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I wrote off Michigan’s struggles against NJIT as an aberration – after all, it’s unlikely that a team that shoots 34% (outside of their game against Michigan) hits 11-17 threes in a game – but at this point, it’s somewhat of a crisis: Michigan’s now 6-3, has two bad home losses, and is ranked 49th in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings and 98th in Jeff Sagarin’s. With Arizona on deck this afternoon, Michigan’s staring at a 6-4 overall record (really 5-4, as the game against D-II Hillsdale doesn’t count towards their resume) and a three-game losing streak.

Not to be too alarmist, but Michigan – projected by Pomeroy to finish 9-9 in the Big Ten – could find itself on the bubble and those two losses could be an incredible anchor dragging on the Wolverines’ resume. After the surprise run into the tournament in 2011, it’s been a given that Michigan participates in March Madness – two 4-seeds and a 2-seed over the last three years have been evidence of that – but as of right now, it’s hard to guarantee much. Pomeroy’s metrics gave Michigan a 97.5% chance of beating NJIT and an 86.8% chance of beating Eastern. U of M lost both: the chances of that were over 1 in 300.

At this point, Michigan is a complete unknown. Very solid (but not great) results against Oregon, Villanova – yes, it was a positive indicator of Michigan’s strength that they played the Wildcats close – and Syracuse contrast starkly with the embarrassing upsets at the hands of NJIT and EMU. Michigan was supposed to be a quality, fringe-Top 25 outfit and the first part of the young season certainly suggested that, but expectations need to be calibrated after losing a very bad and a solidly mediocre team at best.

Right now, NJIT is ranked 271st nationally and Eastern is 116th (via Pomeroy). In the last ten years, of Big Ten teams that made the tournament, there are only three roughly comparable home non-conference losses: Penn State lost to Maine (#209) and finished with an 10-seed in 2011; Purdue lost to Wofford (#197) as well as a sub-100 Iowa State team at a neutral site and finished with a 6-seed in 2008; Wisconsin lost to North Dakota State (#182) and finished with a 9-seed in 2006. NJIT is almost definitely worse than those Maine, Wofford, and North Dakota State teams. In and of itself, the Eastern loss isn’t that bad, but paired with the NJIT loss, Michigan’s almost certain to finish with a bad non-conference resume. Fortunately conference play should provide tons of opportunities for quality wins.

[AFTER THE BREAK: Panic! Or don’t. Whatever.]

My brother is in the gray cardigan, I’m to the right in a blue shirt (Bryan Fuller / MGoBlog)

So what’s wrong?

Simply put, Michigan’s defense was a complete no-show against NJIT and Michigan’s offense was a complete no-show against Eastern. Both are incredibly concerning: Michigan should simply overwhelm NJIT and, at least over the last few years, the offense has had to carry the defense – against Eastern, when Michigan played good defense, the offense was horrible (the second-worst game of the entire Beilein era, in fact). That Eastern’s 2-3 zone defense looked virtually unsolvable after Michigan had already fared decently against Syracuse’s vaunted 2-3 is even more frustrating.

In terms of efficiency: NJIT 1.22 (points per possession), Michigan 1.19; Eastern 0.75, Michigan 0.70. Two completely different meltdowns; two unbelievable losses.

Because the nature of the two losses was vastly different, there are few commonalities between the two. Maize n Brew’s Drew Hallett wrote an excellent breakdown of Michigan’s troubling proclivity for jumpers: against NJIT, Michigan scored 49 points on 46 jump shots, but made 8 of 22 (36%) of mid-range shots.

Eastern’s 2-3 leveraged Michigan into 33 jump shots and the Wolverines only scored 18 points on those. A poor shooting performance like that is extremely uncharacteristic for Michigan, but  there are two issues: Michigan should have been able to get to the rim much more easily, and Eastern forced Michigan into taking tough shots all game. It’s not a quantifiable metric, but it seemed as if the zone made U of M’s offense devolve into hapless passing around the zone that led to either a turnover or a bad shot attempt.

The performance on the offensive glass was especially disappointing: the 2-3 is susceptible to giving up offensive boards – though Eastern’s decent on the defensive glass – but Michigan had to play Albrecht / Walton / LeVert / Irvin / [insert big man]. It’s a lineup that won’t ever be able to exploit that particular weakness.

