Michigan State 70, Michigan 64
This wasn't how I wanted to be reminded of the 2013 Final Four team.
Michigan's loss to end the regular season at Michigan State didn't cost them a Big Ten title, unlike 2013's finale, but there are some parallels. This team has now dropped two of their last three and is suddenly dealing with injury scares; Eli Brooks returned to the bench in a walking boot after rolling his right ankle while landing on Marcus Bingham and Franz Wagner reportedly limped off the floor after an awkward landing on his shot attempt just after the final buzzer.
The 2013 squad had the order the other way around. They started 20-1 but lost starting center Jordan Morgan to a badly sprained ankle that either kept him out or limited his effectiveness for much of the rest of the season. That team lost five of their last ten regular season games, one to a bad Penn State team, before falling apart in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals against Wisconsin.
Those parallels feel less comforting given the 2013 team had Mitch McGary ready to be unleashed in the NCAA Tournament, while the 2021 edition will lean on Zeb Jackson to fill in as the third guard for however long Brooks is absent. John Beilein's team had proven they could win without McGary. Juwan Howard's has fallen flat both times Brooks has been out, looking stagnant on offense both this afternoon and when he missed the blowout loss at Minnesota.
Any absence of Wagner long-term, meanwhile, would be a massive blow to this team's chances of making postseason noise.
not what you want to see [Campredon]
As for the game, Brooks exited after only four minutes, leaving a hole in Michigan's rotation that Jackson plugged for eight minutes in which he kept the ball moving around fine. On the occasions when the team created shots, which were less often than one would hope, they didn't fall. The Wolverines required assists on 17 of their 25 made field goals, a rate that surpasses "good passing" and gets into "nobody could finish plays" territory.
For the second time in three games, Wagner, Isaiah Livers, and Hunter Dickinson combined to shoot well below 50% (11/31 today), and Wagner didn't find his playmaking touch until Michigan was desperately digging out of a late 11-point hole. The Wagner-Dickinson pick-and-roll duo created two and-ones sandwiched around a Wagner steal to get M as close as two points with 1:13 to play, only for Josh Langford to hit a dagger three to answer.
Michigan got one more chance to make it a hair-raiser when Wagner made another three and then combined with Chaundee Brown to trap Rocket Watts on the sideline, where the MSU point guard stepped out for a turnover in a four-point game with 26 seconds remaining. Livers couldn't connect on a good look from three, however, and State iced the game at the line.
Rocket Watts hit some five-star shots [Campredon]
The Wolverines will want a few other chances back from this game. The team went 7/11 at the line and that understates the impact of missed free throws; both Mike Smith and Austin Davis missed front ends of one-and-ones when M got into the bonus midway through the second half and Dickinson couldn't cap off one of those and-ones.
Ultimately, though, this came down to shot-making. Watts had his best game of a tumultuous sophomore season, scoring 21 points—his highest output by eight points since December 4th against Detroit (23)—on a seemingly endless series of contested pull-up jumpers. Aaron Henry arrived at his 18 points in similar fashion, though he was able to craft his way to the rim a few more times. Joey Hauser needed only seven attempts to score 11.
Whether this week or next, Michigan needs to pull themselves together to deliver on the promise of this remarkable regular season. Barring the unforeseen, they'll still be afforded a one-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Which players are available, and how close they are to full health, will play a bigger role in this postseason than anyone would've hoped.
[Hit THE JUMP for the box score]
Such bullshit.
Pretty sure that a lineup with Smith, Brown, Livers, Johns and Dickinson (with Davis off the bench) can win a game in the B10 tourney and one in the NCAAs. Beyond that...
Are you just "pretty sure", or are you CERTAIN?
Win a game in the BTT?
That game is against msu.
So no, that group already proved they can't win beat them.
That was then, is now. Well, now in the future; the team will bounce back, you will bounce back. This team has more than enough to beat State come Wednesday, even without Eli. This is a learning opportunity, a growing opportunity. I think we'll succeed.
are they playing again wednesday?
I've come to almost expect that whichever opposing player get crapped on the most in the MGoPodcast will play above and beyond all expectation against us.
Rocket Watts, your table was ready, I guess. Hope you enjoyed your meal.
Losing Eli in a meaningless game at the end of the regular season is just so... Michigan. Sigh.
The Mgoblog arrogance curse is a real thing. Next year Brian will tell us MSU has no chance in football again and predict a 46-2 score.
When myself and a few others posed the question of whether the starters should rest, we were pretty much laughed at. Now, here we are with likely two injured starters, the season down the drain and a loss @MSU.
Funny. You tell yourself before the game, "eh, if they lose, no big deal. We locked up the Big Ten, MSU has a lot more to play for, etc. etc." And then they lose, and you think "fuck."
I don’t think there would be even half the handwringing around here if Michigan lost but exited the game healthy.
If Brooks is out for the rest of the season, and Franz is less than 100%, it’s hard to imagine Michigan being able to get very far in the tournament. Hell, depending on who they meet from the winner of the 8/9 matchup they could be in serious trouble of exiting after the first week.
It stings because they lost to MSU, sure.
What bugs me is how/why we lost to them. Tentativeness on offense, opponents scoring on dribble-drives, our bigs getting in foul trouble when attacked by smaller guys.
I guess it's better now than in 2 weeks but still...
at this point Illinois or Iowa are the 2 best teams in the league.
I see now way we beat either of them in the BTT the way we are playing.
what once seemed like a final four team now seems like they would be lucky to make it to the sweet 16
crazy how quickly things change
Wieskamp from Iowa left yesterday’s game with an ankle injury that looked even worse than Brook’s.
