Brendon Mulvihill is an RTC contributor. You can find him @themulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

#19 Michigan at Purdue – 7:00PM EST on ESPN HD (***)

Tim Hardaway, Jr. needs to take the ball to the hoop to get out of his shooting slump. (Melanie Maxwell/AnnArbor.com)

• Michigan is coming off a non-conference road loss to Arkansas and has lost two of its last three games. During that three-game stretch, Wolverine swingman Tim Hardaway, Jr., has had a very difficult time scoring. He has posted nine, 10, and nine points in those games and is a combined eight for 30 from the floor, including one for 16 from three. Hardaway is seven for 14 from inside the arc, however. In order for John Beilein’s team to avoid getting down early in games, Hardaway needs to spend more time driving the ball to the hoop and getting to the line. With Purdue having such a poor three-point defense, though, we might see Hardaway continue to hoist up shots from downtown. Keep an eye on his shot selection in the first 10-15 minutes of the game. Missed threes will continue to haunt him and the rest of the team if they are not careful.
• Purdue is also coming off a loss to Michigan State. It was the worst shooting performance of the year for the Boilermakers at 31% eFG. Unfortunately, Matt Painter’s squad does not have a good enough defense to survive such a poor shooting night. Purdue is eleventh in the league in eFG% defense at 52.6%. They are getting killed from downtown. While Michigan shoots a ton of threes, they are only hitting 29.5% of their attempts in conference play. So the three should not hurt Purdue in this game, but it could have an impact simply because of UM’s willingness to launch from beyond the arc. One thing that is tough to come by against the Boilermakers is points off turnovers. Purdue has lowest turnover rate in the country at 14.8%. Michigan is doing a better job of creating turnovers in conference play, but will have a difficult time creating easy baskets in West Lafayette.
• Neither team has stellar field goal defense, so expect good shooting. The game may hinge on free throws, particularly if the Wolverines are being smart from deep and driving to the hole. Purdue needs to still defend the three better because U of M certainly is not shy about shooting. If Hardaway can get back on track, Michigan has a great chance to pick up a nice road win in the Big Ten. If not, Purdue could pull off the win.

Other Games to Watch:

• Tennessee at Vanderbilt (7:00PM EST on ESPNU HD) – How will Tennessee follow up on its upset of UConn on Saturday?
• Baylor at Oklahoma (8:00PM EST on Big 12 Network HD) – Baylor looks to end a two-game losing streak on the road after starting the season with 17 straight wins.

bmulvihill (74 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 12:33 pm by bmulvihill and is filed under Regular Features, set your dvr. Tagged: john beilein, matt painter, michigan, purdue, tim hardaway jr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.