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UMHoops also took a look at Michigan’s struggles, and a few things stood out to me:

Dylan focuses on the lack of success on ball-screens and rightfully so: they have been an indispensible part of Michigan’s offense in recent years and the team hasn’t been executing well so far this season.

One thing to look at – it seems like the big men aren’t setting good screens. It’s simple, but without the ability to create some discomfort for the opposing big men (should I contain the ball-handler, or should I stick to the rolling big man?), there’s little chance of success. It also doesn’t create a situation in which wing defenders need to help off of good three-point shooters.

DEPTH. DEPTH DEPTH DEPTH. Beilein has preferred short rotations in the past, but there seems to be a particularly severe lack of depth this year. The rotation is pretty much this:

• GUARD / WING – Caris LeVert
• WING – Zak Irvin
• GUARD – Derrick Walton
• GUARD – Spike Albrecht
• CENTER – Ricky Doyle
• WING – Kam Chatman
• CENTER – Mark Donnal
• CENTER – Max Bielfeldt

The big men are effectively indistinguishable: Doyle is probably the best, though not by enough to merit a clear majority of the minutes at the position. The platoon at that one position accounts for three of the eight spots in Michigan’s rotation, leaving five guys to fill the other four spots. That puts tremendous stress on those five and although the “Big 3” of LeVert / Irvin / Walton is stable enough, Albrecht can’t defend and Chatman’s had a rough transition to college basketball on the offensive end.

This is the production from the Big 3 thus far:

Derrick Walton was out with an injury against Nicholls St.

Against Syracuse, the Big 3 had supplementary production: Doyle had 12 points, Albrecht had 11, and Chatman had 10. LeVert / Irvin / Walton had a collectively bad game against Eastern, but there was no one to pick up the slack. Michigan tried feeding the big men in the second half, which was a disappointing and unsuccessful locker room adjustment by the coaching staff.

The above graphs show how impressive Caris LeVert’s performance against NJIT was – though it’s definitely not a good thing that Michigan managed to lose a game in which its star player had a career game, let alone against a team as bad as NJIT.

Depth is a very real issue, one that’s unlikely to go away anytime soon. Play from the center position has been about as mediocre as expected: Doyle is still a project and cannot set good screens on the perimeter for decent pick-and-roll play, Donnal is seemingly acclimating to the physicality of college play, even after his redshirt season, and Bielfeldt simply doesn’t have the tools to be an impactful high-major player in most games. Michigan will have to live with whatever works best at the position, though the ceiling admittedly does seem low.

With Michigan’s depth issues, Kam Chatman needs to be a scoring threat. He does a lot of things well – he has the third-highest defensive rebound % in the Big Ten and he has plus vision and passing ability from the stretch-four position – but this shot chart (from Shot Analytics) is alarming:

He’s 3-11 at the rim, by the way. Small sample, but ugh.

It’s clear that he’s been a significant downgrade from Glenn Robinson III, if only because GRIII could finish inside and hit mid-range shots pretty reliably. Chatman’s really struggled shooting and has found it hard to stay on the floor, although he’s shown flashes in other parts of the game.

Michigan’s lineup of Albrecht / Walton / LeVert / Irvin / [whatever big guy] lacks in size and worsens an already poor defense – Albrecht and Irvin are minus defenders, LeVert has potential but still needs strength to be a lockdown defender, and the big men aren’t rim protectors who can consistently clean up the mistakes from the perimeter. Chatman has had a few freshmen mistakes on the defensive end, but he’s an upgrade over Albrecht and he allows LeVert and Irvin to slide to their more natural two and three positions, respectively.

Fuller / MGoBlog

At this point, there’s little to do but wait and see. The season is still quite young – Michigan’s only played about a third of its regular season games thus far. I’m not generally an optimist, but it’s easy for me to rationalize: NJIT was perhaps a game that Michigan didn’t take seriously (and getting seriously unlucky with three-point shooting definitely hurt) and Eastern’s 2-3 took Michigan out of its comfort zone in a way that’s probably not going to happen again this year, unless Michigan sees a 2-3 staple defense in the NCAA or NIT Tournaments. Michigan’s probably not as bad as they’ve looked in the past week, but it’s still alarming. A win today against Arizona would certainly do wonders in righting the ship.