Welcome back to Year 2 of trying to write team previews that don’t suck. You can find your per-game stats, a roster roll call, and the typical coachspeak in any of the preseason magazines. Those are great for telling you the who and the what. I’m going to project each team’s final KenPom ranking, their conference offensive and defensive rankings, and delve into the why. If you enjoy what you read, tell a friend and drop your e-mail address to sign up for free to get new pieces in your mailbox as soon as they’re live.
Maryland Terrapins
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #64 (+19 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 8th offense/7th defense
The Terps staved off the expected post-Anthony Cowan and Stix Smith crash for a year. They won a game as a 10 seed in 2021 and were an early winner of the transfer portal last offseason but it took less than a month for things to unravel in the 2021-22 season. Mark Turgeon abruptly left in early December and the rest of the season unfolded predictably with a lame duck coach (Danny Manning) and point guard (Fatts Russell). A yearslong erosion of depth led to floatsam like Xavier Green and Ian Martinez forced into the already short rotation.
Kevin Willard is a sizeable upgrade on the sideline over Manning, and Maryland is a program with a stable floor. It takes a perfect storm like last season to fall below it. So while the Terrapins were stuck in the 80-90 range at KenPom with the likes of Penn State and Northwestern, I like them to separate themselves this season. They’re much closer to Ohio State and Wisconsin than the bottom four of the league. A higher climb is possible, but the depth is still lacking and the guard play is a question mark.
Donta Scott and Hakim Hart return for their senior seasons and give Maryland an edge over most other teams on the wing. Both have had enigmatic careers and even with long track records it’s hard to know what you’re getting. Hart led the conference in offensive rating last season but he’s gotten more passive each season. A bigger role for him is a must this season. His efficiency numbers will take a hit but it’s worth the tradeoff for increased volume considering the rest of the roster. Scott thrived in the fun positionless Maryland experience in 2021 but fell back while playing with a traditional center and point guard last season. His assist and rebounding rates backslid: he was taking more shots but was less of a basketball player.
Their success will depend a lot on how lead Jahmir Young, uptransferring from Charlotte, fits into the Big Ten. He dominated the ball and lit up the stat sheet for the 49ers but they were only the 8th best offense in Conference USA. He’s quick and crafty getting into the lane and he’s a good shooter but we don’t know how he can perform in a offense that will need to get the wings involved.
Even with the downturn last season, Maryland ranked in the top half of the Big Ten in offense. With Hart and Scott back and Young filling the Fatts Russell role they shouldn’t slip too far from that, and it wouldn’t be a shock if they actually improved. The depth is just so questionable.
At Seton Hall, Willard wasn’t a big rotation or a small rotation guy. He played his depth when it was solid and rode his starters when it wasn’t. His first year at Maryland is going to be a short bench year. Young was on the floor 90+% of the time at Charlotte, that may have to continue because there’s not another point guard on the roster and I don’t see anyone I’m confident in even as a combo guard to lead the offense.
Donald Young comes over from Georgetown where he shot the lights out, but like Young, it was for a bad offense. He’s also had a problem with turnovers in his career, though he greatly improved there last season. Carey at 6-5 has the size Young (6-1) lacks but neither registers as an impact defender. Those two are already an unproven backcourt in terms of playing winning basketball. The pieces behind them are unproven in terms of playing college basketball.
Up front I like Julian Reese as a 5 who can space the floor offensively but he’s due for a large increase in minutes because, again, there’s not much behind him. He flashed potential — 3rd in the conference in offensive rebounding percentage — but what does his offensive game look like when he’s tasked with banging with Big Ten centers in the post on defense for 30 minutes a night? Will he even be able to do that given how foul prone he was a freshman? (6 fouls per 40 minutes) He’s the sort of guy who might plant the seeds for a 2023-24 breakout season.
The starting five for the Terps can hang with most teams in the league, but they’re an injury or bad slump from a starter away from real danger. Independently, the roster makeup and the fact there’s a new coach give this squad a wide range of outcomes. Combine them and the error bars are miles apart. I can see a 12-8 tournament team, and I can see another 7-13 scuffle. Their projected ranking is a bet on the program and coaching competence.
Michigan
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #21 (+6 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 4th offense/5th defense
It’s Hunter Dickinson with a grad transfer point guard and a young roster. That was the formula last season when the Wolverines were the #6 preseason team in the AP Poll and started off 2nd at KenPom. (I projected them to finish 12th) They slid as low as 47th before saving their season but the team never did find its groove, alternating wins and losses over their final ten conferences games, including the tournament loss to Indiana. So expectations are softer this season but with the best player in the league back they’re going to find their way near the top of the table.
There’s nothing to be said about Hunter Dickinson that isn’t obvious from seeing him play. He took every possible step forward as a sophomore: he shot three pointers, passed the ball out of the post, cut down on turnovers, and maintained his scoring efficiency while his minutes and shot volume increased. The only thing he didn’t get to do was settle his beef with Mark Turgeon when the Maryland coach resigned before conference play, but Dickinson went for 21, 6, and 6 in a big win over Maryland anyway.
