Not What We Expected: Purdue 75, Michigan 61

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Not planning on dwelling on this, and I hope the fellas don't either.  

With the student body out of town, and likely knee deep in tequilla, the crowd was dull and lifeless.  Michigan's start, which had Purdue leading 12-2 before Godfather even got his popcorn, didn't help things much.  Michigan didn't have it Saturday night, Purdue did.  My un-basketball-educated perspective?  In Michigan's delicate balancing act of choosing between trying to establish position through screen and rolls to the inside, and chucking it from three, they seemed to make the wrong move each time down court.  When we went to the inside, three Purdue players were waiting to converge on the ball.  When we rotated around the perimeter, there seemed to be a double team at every stop.  Trey Burke had a lot of difficulty penetrating, to a level I haven't seen since the game at Ohio State.  It felt like they shut him down, but that just goes to show you the expectations we have for our fab freshman...he still had 12 points and 4 assists.  Tim Hardaway was 5-7 from the floor when inside the arc, but 0-6 from three.  He and Trey both had 4 turnovers, but a couple of Tim's stood out to me as particularly frustrating during that dreadfully paced first half.

But it wasn't Michigan's offense that lost the game on Saturday night, it was the defense.  Purdue scored 43 points in the second half, which I believe is above the Big Ten average for most full games.  Purdue consistently beat Michigan's defenders to the hoop.  Everything looked like a mismatch.  Too many mistakes, too many open 3's, and the pair of late game daggers from Hummel...game over.

Michigan ends the home slate at 15-1.  Not perfect, but still impressive.  Unfortunately, this not-so-great-on-the-road Michigan team will be playing out the season and post-season in arenas not named Crisler.  Michigan needs to concentrate on finishing off these remaining two road games in a proper fashion, grabbing some momentum heading into the Big Ten tournament.  They've got a couple of extra days of rest this week before heading to Champaign on Thursday, where they will face a wounded Illini team...heavily wounded.  Going into tonight's game against Iowa, Illinois has lost 9 of their last 10, including a 23 point loss to Nebraska.  Then it's just two-days off before heading to Sandusky-ville for the regular season finale.

Michigan needs significant help to grab a share of the regular season Big Ten title.  Ohio State needs to lose either vs. Wisconsin tonight, or at Northwestern on the 29th.  They then need to beat Michigan Agricultural College in the season finale.  MAC needs to lose at Indiana on the 28th, then obviously lose to OSU on March 4th.  Longshot?  Yep.  Impossible?  Nope.

Other Purdue reactions across the internets:  Indianapolis Star gloats, USA Today has pretty colors, UMHoops breaks it down proper-like.

Go Blue!

Purdue Quick Hits

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Jersey neck hole too big, or head too small?  ​

Jersey neck hole too big, or head too small?  

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My first Michigan basketball game was Michigan vs. Purdue...but it was Chris Webber vs. Glen Robinson.  I remember that it was like an NBA game, and I remember that Johnny Cleveland was there, eating Zingerman's (and a sauerkraut and corned beef reuben) for the first time.  I think this story makes me old, but I've got that little kid feeling today as a couple of would-be role players turned heroes will be taking the court at the "house they rebuilt" for the last time.  Maybe ten years from now I will remember that today featured Trey Burke and Robbie Hummel...Michigan's amazing freshman...and a guy that was a freshman back when Gene Keady had a full head of hair.  

Things to know before you go....

  • Michigan beat Purdue by 2 in West Lafayette.
  • Partying to hard?  Purdue is short a guy, as Kelsey Barlow was removed from the program. Good bench scorer.  You never can tell what kind of effect this will have....rallying cry for a desperate team, or another nail in the coffin in one of Purdue's less than remarkable seasons?
  • DJ Byrd is back from his suspension, and is one of those guys that comes off of the bench and rains threes....which is something that we always seem to be susceptible to.
  • Hummel has been hot in his last 4 games.
  • Purdue needs this win for NCAA tourney posterity.
  • Michigan needs this win to go undefeated at home for the first time in 35 years, and to stay within a win of the Big Ten championship.

Be there...6pm...BTN.

Go Blue!

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Wildcats Down (and out?), "Boiler Up" Coming to Town

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I'm praying too John.  I'm not certain how the calculation works, or if it even translates properly from baseball to basketball....but I think the Wolverines magic number is 4.

