Michael Cohen
College Football and College Basketball Writer
On Feb. 3, two days removed from his team’s second victory in what is now a four-game winning streak, Michigan head coach Dusty May held his typical weekly news conference inside the media room at Crisler Center, a building in which the 20th-ranked Wolverines are still undefeated ahead of Tuesday’s showdown with No. 7 Purdue.
At that moment, May was exactly halfway through an already impressive first year that has seen him overhaul the roster, incubate a winning culture and accomplish both of those things with such alacrity that fans are buying tickets at rates unseen since the early, stench-free days of former coach Juwan Howard’s tenure, long before everything fell apart and Michigan plummeted toward the Big Ten’s basement. The robustness of May’s intended rebuild meant the Wolverines were picked to finish ninth in the league’s preseason poll — sandwiched between Ohio State and Maryland, four spots behind rival Michigan State — and yet there sat Michigan in early February with an impressive record of 16-5 overall and 9-2 in the league, tied with the Boilermakers for the second-fewest losses in the conference behind the previously unblemished Spartans. A fan base that watched dejectedly from well outside the NCAA Tournament bubble each of the last two years began harboring newfound dreams of national relevance, with the Wolverines flitting in and out of the AP Poll seemingly every week.
And so May was asked a rather poignant question toward the end of his media session last Monday: You talked earlier about being in the [Big Ten] fight. I guess, when you look around at the league and what’s ahead for you guys, what do you think are a couple keys to being the team that wins the fight?
“Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers,” May said with a wry smile and a laugh. “And we’re gonna watch them [on film] today, we’re gonna replicate those situations, and I’m gonna continue to try to figure out what we run better to eliminate some of these things. It’s a partnership amongst us all.”
With one month remaining in the regular season, and ahead of the titanic matchup against first-place Purdue in Ann Arbor on Tuesday night, the Wolverines continue to find success through a mystifying brand of basketball that qualifies them as one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country (23rd on KenPom as of Monday afternoon) and also one of the most turnover prone (332nd on KenPom), with Colorado being the only power-conference program worse in that particular category. Just twice in the previous 10 seasons have the Wolverines begun a Big Ten slate with 10 victories through their first 12 games — in 2021 under Howard and in 2019 under his predecessor John Beilein — but never in the KenPom era, which dates to 1997, has Michigan navigated an entire campaign with the kind of turnover woes May is currently enduring. Only six Michigan teams have ranked outside the top 200 in turnover rate during that span, none of which were worse than 286th overall. And that’s still nearly 50 spots above where May’s group currently sits while turning the ball over on an astounding 20.5% of possessions.
That Michigan has still ranked among the top 20 nationally in offensive efficiency for much of the season underscores how lethal May’s offense has been whenever his players can keep the ball. The Wolverines are second in the Big Ten and seventh in the country for effective field goal percentage (57.3%), a metric that places heightened emphasis on successful 3-point shots, and they have more players in the league’s top 50 for Offensive Bayesian Performance Rating (six) than any other school in the conference: point guard Tre Donaldson (13th), center Vladislav Goldin (19th), small forward Sam Walters (25th), power forward Danny Wolf (29th), shooting guard Nimari Burnett (40th) and power forward Will Tschetter (47th), only one of whom began his career at Michigan. The question facing May and his players from now through the end of the season — whenever that might be — is whether their most glaring Achilles’ heel can be addressed before it’s potentially too late.
“There’s no other team in my database that has had a top-20 offense and a turnover rate outside the top 300 since I’ve been keeping track of this,” Ken Pomeroy, the creator of KenPom.com, told FOX Sports last week.
The historical comparisons are striking given just how much of an outlier this year’s Michigan team seems to be, even as the Wolverines slipped a few spots to No. 23 in adjusted offensive efficiency following a road win over Indiana on Saturday. Not only has there never been a team to finish among the top 20 offenses in the country while also ranking 300th or worse in turnover rate — which is the exact paradox Michigan has occupied for most of the season — but nearly 90% of those elite offenses landed safely within the top 150 for lowest turnover percentage, including three seasons when not a single top-20 offense came in below that threshold in 2002, 2011 and 2017.
