Michigan Basketball: 3 takeaways from the win against Villanova
By Adam Childs
Michigan’s defense is elite
The Wolverines season turned last year when they completely bought into playing tough defense. It led them all the way to the National Title game despite not shooting the ball well. We are only three games into this year, but it looks like they have carried that over into this year.
Think about this for a minute, Michigan has played six total halves of basketball this year and in three of those they have given up 17 or fewer points. The most points they have given up in a game was the 46 they gave up to the Wildcats last night. They have now given up an average of 42.3 points per game.
The argument will be that they have played Norfolk State and Holy Cross, not exactly basketball powers. While that is true the above stats are still very good. Michigan is not the biggest team, but they switch well, they play great help defense and they contest almost every single shot. They have also gotten much better at rebounding and limiting opposing offenses to just one shot.
Villanova was averaging just under 35 three-point attempts in their first two games and made almost 35% of them. Michigan held them to 15 attempts and they only hit three. Beilein brought in assistant coach Luke Yaklich to coach defense and he has turned in one of the best hires he has ever made.
If Michigan keeps playing defense like this all year, they will be able to win some ugly games and will be a force in the Big Ten.