Why Michigan basketball's defense has been elite and improving: 'They're fighting like crazy'

Michigan Wolverines basketball is off to a 6-1 start and coming off a Fort Myers Tip-Off championship with victories over Virginia Tech 75-63) and Xavier (78-53), and the most noteworthy development of the early season is that the Wolverines are playing elite defense.

Head coach Dusty May‘s group ranks No. 10 nationally in Kenpom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric, checking in No. 38 on offense.

Michigan is top 15 defensively in effective field goal percentage (42.0), turnover rate (24.5) and two-point field goal percentage (40.7). Opponents are making only 29.6 percent of their three-point attempts, too (70th nationally).

May has assigned assistant coach Mike Boynton Jr. — the former head man at Oklahoma State — to lead the efforts defensively, and he’s delivered.

“Coach Boynton has done a great job,” May said. “The implementation, it’s been in bits and pieces, it’s been nuggets. And when you see it come together, obviously it’s been layered properly.

“But most importantly, it’s our players. They’re fighting like crazy, they’re giving great effort, they’re communicating better, they’re moving, they’re staying intense for longer periods. So it’s been a lot of work by a lot of people, and now we get a chance to see where it stacks up against an elite offense [in Wisconsin Tuesday night].”

Michigan switches screens (both on and off the ball) and dribble handoffs at most positions (typically 1-4). The Wolverines also play aggressively in gaps, limiting dribble penetration, and have to rotate and recover.

All of those areas have been firing as of late, with Michigan holding its last five opponents to under 0.95 points per possession. The last time out, Xavier produced only 0.747 points per play, thanks to Michigan’s suffocating defense.

“The way we play defense, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made on the fly,” the Michigan coach explained. “We’re not real black and white, you’ve gotta do this and you’ve gotta do that. It’s, who am I, who is he, who’s the guy next to me?

“So there are a lot of really quick decisions that need to be made, and it seems like our guys are making those correct decisions a lot more frequently than they were three or four weeks ago, and part of that is us getting used to playing with guys and us not having a set system of rules, per se.”

A key stat May looks at is defensive assist rate — the amount of assists opponents register per made field goal. Michigan currently ranks seventh in the country at 35.5 percent. May’s teams at Florida Atlantic ranked second and third in the nation the last two seasons, respectively, so he joked that this one isn’t quite up to par yet.

“A little bit surprised that I think we’re seventh or eighth in giving up assisted baskets,” May said. “Usually, we’re one or two in the country, and that’s the goal, especially now with our positional size, to force tough, contested twos. 

“I would say that’s probably a result of turning the ball over and some guys getting some assists in transition because of our offensive woes at times. But yeah, we like where we are defensively.”

Michigan faces a big challenge at Wisconsin

No. 11 Wisconsin is waiting for Michigan in Madison. The two teams will open the Big Ten season Tuesday night at the Kohl Center, where U-M hasn’t won in front of a crowd since Feb. 11, 2018.

The Badgers are 8-0 and rank 18th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency.

“They’re impressive on a number of levels,” May said. “They have a really unique mix of downhill drivers that get to the line and convert at the line better than anyone else in the country. Their post guys can shoot it. They can score one-on-one after the dust settles. But they’re really, really efficient as passers, which I think gives the cutters even more confidence to cut, the shooters even more space.

“It’s gonna be fun, because they play the game the right way. They play with great tempo, they share the basketball, they live in their strengths. Hats off to [head] Coach [Greg] Gard. I don’t think anyone expected them to be where they are right now, but they’ve done a nice job, and they’re obviously playing extremely well together.”