The preseason basketball mags keep hitting the stands and here and there a national writer has been releasing their early rankings. Outside of the Sporting News mention in another post, it has been relatively unanimous that Michigan State and Michigan are the top two teams in the Big Ten, respectively. From where I sat this summer those two being at the top made sense albeit in a slightly reversed order. I felt both were in the teens with Michigan being less than a handful of spots better. The consensus though seems to have Michigan State around 10 and Michigan being somewhere between 20-25.
Those rankings didn't add up in my head. They sat next to each other in the top 10 of the final Kenpom rankings. MSU returned about 60% of their production, with Michigan at about 50%. The aggregate of the recruiting classes were similar with Michigan having more star power with Iggy clearly being the best of all 10 freshmen and Johns probably being the next best overall. I was seeing equal numbers for 2019. I thought it may be a function of writers dismissing the size of Foster Loyer or buying into the recruiting ranking of Marcus Bingham or Tom Izzo getting the benefit of the doubt over John Beilein. A deeper look at the numbers and perhaps those writers are correct.
I picked up a copy of Lindy's and I was a bit humored when Cassius Winston was listed as the number 9 player in the country. I probably didn't even have him in my top 15 in the Big Ten due to his reputation for being ghost defensively. I decided to look at his offensive and defensive ratings from last year per 100 possessions and I was shocked to see he was +32 on the season. To no surprise Jaren Jackson was +34, but Miles Bridges was at only +23. I took a deeper look at conference games and the results weren't too far off with numbers of +38 (Jackson), +25 (Winston) and +15 (Bridges). The main outlier of the starters was Josh Langford who had a very poor +6 overall with a -6 in conference. I can see how Winston had an advantage over Bridges. Winston only had to see the floor with Tum Tum a few minutes a game whereas nearly half of Bridges minutes were spent with Tum dragging his rating down. For perspective of how bad Tum was he had a margin of +10 overall last year, but in 2016 he had a margin of 0 despite having four guys on the roster pulling in +30 margins and getting a cup of coffee in the NBA (Valentine, Forbes, Davis, Costello). With that said, I'm not certain to what extend one player can anchor another. Was Miles Bridges a bit overrated and was Cassius Winston a bit underrated in viewing last year's team?
After the 2015 season there was a bit of hype that Bronson Koenig was going to be a star in Madison. He was hitting timely shots for Wisconsin in their runs to the Final Four the previous two seasons. He had an impressive +18 in 2015, but it turns out that was merely a function of playing with Sam Dekker (+29) and Frank Kaminsky (+37). Koenig had a mere margin of +6 in 2016 while being one of the three main cogs of a 7 seed in the NCAA. This is the type of season I would expect from Cassius Winston if his margins were flipped with Bridges, but that is not the case.
I naturally took a look at the numbers for Michigan and the losses look bigger than I thought. Wagner (+25) and MAAR (+22) were both great last year, but surprisingly Duncan (+25) had a better margin than I thought. Meanwhile, Zavier was only at +12 with Matthews being +9 overall and a bad -11 in conference games. Granted one has to take into consideration of usage as well, but perhaps we overstated the abilities of Z & CM and understated the loss of Duncan. We often see posts about Duncan being abused by one player after another, but were we missing other pieces where he was playing in the right place on the floor and it didn't make it into the box score? One nice bullet is seeing Teske at +32 overall and in conference. This will likely decline with more minutes, but it does show that he is a key piece moving forward (did anyone score at the rim when he was in the game last year? didn't seem like it). Teske's game was clearly superior to the box score. Did the same hold for Duncan?
With that said when it comes to Michigan and Michigan State we can just look merely at last year's games. Despite having overall a worse season by margin, Zavier Simpson was slightly better than Cassius Winston in both games last season. So while the numbers look nice for Winston, apparently Zavier was a poor matchup for him last year. And there is a good chance of that happening again this year. In addition anyone who pays attention to these two teams knows that Beilein's players will improve at a greater rate than those coached by Tom Izzo. Thus, I fully expect a bigger bump out of the returning guys for one school than another. I will say though that the numbers I see lead me to believe that Miles Bridges may have been a bit more overrated and his loss may not be as significant as believed.