The reasons Michigan slid back and did not meet preseason expectations was their three point shooting and their two point defense. Otherwise, statistically, they weren’t that different from the previous iteration. Turns out losing three players who shot over 40% plus a lottery pick renowned for his defense mattered. A lot. Huh.
They went from the 13th best three point shooting team to the 164th best. The fall in two point defense dropped them from 3rd nationally to 203rd. And even with that, they made the Sweet 16 and nearly cracked the top 25 at KenPom by the end of the season.
The shooting looks like it still might be a real problem. Eli Brooks and Caleb Houstan made more than half the team’s three pointers last season, and did so at a 37% clip. Jaelin Llewellyn comes over from Princeton to run the point but he’ll also be leaned on as a shooter. He hit on 38% of his tries last season but only 29% in his first two. He’s a former top 100 recruit who missed a full year when the Ivy League scrapped their 2020-21 season. The last time he played against a KenPom top 50 team was November 20, 2019. There are a lot of mixed signals and a wide range of potential outcomes here, is what I’m saying.
At Princeton he had the luxury of playing with some of the best shooters in the league. Three other starters combined to shoot just under 40% on over 500 attempts, and neither those three nor Llewellyn were the Princeton’s best player. That was Ivy League POTY Tosan Evbuomwan, the 6-8 interior force that opened the floor for everyone else. At Michigan, Llewellyn will again be able to rely on a dominant big man to draw attention, but the shooting around him is a much bigger issue. Dickinson attempted 64 shots from three and that’s the biggest number of attempts Michigan returns.
Terrance Williams will step into a bigger role. The 6-7 wing was lethal in his small role last season, making 12 of 24 three pointers in conference play. Exactly how much he’s counted on for offense depends on how playable freshman Jett Howard and supersenior Duke transfer Joey Baker are out of the gate. Both were top 50 recruits but Howard is brand new to the collegiate level and Baker was already limited defensively before he had hip surgery in the offseason. If Baker proves to be too much of a liability on defense to stick in the rotation consistently, they’ll need some buckets from Williams.
Howard is also going to be counted on to provide offense — he looks like he might even the primary option on the wing. The buzz around him has all been positive, but you just never know with freshmen. With glue guy (and 40% three point shooter) Eli Brooks moving on, Michigan lacks any semblance of a proven second scoring option besides Dickinson. The focus he demands means opportunities will be there, and there’s a lot of heralded talent on the roster. I’m trusting that combination, but it’s not crazy to raise an eyebrow.
The bear case for the Wolverines is that if Lleweylln doesn’t make a smooth ascension to the Big Ten then the backcourt smoke detector will be going off quickly. Kobe Bufkin’s another top 50 recruit from the class of 2021 but couldn’t carve out a role as a freshman. Brooks was forced to be Ironman, playing 351 of 360 minutes in the team’s final nine games. It’s fair to wonder if the demands put on him to play so many minutes and do so much on offense affected the defense. Bufkin was generally not trusted to be on the floor in tight games, and his performance when he did play underwhelmed. I expect sophomore improvement in line with his recruiting pedigree, but if he has to cover for an iffy point guard (and the only option besides Llewellyn is 5-9 freshman Dug McDaniel) things can get dicey.
The flipside is that Juwan Howard could put you or me on the floor with Hunter Dickinson and the offense would still be in the top half of the league. He raises the floor that much on that end. He can be attacked in ball screens on defense but at his size he’s a solid rim deterrent and I don’t put the defensive regression last season on him. Michigan showed in 2020 that he can be part of an elite defense. There aren’t the bodies or the experience to expect defensive greatness this season, but a rebound from where they fell is a good bet. Like with Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and (oops, deleted for spoilers), Michigan is a few bounces of the ball away from grabbing the league title.
Michigan State Spartans
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #42 (+0 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 3rd offense/10th defense
The Spartans bounced back from their worst season in the KenPom era but things never did click the way you expect from a Tom Izzo team. Their schedule was optimized for a hot start — they went 5-0 against Minnesota, Penn State, Northwestern, Nebraska, and Minnesota again to start Big Ten play — and was bound to toughen up but they closed the season going 6-9 and finished tied for 7th.
The best thing that happened last season is that they got actual point guard play from AJ Hoggard and Tyson Walker which opened things up for Gabe Brown, Malik Hall, and Joey Hauser, all three of whom shot 38% or higher from 3. Both guards along with Hall and Houser are back. The offense, or more accurately the shooting, should continue to hum along, albeit only at a moderate volume.
