In mid-December, Spike would shut it down, a blow to leadership and depth. And from a motivational perspective, Michigan would not find an man so inspired until Mo came out of nowhere in the postseason. But I digress... four straight cupcake games built some confidence, enough to pull out an elusive road Big Ten win against the Illini to close out the calendar year. Unfortunately, what we didn't know then that we know now is that December 30th would effectively be Caris LeVert's final game as a Wolverine. And it would have been really nice to know then, because removing the fact that we were effectively Indiana without Yogi or Michigan Agricultural College without Denzel, I feel that the uncertainty of the if/when return of LeVert messed with the team just as much, and messed with John Beilein.
It isn't easy man. Choosing to move on from a team leading 17PPG, from the only guy that had any inkling of driving the ball to the hoop to open up our perimeter game, is a tough one. And nobody on the team seemed to want to take that role, or any other role for that matter. Meanwhile, Michigan's big men devolved. The air had been let out of the balloon. Smoked on the road in West Lafayette (17 points) and in Iowa City (11 points) at home by Sparty (16 points) and Indiana (13 points). They would lose 6 of 8 going into the home finale against Iowa, just four days after the official announcement that Caris would be out for the remainder of the season. What was thought of nationally as a win-and-in game for the Wolverines became an embarassment. Despite a flurry of threes pulling them within five with 5 minutes to go, it was all Iowa on limping Senior Night at Crisler.
I don't believe that you can play your way into the NCAA tournament with wins in your conference tournament. So yes, I believe we were already sharpied into the bracket in the NCAA war room without the narrow win against Northwestern and the miracle against Indiana. What was important about those Big Ten Tournament victories though, was that the team finally seemed to get together. Chatman's buzzer beater was glue. The arrival of Mo Wagner was a huge spark. Wagner, after 12 total minutes of PT in the month of February, played 16 minutes against the Big Ten outright regular season champ, and dominated.