Those rankings didn't add up in my head. They sat next to each other in the top 10 of the final Kenpom rankings. MSU returned about 60% of their production, with Michigan at about 50%. The aggregate of the recruiting classes were similar with Michigan having more star power with Iggy clearly being the best of all 10 freshmen and Johns probably being the next best overall. I was seeing equal numbers for 2019. I thought it may be a function of writers dismissing the size of Foster Loyer or buying into the recruiting ranking of Marcus Bingham or Tom Izzo getting the benefit of the doubt over John Beilein. A deeper look at the numbers and perhaps those writers are correct.
I picked up a copy of Lindy's and I was a bit humored when Cassius Winston was listed as the number 9 player in the country. I probably didn't even have him in my top 15 in the Big Ten due to his reputation for being ghost defensively. I decided to look at his offensive and defensive ratings from last year per 100 possessions and I was shocked to see he was +32 on the season. To no surprise Jaren Jackson was +34, but Miles Bridges was at only +23. I took a deeper look at conference games and the results weren't too far off with numbers of +38 (Jackson), +25 (Winston) and +15 (Bridges). The main outlier of the starters was Josh Langford who had a very poor +6 overall with a -6 in conference. I can see how Winston had an advantage over Bridges. Winston only had to see the floor with Tum Tum a few minutes a game whereas nearly half of Bridges minutes were spent with Tum dragging his rating down. For perspective of how bad Tum was he had a margin of +10 overall last year, but in 2016 he had a margin of 0 despite having four guys on the roster pulling in +30 margins and getting a cup of coffee in the NBA (Valentine, Forbes, Davis, Costello). With that said, I'm not certain to what extend one player can anchor another. Was Miles Bridges a bit overrated and was Cassius Winston a bit underrated in viewing last year's team?
After the 2015 season there was a bit of hype that Bronson Koenig was going to be a star in Madison. He was hitting timely shots for Wisconsin in their runs to the Final Four the previous two seasons. He had an impressive +18 in 2015, but it turns out that was merely a function of playing with Sam Dekker (+29) and Frank Kaminsky (+37). Koenig had a mere margin of +6 in 2016 while being one of the three main cogs of a 7 seed in the NCAA. This is the type of season I would expect from Cassius Winston if his margins were flipped with Bridges, but that is not the case.
I naturally took a look at the numbers for Michigan and the losses look bigger than I thought. Wagner (+25) and MAAR (+22) were both great last year, but surprisingly Duncan (+25) had a better margin than I thought. Meanwhile, Zavier was only at +12 with Matthews being +9 overall and a bad -11 in conference games. Granted one has to take into consideration of usage as well, but perhaps we overstated the abilities of Z & CM and understated the loss of Duncan. We often see posts about Duncan being abused by one player after another, but were we missing other pieces where he was playing in the right place on the floor and it didn't make it into the box score? One nice bullet is seeing Teske at +32 overall and in conference. This will likely decline with more minutes, but it does show that he is a key piece moving forward (did anyone score at the rim when he was in the game last year? didn't seem like it). Teske's game was clearly superior to the box score. Did the same hold for Duncan?
With that said when it comes to Michigan and Michigan State we can just look merely at last year's games. Despite having overall a worse season by margin, Zavier Simpson was slightly better than Cassius Winston in both games last season. So while the numbers look nice for Winston, apparently Zavier was a poor matchup for him last year. And there is a good chance of that happening again this year. In addition anyone who pays attention to these two teams knows that Beilein's players will improve at a greater rate than those coached by Tom Izzo. Thus, I fully expect a bigger bump out of the returning guys for one school than another. I will say though that the numbers I see lead me to believe that Miles Bridges may have been a bit more overrated and his loss may not be as significant as believed.
