur.
The Wolverines go into these types of games like an underdog squad from a small conference, the built-in size and strength advantage too much to overcome.
But it doesn’t need to be the case. Michigan is a member of the Big Ten, one of the toughest basketball leagues in the country.
One of these days, their roster might even reflect that.