Two issues, though. Despite leading the conference in three point shooting, the offense only ranked 7th. They ranked dead last in turnovers. This is partly on Hoggard and Walker; at times their style that helped open the floor led to some confounding turnovers. But it wasn’t just them throwing the ball to the opponent, the plague spanned the roster. Hall and Hauser turn it over too often given what they’re asked to do — neither is counted on to make crisp passes into tight windows.
This problem is, if not fixable, at least improveable. The other issue, the lack of a reliable interior scorer, is a glaring red flag. Neither Marcus Bingham or Julius Marble ever seized the 5 spot but both were reliable Big Ten bodies. I mean, Bingham was a 7-footer who could step out and shoot threes! But both players transferred out and don’t look like they’ve been adequately replaced.
Mady Sissoko was a top 50 recruit and he looks the part at 6-9, 230 pounds but he’s hardly gotten off the bench and in the one game he did he committed four fouls in 11 minutes. There’s just no baseline for what he can do in the rebounding or scoring department against legitimate Big Ten starting centers. But he’s apparently the leading candidate to start because the other candidate would be 6-10 Jaxon Kohler, who’s some sort of YouTube sensation because he scores 50+ in all these defense-optional high school exhibitions. If you smushed what I approximate Sissoko’s defense and rebounding to be with what I approximate Kohler’s offense to be you’ve got… maybe the conference’s 11th best big man. Maybe. We’re talking about a guy who’s been glued to the bench and the #58 recruit. You know who the #58 recruit was last season? Will McClendon. I’ve never heard of him either.
To steer it back to Sparty, #61 last season was Pierre Brooks, who played even less than Sissoko as a freshman. He was behind Max Christie and Hall and Gabe Brown, I get it, my point is that freshman rated like Kohler generally do not make an impact quickly. And of course they still haven’t legalized live ball substitutions, so the best case looks like an alarming deficiency on one end of the court.
They could try Joey Hauser at the 5. He’s also not much of a defender but at least they know what they’re getting offensively from him. He’s been a 22 minute a game guy, is that going to change as a senior? The real question there is whether the weirdly low minutes that have gone to Hauser, Hall, and even Bingham are a Tom Izzo philosophy or if he truly doesn’t trust them to play 30 a night.
It’s really hard to see things working at the 5, and with the lack of a rim protector the downside is enormous. Even with Bingham and Marble last season it was a middle of the road two-point defense. Izzo’s main defensive wizardry is that opponents do not make three pointers. Nearly a decade ago Ken Pomeroy made the case that three point defense should not be defined by opponent’s percentages, but by the amount of three pointers they allow. That news missed East Lansing.
Sometimes opponents shoot a lot of three pointers against Michigan State, sometimes they shoot fewer. It does not appear that running opponents off the line is a top priority. And yet! For eleven straight years they’ve been in the top half of the country when it comes to the actual shooting percentage. Obviously there’s correlation between this stat and, you know, being a good team, but there’s some luck baked in here too.
Michigan State had the 8th best defense in the league last season and that was with both a prolific shotblocker in Bingham and the best defensive three point shooting percentage (teams shot 32% against them in conference play). What does it look like if that slips even to the middle of the pack? They don’t generate many turnovers and nobody on the roster looks like a lockdown defender.
For as bleak at the defensive outlook is, they still have a good enough team to continue the tournament streak (but hold that thought for a moment). The backcourt of Walker, Hoggard, and sophomore leap candidates Jaden Akins and Pierre Brooks is solid, and with the dearth of quality guards in the Big Ten “solid” might turn out to look incredible. If they do get stuck playing Sissoko then the creation gets harder for Hoggard and Walker, but proven shooters in Hall and Hauser help to alleviate it.
Walker had a tremendous shooting year himself last season, but his shot volume was way down from when he ran the show at Northeastern. With the Huskies he took 30% of the team’s shots when he was on the floor; with Michigan State just 21%. A less timid version of Walker would be welcome because Hoggard can penetrate and dish but it’s tough to see his shot coming around. Akins is atop Spartans’ fans breakout lists, but he’ll be entering the season coming off of foot surgery. That makes me nervous.
Now I said Michigan State has a good enough team to continue the streak, but I don’t know that I would make them favorites to do so. Their non-conference schedule is absurd. They play Gonzaga and Kentucky on neutral courts, then get Villanova at home, and then go to PK85 where they’ll play Alabama, UConn or Oregon, and a third game. They’ll wrap up Feast Week only to go on the road to play Notre Dame in the ACC Challenge. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Michigan State could earn or cost the Big Ten a tournament bid all on their own with their non-conference performance.
How about this scenario: Losses to Gonzaga, Kentucky, one of Villanova/Notre Dame, and a 1-2 performance in PK85. That’s not so farfetched and gives them, at best, a 6-5 record. If they go 11-9 in the Big Ten is that enough? Their strength of schedule will be factored in but 17-14 is an ugly record to bring to the table. Spartan fans, just know that the rest of the conference is rooting for you to boost the league’s profile early on.
Up next: Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State
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