culture shock

This is the post I should've written before Sunday, so you'd know what was coming.  I only managed to nod suggestively in its direction.  Now it's just about making sense of what happened.

Because to make sense of what happened, you have to get Michigan State.  Darion Atkins doesn't, or else he wouldn't have talked sideways about his teammates not wanting it enough.  No, I don't actually blame Atkins one bit.  He's frustrated, he just walked off a college basketball court for the last time, and to the uninitiated, what just happened really did look an awful lot like one team wanting it a lot more than the other.  But I'd venture to say nobody in the UVA locker room really gets Michigan State, nor do 99% of UVA fans.  After this, you'll know the true story of UVA's 2015 tournament exit.

See, MSU is built on a certain culture that Tom Izzo has cultivated.  It's a culture of birthright, of entitlement.  It makes them arrogant.  There's a hint of punk in their game.  Not Joey Ramone punk.  Think Greivis Vasquez punk.  The Spartans are cocky to an extreme, and it works extremely well for them.  They've been brought up to believe two things: one, that it's their right to beat Michigan, and two, that it's their right to excel in March.

This doesn't make them complacent.  On the contrary, it makes them hungry.  I often say that getting college kids to believe they've been disrespected is the easiest thing in the world.  They view the very existence of an opponent as disrespect.  That you would think you have any claim to winning a game against their birthright is disrespect on the order of making a rival claim to the throne.

As a result, they're really sore losers.  Some say that's a good thing; Vince Lombardi was the sorest loser in history.  "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser," he said.  Several years ago, Michigan made the U-M/MSU game a rivalry again by reeling off three straight wins; when MSU got one back, Draymond Green boasted that "The world is back into place."  He wasn't kidding.  Green had been recruited to MSU under the premise that beating Michigan is something you do as naturally as breathing.**   Three straight losses threw off his world order.  Izzo and his players have developed a pattern of saying in post-loss press conferences, "I'm not here to make excuses," and then rattling off a dozen excuses to rationalize why the world didn't turn out the way they expect.

-- After losing to Duke in the 2013 NCAA tournament, Gary Harris complained about a free throw disparity; MSU had shot 24 free throws to Duke's 16 before the first stop-the-clock foul.

-- After losing to Michigan last year, Izzo bemoaned Keith Appling's sore wrist as a reason for his poor shooting night.  Appling's sore wrist had put together two straight 20-point games just a couple weeks before and would follow up the Michigan loss with a 3-for-6 performance from three against Iowa.

-- The same loss to Michigan, in the very same press conference, saw Izzo simultaneously complain that he couldn't get Appling enough rest, and that Appling was in foul trouble too early and had to sit.

MSU takes this attitude into the postseason.  This is why I called them a zombie team.  It played out exactly like that on Sunday.  Every time the momentum looked like it might shift, something happened, and it didn't.  Darion Atkins gets a huge block and starts a mini 5-0 run; MSU gets re-energized by a wide-open dunk and then immediately gets the benefit of a TV timeout to let their momentum simmer.  UVA gets within two just after the half, misses the shot that would put them in the lead, and Denzel Valentine hits a three on the other end, sparking another run.  UVA gets a brilliant double team and a potential turnover, only to have the refs give them a loose-ball timeout and follow it up with an all-ball foul on Darion Atkins, sending our one effective post guy back to the bench.  Zombies.  You shoot and shoot and shoot and they don't die.  All that stuff conspired to remind MSU that March is their birthright, and they kept on playing like it.

Dollars to donuts, the pregame speech in the MSU locker room had a theme like this: "Hey.  This is March.  This is what we play for, and this is our time.  Those guys over there - they're January warriors.  They're great in the regular season.  Now they think they're gonna stroll in here and take what's ours?  They don't know March.  They can't handle March.  We know March."  They don't view you as an obstacle; that would be giving you respect.  You're in the Michigan State Show.  You think you're ready to make your run and beat them, they simply make a play, slap the floor, strut a bit, and that's that.

