luck

3/5/2023 – Michigan 73, Indiana 75 (OT) – 17-14, 11-9 Big Ten

There's a special agony in losing a close basketball game that outstrips any other close loss in other sports, because the margins in basketball are so razor thin. Close losses in other sports often aren't that close. Losing by a goal in sports like hockey or soccer is often losing by a fairly wide margin. You can lose a football game by a field goal and Bill Connelly will hop on twitter the next day and tell you that your team had a 22% win expectation.

1 hour and 40 minutes

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1. Illinois and Bad Luck vs. Michigan

starts at 1:00

I'm not even mad, I'm impressed that they keep missing these threes. Michigan had just 2 turnovers, won the OREBs by five. Debate between the everything is explainable and some things are random people. Eli, Johns are like Mo's three: if the first goes down we have it tonight. Michigan during this skid has been the 350th team in college basketball at threes. X did not attempt one. Two-for-one possessions. Sick of getting just random off-the-dribble mastery by 25% shooters when our 40%ers can't hit a wide open catch and shoot three.

Do you think we have some sort of weird defense that makes an off-balance 30-footer?

2. Penn State and Bad Luck vs. Michigan

starts at 23:32

Michigan was 2/20 on catch-and-shoot threes (the ones you want), in this game. Myles Dread is getting ice cream of the future, weird and-ones, Curtis Jones has the game of his college career, because life is crazy like that. Is there a guy on their roster with peg leg? That guy's going off.

3. Hot Takes and Wide View

starts at 36:44

Dave's ringtone is just a choking sound. Delete the three point line. How mad are we about this season? Not very: this was a fragile team that lost Iggy and Poole and its coach and therefore couldn't afford to lose Livers. Things that tie to coaching point up from preseason expectations. Recruiting better than best-case scenario. Bags? Christopher is a guy who has cachet that Isaiah Todd does not—Todd you're catching in the early part of his development while Christopher is a 5-star because he's an immediate dude in college. Also: Hunter Dickinson, who's Teske. Williams projects as a four-year guy whom the other schools are always like "When is this guy gonna leave?" after he gets a critical offensive rebound again.

4. Ace's Hockey Podcast

starts at 1:12:06

Old Fashioned road three points: 6-0 win and then a penalty-crazy Saturday. Significantly outplayed Penn State in the first game, got that pugilistic second game. They don't have the shooting or luck so their low shooting % was killing them—it's like going against a better goalie than Strauss Mann every game. Get even luck and they're a top of the Big Ten team, and that's what happened against Penn State and Notre Dame. Tying goal by PSU was such bad luck. They're good in Corsi, not giving up bad goals, generating good looks, don't have dangerous scorers and that's a weakness. Too late probably for this year but trending up for when the cavalry arrives. US game: watching Thomas Bordeleaux, who's gonna be a creator, but isn't flashy.

Brian and David go through the 2020 recruits.

MUSIC:

• "I Miss You"—Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes
• "The Big Three Killed My Baby"—The White Stripes
• "There is a Valley"–Bill Fay
• “Across 110th Street”

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• What's with the theme music?

Enjoy Rutgers Basketball this year because they're having our season.

Remember the third quarter?

Michigan State scored off a trick play, after a turnover, tying a game in which it had been outplayed and it was like every iteration of this rivalry amalgamated into a five-minute span. It felt like you knew exactly how the rest of this thing was going to go, because we had seen this movie before.

When Michigan went three-and-out on the ensuing drive, Khari Willis dropping a surefire interception, it seemed like a prelude. Instead, it was another break in a game full of them, ending in a narrative-changing 21-7 victory.

If some of those breaks go a little differently — if the Spartans come down with a first quarter tipped ball instead of Nico Collins, if they do the same in the third quarter instead of Zach Gentry, if Willis doesn’t drop that pick — this might be a column about how the Wolverines still can’t get over the hump. Those plays have gone Michigan State’s way of late in this rivalry. And being able to win that weird, intangible element — clearing the “everything always goes against us” hurdle — might say more about Michigan than anything else it has done.

“Our team never blinked the entire time,” Jim Harbaugh told reporters. “They played hard, they played smart. From the pregame shenanigans, there was no backing down today by our guys. From then on.”

[After THE JUMP: A column]