From the beginning of the season, the Michigan Wolverines have set their focus on winning a national championship. A Big Ten regular season title soon became inevitable, and while it was disappointing to fall in the Big Ten Tournament final, the goal does not change, nor does its viability. Dusty May and company have a great chance to reach the Final Four — and to win the entire thing — but that first requires getting through the opening weekend.
While Michigan is coming off a loss, the same cannot
be said for the MEAC Champions. The Howard Bison did the double in their conference, then squeaked by UMBC in Dayton on Tuesday to make it to the true start of the NCAA Tournament. Ranked 205th in Kenpom, the gap between these teams should be immediately apparent, but no one can ever let their guard down in March.
First Round: No. 1 Michigan (31-3) vs. No. 16 Howard (24-10)
Date & Time: Thursday, March 19, 7:10 p.m. ET
Location: KeyBank Center, Buffalo, NY
TV/Streaming: CBS
These teams last met in November 2016 in Ann Arbor as part of the lead-in to the 2K Classic (which Michigan won by beating Marquette and SMU at Madison Square Garden). As one might expect, there was not too much excitement in the 18-point victory; Derrick Walton led the scorers with 20 points, while both Zak Irvin and Mark Donnal recorded double-figures in the season opener.
Two Stats to Watch
Howard Def. TO Rate: 21.0% (14th)
Now, all stats must be taken in context with the Bison, as the vast majority of their games came against teams outside the Kenpom top 200. Still, their elite takeaway numbers are going to stand out given Michigan’s struggles in this department, and unfortunately it is not too difficult to imagine the Wolverines gifting their opponents some free possessions thanks to careless passing.
Howard’s defense is more or less predicated on forcing turnovers, bringing tons of pressure and using a variety of tactics to make the offense uncomfortable. In theory, Michigan should be able to handle this thanks to its size and preference for playing quickly already. If the Wolverines can beat the press by hitting its bigs in the paint, the underdog’s ability to cause disruption will be limited.
Against careful teams like Northwestern, the Bison generated fewer takeaways, but against more open squads like Duke and Missouri, there were turnovers to be had. For the Wolverines, perhaps this is a little scary, though three of the last four outings have been very manageable from a ball security perspective. Still, this is probably the number one way this contest gets dicey, so May must get his team ready to face some pressure.
Howard OReb Rate: 36.4% (21st)
Kenpom considers the Howard defense (129th) significantly better than the offense (268th), which is not a surprise given how poorly it shoots the ball, especially inside the arc. However, the Bison are elite in two of the Kenpom Four Factors, with the 11th-highest free throw rate and 21st-best offensive rebounding percentage (again, these are somewhat competition-dependent).
What this means is that this team simply wants to grab rebounds and/or get fouled, regardless of what happens with the initial shot. Unfortunately for the offense, Michigan has been pretty good in both of these areas, and really should have very little problem securing missed shots given the serious size advantage it will have on the interior. While Howard is used to this style of offense, it is really difficult to envision sustained success.
Perhaps a generous whistle could keep the game close, as the Bison will certainly be looking for contact to keep up its impressive free throw rate. Even so, they are just 122nd in free throw percentage, so this is far from a guaranteed source of points. What is most likely to happen is some really ugly offense that fails to find any sort of consistent scoring outside of a few annoying calls and lucky rebounds. Michigan should dominate this end of the floor and that will be enough for a smooth win into the Second Round.