Michigan finally beat them and made it a rivalry again by finally being sick of their shit.  In 2011, Michigan finally swept the Spartans for the first time long enough that everyone had to look it up; the second game - at Michigan - got a little woofy, and Michigan's Darius Morris told MSU's Kalin Lucas to "Get the fuck off my court."  This is not a paraphrase or a metaphor.  The only response Lucas could muster was to throw the ball at Morris.

That's one way to beat them, but it took years of abuse.  UVA had one loss to them, not ten years worth of losses.  The other way to beat them?  Develop a winning culture of your own.  Our two years of being near the top of the world is nice, but it's not enough.  Here are the teams that've knocked MSU out of the tournament in the last ten years:

Connecticut, Duke, Louisville, UCLA, Butler, North Carolina, Memphis, North Carolina, George Mason, North Carolina.

That list is all blue-blood teams, with three exceptions: the first of two Butler teams to reach the championship; Derrick Rose; and a George Mason team that didn't know any better and wound up in the Final Four.  In fact, seven of those ten teams went to the Final Four; four went to the national championship, and two won it all.  These are teams that laugh when you slap the floor, because they've earned the right to do so.  Any other reaction and you're doomed.

That's what UVA was up against.  Probably a Final Four team now.  Oklahoma, bless their heart, is screwed.  MSU will look at them like a less-talented version of UVA and walk all over them.  The only team left in this region with a chance is Louisville.

To be fair to our players, there's a lot of breaks that, had they bounced the right way, we'd be scouting Oklahoma right now.  Hitting two end-of-shot-clock three pointers while your opponent goes 1-for-13 is part been-there-before and part luck.  But I can look at that game and find ways to win without a single one of those missed threes going down.  And so damn much of it can be chalked up to a culture that we just don't have yet.

**He'd also been recruited to MSU with the promise of playing in a Final Four.  Izzo literally had every single one of his recruiting classes go to the Final Four at least once, a streak that was finally broken last year.  Guaranteed, though, the substance of the pitch is the same even if the exact words no longer are.

game preview: Michigan State

Date/Time: Sunday, March 22; 12:10

TV: CBS

Record against the Spartans: 0-4

Last meeting: MSU 61, UVA 59; 3/28/14, New York, NY; NCAA Sweet Sixteen

Last game: UVA 79, Belmont 67 (3/20); MSU 70, UGA 63 (3/20)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 58.5 (#349)
MSU: 64.0 (#216)

Offense:
UVA: 112.1 (#24)
MSU: 113.7 (#16)

Defense:
UVA: 86.1 (#2)
MSU: 95.6 (#48)

Pythag:
UVA: .9544 (#5)
MSU: .8799 (#17)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (6.5 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 4.7 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (14.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SF: Evan Nolte (3.1 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.6 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.6 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Michigan State:

PG: Travis Trice (14.8 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 5.2 apg)
SG: Lourawls Nairn (2.3 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 2.5 apg)
SF: Denzel Valentine (14.5 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 4.4 apg)
PF: Branden Dawson (12.0 ppg, 9.0 rpg, 1.8 apg)
C: Gavin Schilling (5.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)

The selection committee insists they don't take storylines into account when they fill out the bracket, and maybe they don't - they certainly have plenty to worry about without looking for transfer players who might get the chance to play against their old team.  But the opening rounds for UVA have certainly not been lacking for interest.

UVA gets another shot at the team that bounced them from the Sweet Sixteen last year.  On paper, Michigan State isn't as good as they were last year.  In real life, MSU has a reputation as a tough out for a reason.  And just going by KenPom rankings, they're more a high 5-seed than a 7-seed.  They clamped down on Georgia in round 1; the Bulldogs only made one shot in three.  Your reward for a top-2 seed is to open the tourney against some scrappy little upstart that you can probably fry like an egg; the real tourney begins now.