Data surrounding NCAA Tournament teams during the KenPom era is even more concrete, with only 12 of the last 108 schools that have reached the Final Four doing so while ranked 150th or worse in turnover rate. That includes only six that were ranked 200th or worse: 2023 UConn (236th), 2018 Loyola Chicago (227th), 2012 Louisville (215th), 2010 Michigan State (219th), 2007 Georgetown (211th) and 2006 UCLA (225th), though the Huskies went on to win the national championship. When Michigan reached the Final Four under Beilein in 2013 and 2018, snapping a drought that had stretched to 20 years, the Wolverines ranked first and fourth in the country in turnover rate, respectively.
“Clearly, it’s pretty hard to have an elite offense [and keep] turning the ball over as much as Michigan does,” Pomeroy told FOX Sports. “You can still have a good offense. The area of turnovers is a pretty interesting, unexplored region of study, I feel like, because if you’re too obsessed about turnovers, that can be bad as well. Some turnovers are not bad. Let’s just put it that way. And it seems like Michigan, their shot quality seems to be really good. Some of that is due to the fact that they do probably attempt riskier passes that ultimately, when they’re successful, they pay off really well.
“I always tell coaches, you can imagine a situation where you’re running a play and it’s a pick-and-roll or something and you’re throwing a lob that, if you complete it, it’s like guaranteed points, right? So, even if you commit a turnover, even if that pass wasn’t successful like 30% of the time, if it’s successful 70% of the time [then] it’s going to be very good offense. Obviously, Michigan has some turnovers that are bad and preventable, I’m sure. But there are clearly some turnovers that are of that [not-so-bad] variety. Things like interior passes that, when they’re successful, end in very good shots. That seems to be at least part of what Michigan is tapping into in this case.”
This was a sentiment May seemed to echo last week following an 80-76 win over Oregon in which Michigan turned the ball over 15 times — three more than the Ducks but in keeping with their season average. “Turnovers that are leading to layups and dunks,” May said when asked about his team’s mistakes that night, “we live with.” And the Wolverines had several of those throughout the game.
Some of them, it seems, were products of an offensive scheme that operates at the fourth-fastest tempo in the Big Ten, a core tenet of how May wanted to play after arriving from Florida Atlantic last spring. The Wolverines are also relying on a point guard in Donaldson (2.3 turnovers per game) whose giveaways have increased each season of his career and run plenty of sets that feature big-to-big passing between Wolf (3.4 turnovers per game) and Goldin (2.1 turnovers per game), a pair of seven-footers who are routinely swarmed by defenders slapping at the ball. But an analytically sound shot distribution that includes 33.4% of attempts originating at the rim (67.9% success rate) and 44.2% of attempts originating from beyond the arc (36.3% success rate) this season reflects the team’s general adherence to sound offensive principles.
“I thought our guys played with great intensity and effort,” May said after the win over Oregon. “It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t anywhere where it’s gonna need to be to win the championships we’re trying to win. But I do think we competed and fought at a championship level tonight.”
Which is why the silly mistakes and moments of inexplicable decision-making from his players continue to vex May entering the final month of the regular season. The examples against Oregon weren’t hard to find: Walters was standing on the sideline when he caught a pass in the corner; Burnett dragged his pivot foot on a routine jump stop, Donaldson dropped an in-bounds pass with no defender nearby; shooting guard Roddy Gayle Jr. was called for traveling not once, not twice but three times in quick succession in the second half. The list seemed to go on and on. In its five defeats this season, Michigan has averaged 15.6 turnovers per game, a tick above its season average of 14.7 per game, which ranks 337th overall.
Perhaps some of this was to be expected given the influx of new faces on both the roster and coaching staff alike, with May essentially building this team from scratch — and in short order — once athletic director Warde Manuel made the decision to move on from Howard. After all, May’s first team at Florida Atlantic ranked 303rd in turnover rate by giving the ball away on 20.6% of possessions, one-tenth higher than the current number at Michigan. It wasn’t until May’s fourth season that the Owls finally cracked the top 100, and that’s when he took them to the Final Four.
“If you eliminate half of those 17, 18 possessions that you turn it over,” May said last week, “now your defense is significantly better, guys have more touches, there’s more flow. And so, I think all parts of the game will function better if we just eliminate that one thing. We’re fighting it tooth and nail every single day.”
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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