Post-game analysis from a Wisconsin Badgers win over Michigan
The Wisconsin Badgers took it to Michigan, and played beyond expectations. They are now up to #27 in the nation in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, and they are the last team out for the polls, so, we have an occasion when objective and subjective measures agree.
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And, make no mistake, it is the defensive improvement that is carrying this team.
Pomeroy has them ranked at the 18th best defense in the nation, and, as you can see, below, the defense is much better than the average D-1 team.
Greg Gard took over in the 13th game of the season, and the team he inherited was already getting better, defensively (see the downward trend of the 5-game moving average).
After continuing the good defense for five games, Gard’s Badgers encountered Northwestern and Michigan State, which lead to the dramatic upward climb in the moving average. Since then, it has been a mixed bag, but the trend is again going down.
The improvement in team defense may even be understated, because these results are not adjusted for opponent strength. Gard’s time with the Badgers has included the tough, conference opponents in the Big Ten, which means that you would expect the defense to be worse by this chart.
For example, the two recent outliers are the two games against Michigan State. They must be pretty good if they can put up 123.9 and 111.1 points/100 possessions against the 18th best defense in the land.
Turning to the game, itself, we see that the Badgers made up for a 6-point deficit in two pointers with and 8-point edge at the line and a surprising 9-point advantage beyond the arc.
Going into the game, I predicted that Michigan would hoist 25 threes and make 10 of them, for a 38.8% clip. In fact, they only attempted a meager 13 shots from three, but made five of them, for a 38.5% conversion rate.
This appears to be a spectacular vindication of the principle that defenses have a much better chance of controlling the number of 3-point attempts than their conversion rate.
As you can see, below, the Badgers also held advantages in all the ancillary stats, especially Offensive Rebounds and Blocks.
As you can imagine in a game dominated by the Badgers edge in 3-pointers, Bronson Koenig was the MVP. This is his second, straight game as Badger MVP, and his hot play has really helped the Badgers to their near-top-25 spot.
Excluding Koenig, this was a big man’s game, with the other guards contributing a -8 NPA, cancelling out Koenig’s big night.
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Nigel Hayes has not been the best Badger player on most nights, but he has been the most consistently good, which is one of the reasons Pomeroy has him ranked at the 4th best player in the Big Ten.
The fact that he can be a First Team All-Big-Ten caliber player for the second straight year, even with a broken jump shot, speaks to his versatility.
Given that shot, he will probably be back next season (38th ranked by Draft Express), so it will be fun to see if he can get his shooting stroke back and be the Big Ten POY.
If we look at the per-possession efficiency of the Badger players, not much changes. Vitto Brown overtakes Hayes and Zak Showalter leap-frogs Alex Illikainen.
It’s a good sign when the NPA matches with the Efficiency, because it means that Gard’s playing time allocation is roughly matching the player production.
Time to beat Minnesota. Speaking of which, let’s see if I can get a preview up for the game.
Next: Badgers at Gophers: Game Info, Odds and More
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