-- UVA on offense

Despite the great work against UGA, in almost all of their losses, MSU topped the point-per-possession mark.  Their problem was occasionally letting bad teams score a bunch.  Minnesota, Nebraska, even Texas Southern early in the season; MSU usually doesn't have much trouble scoring, but their defense can occasionally buckle on them.  They generate good numbers, they just get a little inconsistent - a strange thing for a Tom Izzo team.

MSU is a little undersized.  Matt Costello and Gavin Schilling play as traditional centers, and rarely (if ever) appear on the court at the same time; both are 6'9", though, giving up a few inches to Mike Tobey.  That said, they're also heavy and solidly built, and can hold their ground just fine.  Other than the very lightly-used Colby Wollenman (who checks in at 6'7") nobody else on the MSU depth chart is over 6'6".  Branden Dawson is athletic and was a potential NBA draft entrant last year, but is only a 6'6" power forward.  So is his second-string, freshman Marvin Clark.  Finally, you've got 5'10", 170-pound shooting guard Lourawls Nairn, who'll draw 6'5" strong-as-an-ox Malcolm Brogdon, unless it's 6'0" Travis Trice instead.

So hopefully UVA will be able to put their size advantage to good use.  MSU is tough to score on when they're playing good fundamental ball; Izzo, though, has bemoaned his team's inconsistency all year, including after the Georgia game when he called his team "interesting."  MSU sometimes puts itself in foul trouble.  Costello and Schilling are strong, but not all that quick, and are prone to fouling players driving to the hoop.  They'll go for the block, and they get it pretty often, but they also sometimes miss and get a hack instead.  The guy to watch out for is Dawson; he's got some leaps and an ability to get those blocks without fouling.  He's a good answer to Justin Anderson in that regard.

Despite the inconsistency, you have to expect a grind.  MSU is also capable of excellent defensive performances; Indiana is one team that found that out, as did Georgia.  There are matchups where UVA will have the upper hand; failure to take advantage would be killer.

-- UVA on defense

The size advantage UVA has is different than what they had against Belmont, for one big reason: UVA was forced to go smallish against Belmont, because the whole team played outside the arc.  Mike Tobey only played five minutes.  MSU's bigs are never shooting threes (Marvin Clark being a possible exception, if you want to call him a big) and so Tobey and the rest of UVA's bigs can do what they're comfortable doing.

Clark will hoist them some, but there's really only three Spartans to care about from long range: Denzel Valentine, Travis Trice, and Bryn Forbes.  All of them will fire away and all of them can hit with regularity.  Limiting the three-bombing to the players that can actually hit them has helped make MSU a really efficient offensive team.

They're also really good inside the arc.  Costello and Schilling kind of look like galoots, but they're strong players and know how to establish a presence.  They do a lot of cleanup work, scoring on putbacks quite a bit.  Schilling usually starts, but it's Costello, often going against opponent's second strings, who does the best work in most facets of the game.

Dawson uses his athleticism very well in getting to the rim, and off the bench, Bryn Forbes is a very versatile scorer.  The most dangerous guy on the court, though, is Valentine.  Valentine has always played with a little bit of an attitude, sometimes not a productive one.  Now a junior, though, he's reined it in a bit and has a great deal more consistency in his game as a result.  Valentine can score from anywhere.  He prefers jump shots and doesn't go to the rim as much, but he's very comfortable shooting from wherever he is on the court.

The one big weakness of the Spartans: Foul shooting.  Valentine is outstanding from the stripe, and Forbes is dependable.  Trice, though, misses more than a guard should.  Lourawls Nairn is a lousy shooter, especially for a guard; Costello is OK for a big, but Dawson is horrendous and Schilling is worse.  This would be a great game to have really whistle-happy refs who call it as tight as possible; if it's a parade to the line, UVA's chances improve tremendously.