 

For the duration of the time that John Beilein has been our fearless leader, I've quipped that Michigan could beat anyone in the country if they got hot from behind the three-point arc.  I waited five long years for it to happen.  On Tuesday night, in overtime against a medium-grade opponent, away from the friendly confines of Crisler center, in front of an NCAA-bid-starved 8,117 fans in Evanston, it finally happened.  Michigan went 3-5 from three, with the three makes coming in three straight trips down the floor, as part of an 18-6 run in the extra period, putting a dent in the post-season hopes of Wildcat fans, and possibly saving a NCAA tournament watching national audience from having to witness Shurna's weird wrist flip jumpers.  Sure, they didn't use this three-point arsenal (they shot 38 of them, making 14) to down a Goliath, but they did use it to save themselves from themselves, to save themselves from the deep bench use due to foul trouble, and to save themselves from a huge letdown with a regular season Big Ten title on the line.

 

Other NW stuff:

Up next for the cagers is a Purdue team that is still scratching and clawing its way through the Big Ten.  They are at .500 with four games to play, including two road games against ranked opponents (one being us).  So, while it's likely they will be NCAA bound going 2-2 in those last 4, they could play their way into the tournament and off of the bubble by holding serve at home and knocking us off.  Teams on the ropes scare me, so does the pressure on our boys for a perfect home season.  Add in the emotional aspect as we say goodbye to Zack and Stew and, well, I get nervous.  Me of little faith.  The good news is, a couple of Purdue players just went all Sparty and got in some trouble at a bar, and Kelsey Barlow got himself booted from the team.  Hopefully his 24 minutes and 8.3 ppg will be missed.  The other culprit, DJ Byrd, was suspended, and he is deadly off the bench from three, so there's that.

 

Anyway, we've got a UMTailgate.com crew coming to town for the game for Winter Reunion Part 2 (of 3?), so hopefully we'll have some new pictures so you can see how much older The Godfather looks.  He's been drinking a lot.

Wire to Wire

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During this same week two years ago, Michigan lost back-to-back games at home to Penn State and Illinois, and while the dream was probably long since over, the two losses effectively left the 2010 Big Ten tournament's auto-bid as Michigan's only chance to get to postseason play.  As disappointing as the season had been, I had delusions of Michigan winning that Big Ten tournament and dancing again...just as I had at the end of each season for the better part of decade.  I thought since this team had received that NCAA Tournament taste in 2009, they might have the drive to make it happen.  Needing a conference tournament run to salvage a season is the mark of desperation.  It's the way you think when you're not good.  It's how we'd lived our lives as Michigan Basketball fans since 1998.  Ohio State, who at the time was the toast of the conference, needed a 37 foot prayer from Evan Turner to beat the Wolverines and end that season for the Wolverines.  No tourney.  No NIT.  No post-season.

Now, just two years later, the momentum has swung to a place where the NCAA tournament is an expectation...the postseason even appears on the official schedule.  This year, despite a slate that included a Maui Invitaional and a run through the what might be the nation's most powerful conference, they haven't dissappointed.

Michigan has been ranked in both polls for the entirety of the 2011-12 basketball season.  Michigan hasn't lost for over a year on their home court.  They split the season series with their two biggest rivals.  They're not playing their way in anymore, they're playing for seed.  And they did it all after losing a huge portion of their offense to the NBA in Darius Morris.

That's not to say it's been pretty the whole way.  The road has been a huge issue, and Tuesday's game at Northwestern looms large as Michigan attempts to position themselves for their first Big Ten regular season championship in 26 years.  Their lack of big men that are skilled around the rim, both in scoring and rebounding, sets them up for problems against most teams.  And the John Beilein system (while effective) isn't pretty, and from an offensive perspective, it can be downright frustrating to watch even in victory, especially on nights where the threes aren't falling.  But good systems evolve, and while the offense has basically consisted of Trey Burke drive-and-score and Trey Burke drive-and-dish...there seems to be a push (which was evident Saturday night) to get Jordan Morgan more involved in an inside out type gameplan despite his shortcomings.  Trey Burke was decidedly "the show" against the Buckeyes, but Jordan Morgan might have played his best game at Michigan...and did it against one of the Big Ten's best players.

Michigan took a 6-0 lead to start the game, and while they found themselves looking over their shoulders the whole time and never really got a commanding lead...they never trailed...going tip to horn over one of the best teams in the country.

Three of the remaining four games on Michigan's schedule are on the road, and while they aren't against the Big Ten's best (Northwestern, Illinois, and Penn State) they are still decidedly not in Crisler.  The Boilermakers are the lone home game remaining, and are the only thing standing in the way of a perfect home season (which would make us perfect at home in football and basketball!) when they come to Ann Arbor this Saturday for senior night.  Michigan needs to win all four of these games if they want to end that 26 year drought.

From Other Places:

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