Last week’s opener against William & Mary wasn’t exactly an instant classic. It was a predictable first game for a highly-touted team looking to find its form. While the game tape—which shows a Georgetown team at times careless of the ball and unable to penetrate the zone—won’t be shown at Leo’s next year to pump students up, it may give hope to the upset-minded Michigan Wolverines and their new coach, John Beilein.
The biggest preseason question for the Wolverines was how quickly the squad would assimilate to Beilein ‘s proven system, which won the coach an NIT Championship and two Sweet Sixteen bids in his last three seasons at West Virginia. Beilein’s Mountaineer teams were known for shooting from behind the arc, forcing turnovers, assisting on field goals and frustrating teams with constantly changing defensive schemes.
In their first two games (both wins), Michigan has left little doubt about its willingness to buy into their new coach’s system. The Wolverines have attempted 49 three-pointers, forced 31 turnovers and tallied 34 assists. They also appear on board with Beilein’s defensive strategies, a mixture of formations similar to the William & Mary set-up that stymied the Hoyas for most of last weekend’s game.
“Going over the tapes, they [Michigan] run a lot of the same things [as W&M],” Coach John Thompson III said Tuesday. “They give you different looks, they might come out in a 1-3-1 to start, but they may also switch to a really aggressive man-to-man.”
The 1-3-1 zone was Beilein’s bread and butter in his five seasons as coach of the Mountaineers. The defense places one defender at the top of the key to disrupt passing lanes on the perimeter. When executed properly, the scheme allows defenses to clog the lane and prevent the entry pass—in this case to Hibbert—an effective tactic for William & Mary in the first half of the opener. It also creates frequent turnover opportunities through half-court traps—double teaming a player in the corner of the court—and tipped passes. This was an area of concern for Thompson, whose Hoyas committed 14 turnovers last Saturday.
“Protecting the ball is very important,” he said. “[Michigan] does a good job of forcing turnovers, and we need to focus on protecting the ball better to be successful.”
Michigan’s prolific outside shooting may be less of a problem for Georgetown. In their only game against Beilein’s Mountaineers of last season, the Hoyas held one of the conference’s best three-point shooting teams to an abysmal 9 for 26 from behind the arc in a 71-53 blowout. Although William & Mary had some success from three-point range early in the game, they shot just 4 for 21 (19 percent) against an inspired defense in the second half. If Michigan finds early success from long range, Thompson has the option of putting in a tall, long line-up of sophomore forwards DaJuan Summers and Vernon Macklin and senior forward Patrick Ewing Jr. into the game to contest the outside shot.
From an experience standpoint, the Wolverines are greatly outmatched. Beilein inherits an 8-8 team with only one returning starter. However, the young talent has proven effective in the first two games. Sophomore forward DeShawn Sims, the reigning Big Ten Player of the Week, is averaging 20 points, while freshmen guards Manny Harris and Kelvin Grady are both averaging double digits.
This season’s Georgetown team has a wealth of combined experience, but the most valuable may be their past encounter with Beilein and the 1-3-1. Thompson won his first match-up with Beilein and the Mountaineers during his first season at Georgetown but was beaten badly twice the year after.
Last year, however, he appeared to have mastered the system in the blowout victory at the Verizon Center. Not only were the Hoyas able to shutdown the 3-point shooting and backdoor cuts of the Beilein offense, they were also able to exploit a soft spot in the 1-3-1. While the player at the top of the 1-3-1 is often a tall forward, the player in the back is usually a guard, leaving room on the baseline for lob passes, especially for a team as tall and athletic as Georgetown. If the Hoyas are able to consistently get the ball to senior center Roy Hibbert in the paint, it will be a death knell for Michigan.
“We’ll just see how the flow of the game goes,” Thompson said. “We don’t like to say before the game ‘Well let’s highlight DaJuan today’ or ‘Let’s go through Jesse,’ but obviously with Roy, getting him the ball is important.”
After William & Mary’s early success last Saturday, Beilein has to think that his system could at least give the Hoyas trouble on Thursday. Georgetown has all the tools to run away with the game late like they did in the opener, but if they don’t clean up some of Saturday’s mistakes, they could find themselves in an early hole. Regardless, this week’s match-up with the Wolverines will likely be the toughest test the Hoyas face before December’s match-up with Memphis.