-- Outlook

UVA has the advantage here.  The Hoos play better defense and don't have an ugly, glaring weakness the way MSU does with the free throws.  That said, games like this have a way of defying the on-paper analysis. Both teams are comfortable in close games, and this one probably will be.  If there's one intangible on the side of UVA, it's this: Like Memphis last year, MSU won't have had much time to focus on scouting the pack-line defense, needing to worry about their first-round opponent a great deal more.  But I'll frankly be damn good and surprised if this game is a blowout ilke that Memphis one.

Since I did such a damn good job predicting the Belmont score, let's hope this one's just as accurate.

Final score: UVA 61, MSU 59

game preview: Michigan State

Date/Time: Friday, March 28; 9:57

TV: TBS

Record against the Spartans: 0-3

Last meeting: MSU 82, UVA 75; 12/4/02, East Lansing

Last game: UVA 78, Memphis 60 (3/23); MSU 80, Harvard 73 (3/23)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.0 (#346)
MSU: 66.0 (#189)

Offense:
UVA: 114.6 (#20)
MSU: 117.9 (#9)

Defense:
UVA: 89.8 (#5)
MSU: 96.7 (#41)

Pythag:
UVA: .9430 (#4)
MSU: .9072 (#8)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (5.4 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 3.8 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (12.6 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.8 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 2.3 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (6.9 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.2 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (6.5 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 0.3 apg)

Memphis:

PG: Keith Appling (11.7 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 4.6 apg)
SG: Gary Harris (16.9 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Denzel Valentine (8.1 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 3.9 apg)
PF: Branden Dawson (11.0 ppg, 8.3 rpg, 1.7 apg)
C: Adreian Payne (16.6 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 1.2 apg)
You know the games are getting big when they have funny non-zero numbers at the end of the game times.  Give everyone generic jerseys and this is arguably the most compelling matchup of the whole Sweet 16.  I love the storylines.  You've got possibly the most hyped-up #4 seed in history with a ton of talent that can score a lot of different ways - but a team that's got a strong element of enigma due to injuries and inconsistent play during the season.  That team is going up against the most disrespected #1 seed in history, who plays suffocating defense and is shattering preconceived notions, game by blowout game.  And it's one of two games featuring major-conference tourney champs.  You can have Louisville-Kentucky.

UVA and MSU played such a memorable game last time they met that I completely forgot it wasn't even the last time they met.  I wanted to make a joke about picking up where they left off in Richmond, but it turns out they did the following year.  Todd Billet and Devin Smith scored 28 and 24 points, respectively, but UVA couldn't overcome 10/28 shooting from the rest of the team as well as 26 fouls and 19 turnovers, and lost by 7.  Interestingly, the preview on the official site claims that all three games between these teams have been played in East Lansing, by which I suppose they mean all three completed games.

No need, of course, to harp about what's at stake.  Survive and advance.

-- UVA on offense

Challenges abound.  One of MSU's keys to success on defense is Branden Dawson, a sneaky good defender who looks like a matchup problem for the Spartans due to his size, but might be the best overall defender on the team.  As a power forward, Dawson is hardly any bigger than our shooting guard, but he can get blocks and steals equally and is rarely in foul trouble.  Adreian Payne tends to get the attention, and both he and Dawson were hurt this year (you can't make this stuff up: Dawson punched a table during team film study and broke his hand) but MSU's losses this year correlated much more closely to Dawson's absence than Payne's.  They kept winning when Payne got hurt; they started losing when Dawson did, and lost only one game since Dawson's return to the starting lineup.

Also a challenge: Gary Harris, one of the best on-ball defenders in the Big Ten.  Harris is a projected lottery pick for a reason (he's kinda quick), and his assignment will be Malcolm Brogdon.  It's likely Brogdon's ability to create off the dribble will be curtailed, and the screens that UVA uses will be of even more importance to get Brogdon some room.

