March Madness is just around the corner, and Dusty May will need to have his best lineups ready for the tough road ahead. Today, we dive into the advanced data to find Michigan’s best lineup combination:
Coming off a tight win at Ohio State to extend their winning streak to six, the Michigan Wolverines have jumped up to their highest ranking in the AP Poll (No. 12) with a one-game lead in the Big Ten.
Sunday’s win marked the fourth game where Rubin Jones was in the starting lineup. Roddy Gayle Jr. was injured for the UCLA win, and Dusty May tweaked the starting lineup earlier this month by bringing Gayle off the bench.
That lineup change got me thinking — with a 25-game sample size and March right around the corner, which five-man lineup is the best for Michigan?
To answer that question, let’s dive into lineup data and advanced statistics courtesy of CBB Analytics .
Lineup Statistics
Takeaways from looking at this data
- Michigan’s most used lineup of Tre Donaldson, Nimari Burnett, Gayle, Danny Wolf and Vlad Goldin — Michigan’s starting lineup in 21 games — has a +/- of +91, the best of any lineup with at least 10 minutes played together. That group also boasts a Net rating of +15.2 (90th percentile in college basketball), an offensive rating of 116.8 (87th) and a defensive rating of 101.6 (83rd).
- Based on advanced statistics, that lineup is Michigan’s best defensively. Offensively, only two groups are better — the one subbing out Will Tschetter and Jones for Goldin and Gayle (91st) and the group of Donaldson, Jones, Tschetter, Sam Walters and Wolf (96th in a 14-minute sample).
- Understandably, out of lineups that have played at least 15 minutes together, Michigan’s best three-point shooting lineup is Donaldson, Burnett, Gayle, Tschetter and Wolf, boasting a three-point percentage of 54.5 percent in 70 minutes (97th). That group also features arguably Michigan’s three best shot creators (Donaldson, Wolf and Gayle) and its best two catch-and-shoot players (Burnett and Tschetter).
- The most turnover-prone group is Donaldson, Jones, Gayle, Tschetter and Wolf (18.5 turnover percentage, 22nd percentile.).
- The group of Donaldson, Jones, Gayle, Wolf and Goldin is elite when it comes to offensive rebounding percentage (51.4 percent, 98th percentile).
- The most notable improvement between the starting lineup featuring Gayle and the one featuring Jones may surprise you — the group with Jones (18.1 percent, 81st) posts a much better free throw rate than the Gayle group (28.3 percent, 77th). In other words, the group with Jones commits less fouls and gives up 10 percent less free throw attempts.
- As expected, pretty much every group that features Wolf and Goldin is above average in the country in both offensive and defensive rebounding rate.
Lineup tendencies
This graph showcases when each player most often appears on the court at certain times, with each rectangle representing one game minute. There aren’t many surprises here:
- The usual starting lineup featuring Gayle is the most frequent group that ends games.
- Jones and Tschetter are often the first players off the bench in the first half, often followed by Walter and either LJ Cason or Justin Pippen.
- Those reserves appear to come in sooner in the second half, which makes sense since that starting group plays almost all the minutes in last 8-10 minutes of the game.
Trio data, with a deep dive into one of the best groups
- The best trio in terms of net rating and plus/minus (99th percentile) is the one that features Michigan’s three leading scorers, Donaldson and Area 50-1. That totally makes sense since Wolf and Goldin are an easy bucket factory and Donaldson does a great job creating shots for himself and others, while the 7-footers provide great length and rim protection on the other side of the floor.
- The best group in terms of effective field goal percentage and true shooting is Donaldson, Burnett and Goldin. That passes the eye test, as Donaldson often sets up Burnett for wide-open threes, and Goldin has the best field goal percentage among scholarship players (64 percent), with the vast majority of his shots coming near the rim.
Now, let’s dive into a trio I think will get more minutes moving forward.
Wolf, Gayle and Donaldson are on the floor often in the second half, with a whole lot of green in the second half of that third chart that measures plus/minus. This group has a total plus/minus of +143 when you include overtime minutes, and net rating of +15.2. Both those marks are middle-of-the-pack when it comes to all of Michigan’s lineups, but I expect we’ll see a lot more of this trio come March.
This group shoots nearly 50 percent (49.5 percent) when they share the floor, including an incredibly efficient mark inside the arc (59.7 percent, 96th percentile. They also slow down opponents defensively and draws nearly 20 fouls per game (19,9, 96th percentile).
These three are probably Michigan’s best players when it comes to creating shots for both themselves and others, and when you combine that with how efficient they are from the field and how often they get to the line, I would wager these three will always be on the floor to close out tight games the rest of the season.
Which lineup do you think is Michigan’s best 25 games into the season? Let us know in the comments.