Though it’s been said to death, it’s still true: the No. 4 Michigan men’s basketball team has the biggest frontcourt in the nation.
Aptly dubbed the Wolverines’ ‘Big 3,’ the pair of 6-foot-9 forwards sophomore Morez Johnson Jr. and graduate Yaxel Lendeborg alongside 7-foot-3 junior center Aday Mara have started nearly every game for Michigan. Making up 42% of the Wolverines’ nightly scoring, this trio embodies the meaning of the word ‘juggernaut.’
But it’s not the Big 3’s offense that’s pushed Michigan to a historical start, rather it’s their steel-curtain interior defense. Defensively, the Wolverines are second to none, at least when you consider the stats — first in adjusted defense, opponent 2-point percentage and opponent 2-point distance, and top 10 in block percentage, per KenPom.
With such size in its starting lineup, an obvious defensive scheme was drawn up: clog the paint. Force your typically smaller opponents to not just drive through you, force them to go over you. Give up a bit of your 3-point pressure by letting your center — usually Mara and sometimes Johnson — slack off his man a little and follow every player into the paint for an undeniable advantage under the rim.
But that tradeoff reared its ugly head in Michigan’s first loss — a sign that an early exit in March isn’t unfathomable.
At the start of the year, Wolverines coach Dusty May acknowledged some of Mara’s middling perimeter defense. Although his physical skill set is tailored to sit under the basket, May recognized that even the best teams can falter if their centers lose the battle beyond the block.
“One of the main reasons (Fairleigh Dickinson) beat Purdue that year was because they had a center come off the bench that shot a terrible percentage throughout the year and banged in three (3-pointers),” May said Nov. 3. “So we’re trying to get Aday to think more like a, first of all, basketball player, versus just being a rim protector (or a) paint clogger.”
This analysis came off of Michigan’s first game of the season where Oakland forward Tuburu Naivalurua caught Mara slipping and knocked down three open threes. In the following weeks, Mara stepped up on the perimeter, getting to his spots a touch faster and working in some Kornet contests to increase the pressure on shooters from the outside.
And for a while it worked. This drop coverage and only switching one through four while Mara was on the floor allowed May to somewhat veil Mara’s perimeter defense while he created pandemonium under the hoop. When the Wolverines did face shooting bigs like Gonzaga forward Graham Ike, Michigan often continued with its drop coverage scheme, and succeeded in part to the big men’s unusually poor days from beyond the arc.
This pattern repeated until Penn State poked holes in Michigan’s defense. With the Big 3 all but missing, Nittany Lions 7-foot forward Ivan Jurić made the Wolverines pay from beyond the arc, hitting two out of his five long-range attempts. With the rest of the Penn State squad shooting a combined 26.7% from deep though, Michigan and its biggest weakness escaped from the Bryce Jordan Center, 74-72.
In its next matchup, the Wolverines didn’t get so lucky. Faced with two Badgers forwards in 6-foot-10 Aleksas Bieliauskas and 7-foot Nolan Winter who attempted a combined five 3-pointers a game, the storm that made the Fairleigh Dickinson-Purdue upset was brewing over Ann Arbor.
The gales struck hard. Bieliauskas alone knocked in five threes with the majority being uncontested. Winter chipped in three as well in mostly the same fashion, but with a slightly better efficiency.
With Wisconsin’s big man duo going 8-for-14 on threes, there was one key difference between the Badgers and the FDU Knights’ upset — this duo had proven they could shoot. The equation of letting the other team’s big men shoot for the sake of controlling the paint looks more and more unbalanced when they park themselves behind the arc and, more importantly, make their shots.
To the Wolverines’ credit, they tried out a zone scheme against Wisconsin after Bieliauskas’ fourth 3-pointer of the night. But perhaps due to Michigan’s drop-coverage complacency, the zone collapsed after a simple drive in, leaving Bieliauskas unguarded at the top of the key, and celebrating his fifth three of the night seconds later .
It’s not as though this drop coverage scheme is losing games for the Wolverines. Statistically, they’re No. 1 in the country. However, every scheme comes with inherent risks and the utilization of volume-shooting bigs — as the Badgers have demonstrated — is a viable way to upset Michigan.
To counteract this, against teams that have proven shooters, the Wolverines may have to sacrifice some of their 2-point defense to grind out the big men. With depth inherent in the Big 3, the Wolverines can rely more on Johnson or Lendeborg — who has consistently matched up against opposing teams’ best players regardless of position — to seal off stretch bigs getting hot instead of just entrusting them to a dropped-off, less athletic Mara.
In conference play, there isn’t really a need to panic. When Michigan is on, especially the Big 3, good things happen. But in tournament play where there isn’t a second chance, the Wolverines’ coaching staff needs to put its players in positions to succeed based on who they’re matching up against and what is currently happening. The drop coverage has and will continue to work wonders, but without proper in-game adjustments, it opens the door for this year’s Fairleigh Dickinson to be the belle of the ball in March while Michigan returns home far before midnight.
