Michigan's two-way bet on shot quality

The team up north presents a question: what if basketball *were* played on paper?

A pretty educational thing one can do for themselves: coach youth sports. You don’t even have to have a kid! Just go do it. You will learn a lot about the world. Here are three important lessons from my three-year cameo as a youth basketball coach for middle schoolers:

1. You are powerless. Once, we ran a transition offense drill for probably 15-20 minutes. It’s very simple and is meant to teach the players how to space the floor. Everyone nodded as if they got it. The next game, every single transition possession resulted in either a missed shot or a turnover despite them running this the way we’d planned. It was infuriating and I wanted to poke my eyes out.

2. Math is stupid and bad. During my second spring, I tried to teach the kids about a very basic analytic fundamental, which is that closer shots are good and long twos probably aren’t smart when you’re 12 years old. We proceeded to miss our first 11 shots in the next game, seven of them wide-open layups.

3. Shot volume and shot quality reign supreme. But not in the way you’d anticipate. As is standard for non-elite youth athletics, probably 75% of games I coached were decided by which of the two teams had the tallest tall player. Said player would rack up 15+ rebounds and was a rebounding vacuum. The other 25% were decided by which team had the player that made bad shots look good by making them. If confused, refer back to point #1 and start over.

This is of no note but to note that you can do more or less everything right off the court, do mostly right upon it, and still lose painfully. Anyway, did you know that Synergy has a Shot Quality metric we’ve mentioned here a few times? And that just five teams in the entire sport rank in the top 25 both offensively and defensively? Three of them will not surprise: Creighton (permanent analytics fave), Saint Louis (coached by number nerd Josh Schertz), and Liberty, who consistently ranks well in these metrics every season.

Even Michigan State may not totally shock you. We know the Spartans always have a terrific defense, but the offense has taken a real step forward this year and generates a ton of action at the rim. The fifth is the only high-major on this list to have a new coach, mostly new roster, and entirely new system. It is Michigan, who is tied for third in offensive Synergy Shot Quality and is fourth in defensive.

The simplest way to think of it is that Michigan takes a ton of analytically-friendly shots and allows relatively few. In terms of defensive midrange attempt rate minus offensive, Michigan leads the nation, trailed most closely by the main math-nerd team of choice.

Now, on one hand, it was fairly easy to see this coming. Last year’s FAU team was 10th in offensive SSQ and 6th in defensive. But! That was a team in a mid-major league playing a mid-major schedule. This is Michigan, playing in the Big Ten and drawing (as of the time of writing) the 23rd-hardest schedule in the sport.

The problem, if it exists, is that simply taking the best shots you can does not always mean you’re gonna win every game. Michigan is 16-5 and 8-2 in conference play with a makeshift roster, yet a sincere argument could be made that they’ve deserved wins in 19 of these 21 games thanks to their two-way shot quality. On one hand, this is an underperformance. On the other, their combo of quality is leading to fantastic two-way shooting efficiency that’s allowing them to cover up key flaws.

BEHIND THE WALL ($): TI-83, but it’s Michigan being 16-1 when opponents score 83 or less