One of the enigma factors to MSU is their fouling, however.  Individually most of these guys actually have pretty good fouls-per-40 rates.  Delaware and Harvard, their first two tourney opponents, shot a ton of free throws.  Payne is prone to fits of hacktion, and Harris managed to foul out against Delaware despite being one of the best on the team (and one of the better players in the country) at staying out of foul trouble.  Denzel Valentine is an enigma even to Spartan fans, and part of his head-scratching repertoire is, of course, inexplicable fouls.  This is all about a team in the Big Ten, mind you, a league that operates just this side of call-your-own-foul playground rules.

The other noticeable weak(ish) point in the Sparty defense is three-pointers.  They're not egregiously bad at defending them, but they did allow the second-worst 3-point shooting percentage in Big Ten play.  Teams generally do prefer to try their luck from deep, and in most of MSU's losses, the opponent hit on 40% or better.  This results in a very large proportion of points scored on their defense being from behind either the charity stripe or the arc.  They're aggressive down low, though, and teams have a tough time with a standard two.

The strategy, therefore, might be to try and take advantage of one or the other of these weaknesses, but they're both capricious ideas.  Your shot can abandon you at any time, and MSU is very capable of defending without fouling.  This ought to be a close game anyway, and the key might be, rather than hitting a bunch of threes, simply hitting timely ones.

-- UVA on defense

Plainly, the marquee matchup of the game is Adreian Payne and Akil Mitchell.  Here's the good news for UVA fans: Mitchell has shut down Jabari Parker and T.J. Warren, and there isn't a post defender in the Big Ten like him.

Payne is a different animal, of course.  Both he and Parker have big-man quicks and can pop three-pointers, but Payne doesn't have Parker's dribble skills and won't hurt you with pull-up jumpers the way Parker can.  Instead, he's bigger and stronger, with a better array of post moves, and probably a better feet-set shooter.  This might be where the problem in this matchup lies for UVA - Parker couldn't shoot over Mitchell (as was ably demonstrated early in the ACC title game) but Payne is 6'10" and more likely to, and may well start the game testing Mitchell with some straight-up bulldog moves in the post to see if he can win the matchup that way.

This is also a very dangerous team from deep.  Among the best in the country.  The whole starting lineup, except for Dawson, will not only shoot, but make, as will bench sharpshooters Travis Trice and Kenny Kaminski.  Make no mistake - this team can get hot from deep.  Among regulars, the worst three-point shooting percentage is Gary Harris's .352.  They'll tell you that point guard Keith Appling's wrist is still bothering him, as it has all season, which is bull; Appling has shot .571 from deep in five games of tournament play and that's including 0-for-2 against Harvard.

Plenty of other ways MSU can score, of course.  Harris can create, and Dawson's a very athletic player and over a 60% shooter.  Appling is a very steady senior PG and runs the show very well, not to mention adding some very good secondary scoring.  Not for nothing is UVA's defense as good as it is, though, and the Big Ten is not loaded with top-notch D's.  Only two of its 12 teams are in KenPom's top 25; compare that to five ACC teams with another just a smidge outside.  UVA has the tools to handle the Spartan attack - not shut it down entirely, but certainly show them a look they haven't seen.  The one that'll keep you up tonight is that three-point shooting.

-- Outlook

Undeniably, this MSU team has talent - in fact, it's likely the most talented team UVA has seen this year outside of maybe Duke, and I'm not sure about Duke.  Injuries might've kept them from hitting their potential, but so has just plain inconsistency.  Let's not forget: everyone's favorite tourney pick was losing to Harvard in the second half, and the Crimson - coached by a coach who Tom Izzo used to dominate when that coach had much better talent than he has now - came close to pulling that one off.

MSU is a bad matchup for the Hoos in a couple ways, particularly the three-point shooting.  They're a deeper opponent than we're used to seeing, and Tom Izzo is a tournament regular while UVA is making a whole season out of the phrase "not since".  But UVA is also a bad matchup for inconsistent teams.  Time to shock the world.

Final score: UVA 59, MSU 56