Opponents have attempted to take DeShawn Sims out of Michigan's offense

Posted: Feb 5, 2010 at 7:23 PM [Feb 5, 2010]

Last month in Madison, Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan pulled Michigan senior DeShawn Sims aside to make sure this was his final year of eligibility.

Sims confirmed to Ryan that he won’t be back for the Wolverines next year, although there have been times this year it seemed like he's already gone.

That, though, has been through little fault of Sims' own.

Often in Big Ten play, Michigan has started its games by going right to Sims. He began the game against Wisconsin on Jan. 20 by scoring 8 of Michigan’s first 10 points. He had the Wolverines’ first 13 points against Purdue.

He dominated the first half against Northwestern on Jan. 9, scoring 13 of his 17 points in the first half.

In the Big Ten, Sims has averaged 18.9 points and 7.9 rebounds, numbers that place him among the best in the conference.

Yet teams eventually begin to take him away.

Each time, the 'how' has been different. Against Penn State, Michigan went away from Sims early because other players shot three-pointers. That approach put the Wolverines in a 15-point halftime hole. 

In the first Northwestern game, the Wildcats trapped so much on the guards they couldn’t make entry passes to Sims.

In Sims' earlier game against the Badgers - the team he’ll see again Saturday at 4 p.m. in Crisler Arena - he had two points over the final 10 minutes after beginning with the aforementioned first 8 of 10.

Sims said it doesn’t take him long to realize he’s getting consistently double-teamed but against the Wildcats on Tuesday, it was different. The way they played him was unlike much he’d seen before.

“I couldn’t really see it until I watched film but I didn’t have a lot of space. As soon as I caught the ball it was like three guys collapsing on me and that was when I was going up to the rim,” Sims said. “Some of them were physical plays.

“But other than that, it don’t take too long for me to realize I’m getting doubled. But it wasn’t like a double. It was like when I was making a move to the basket they would collapse or when I was going up for a shot, they collapsed.”

When teams take away Sims, it affects everything else Michigan tries to do. 

As opponents focus on the 6-foot-8 senior, U-M either take a ton of three-pointers - a shot they are making 29.5 percent of the time - or junior guard Manny Harris drives into the lane. 

In the second half against the Badgers, Michigan took 12 three-pointers and settled often for jump shots instead of driving into the lane. Of Michigan's last 16 shots against Wisconsin, 14 were three-pointers or jumpers. Subsequently, the Wolverines lost a nine-point lead.

With Michigan unable to feed the ball to Sims inside effectively on Tuesday against Northwestern, 28 of the Wolverines' 52 shots were three-pointers. 

Against Penn State last month, when the Wolverines chose to go away from Sims early, they missed all 12 of their three-pointers in the first half, more than half the total shots they took. In that first half, Sims was 5 of 7 from the field. The rest of Michigan was 3 of 16, including all 12 misses from the three-point line. 

Part of the problem has been Michigan’s shooting struggles, which are both inside and beyond the three-point arc.

“Shooting in the in-between game is big for us, pull up from 10-15 feet when people are pressing us from the outside and then hitting the open shots,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “You don’t get them much but when you do you have to shoot more than the 40 percent rate and I don’t think we’re doing that, three pointers.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.