Everything went into the shitter after captain douchebag's "this is the best Michigan team of all time" post was created.
Basketball Gods do not take kindly to that type of overly-optimistic projections and have delt with us harshly since then. So I put both losses and all our injuries squarely at the feet of that poster.
It's science.
I mean the proof is right in front of us all. I hate you Michigan sports hating God
Delt?
Logged in to upvote.
I enjoyed that post, I admit. Damn, did I enjoy that post. Relaxed right into it. Felt like a new day, at last.
Not putting it all at the feet of one message: whether it's human nature, the Uni, or Basketball Gods, complacency / arrogance / taking ish for granted does *not* go over well. Just doesn't work. Gotta stay on it till the very end.
This is what makes this still college, still amateur -- consistency being the next level.
May we get there. Stat.
Or how about that “Michigan basketball fans have the best chill-to-stress ratio in the country” post?
I don’t know about you, but my stress level went up a whole lot when Brooks went down and I haven’t felt too chill since.
yes, but just imagine this was a football team that had clinched the big ten prior to going into a final rescheduled game against msu (osu wins are still too important to muddy the waters in this analogy, so assume we won that already here), and we lose our starting center and a guard or two (or whatever you want to relate eli too - he seems less than a qb, but as the glue-guy huge portions of o-line seems about right) in a "meaningless" game. our fanbase would be off the hook in full meltdown mode. now we are admittedly upset, but in a much more controlled way
We don't know the extent of Brooks' injury. That has a lot to do with it.
"this is the best Michigan team of all time!" = "it's in the bag—we're shutting them out through two periods!" = "he's got a no-hitter after six innings!" = "we're up by a touchdown with two minutes to go—we've got this!"
So that's 2 sprained ankles and a near miss on Livers last 3 with around a minute to go, where Malik Hall mysteriously slid one foot under Isiah as he elevated.
As Ian Fleming wrote “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
Not sure I'd even give Staee the benefit of the doubt after this happened once...
Livers already had his rolled ankle against Illinois. Who knows if he’s even 100%?
Horrendous effort. Should've played backups if this was the level of interest they were going to show. Livers and and Wagner want to be first round draft choices and utterly disappear against a manifestly inferior team. After watching this garbage performance, I can't argue that Illinois is not the best team in this league.
I agree the effort wasn’t great. This is understandable. I disagree with the rest of your post though. This was one damn game in which we literally had nothing to play for other than beating a rival again. You can’t help but have an emotional letdown after winning the outright BIG against them just 3 days ago. It was a bad game and some poor effort in a game that we could afford it. Let’s not read into it too much. This team has plenty of things to be motivated for in the post season.
Except we can't really afford to lose Brooks or Wagner. Seriously, if you're not going to play to win, play the backups and avoid the risk of injury. That was garbage, and it has potentially cost us in our NCAA tourney chances. It's one thing to lose a couple players in a hard fought effort. It's another to phone in a loss that ends up injuring two of your starters. So frustrating to watch.
Wait, so you’d be cool with two guys getting hurt if we played hard in the game?
I’m going to have to disagree with you there.
No, I'd be really disappointed, but I wouldn't feel like they were pointless injuries. You can't win if that's the effort you're going to produce, so if you're not going to put in the effort required to win, don't risk your players health.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Brooks was injured at the very beginning of the game. It's not like he was out there during garbage time.
And what does that have to do with how hard the team played? Injuries are terrible luck. They're not caused by poor effort.
I get that you're mad that we lost, and mad that he's hurt - I share these sentiments. I just don't understand the argument that it'd be "understandable" that he were hurt if we won this game. This game had nothing riding on it for us, so him getting hurt sucks, period.
Agreed 99%.
My only disagreement is that we did have something riding on the game; we played poorly v. Illinois and tentatively in the first half in Ann Arbor on Thursday, before shots started to fall in the second half. IMO, you want to get your guys out there and work out issues to get back on a roll as soon as you can.
That's not what I said. It's not more understandable, it would just be less painful. A guy gets hurt when your team is playing hard and you grind out a victory over a hated rival and damage their tourney chances feels a lot different than a guy gets hurt while your stars are sleepwalking and you give away a game to a hated rival and you hand them a tourney birth.
right, we “didn’t play to win.”
dumbass.
Livers absolutely phoned in his performance. He was asleep today. And Wagner didn't turn it on until the final few minutes. Stupid, sloppy turnovers at bad times, again. Outworked on the boards, again. It was a poor effort. Be a homer, if you want, but that was garbage.
having a letdown is not the same as “not playing to win."
You’re assuming that they consciously played with less effort, that’s not true. You also neglected to mention anything about injuries in your original post which you are now attempting to use as an argument. Howard wanted to win, I’m sure the plan was to play hard. It didn’t happen that way, that doesn’t mean he should’ve rested all of his players. This isn’t the NBA....yet.
The idea that the team and coaches weren't playing to win is absurd. The big problem was that their shots weren't falling. Every aspect of Michigan's shooting was off: 3 pt, mid-range, at the rim, and free throws. That wasn't because of a lack of motivation or care about winning. When shots aren't falling the offense isn't working and every team begins to look hesitant and indecisive. That is by far the primary reason for the loss.
That was the big problem but it was a perfect storm. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did. The players are young and human and have been under a lot of stress this season. They clinched the championship against the same team a couple days ago. There was probably a little mental lethargy at the beginning but once the game got going they would have gotten into the flow if it wasn't for everything else that went on. Brooks started out like he was going to carry the team but then he apparently suffered a serious injury - another emotional hit. The other team was desperate. Watts has been awful all year but was unstoppable tonight.
It's a testimony to their character that despite all that they were able to come back within a basket in the last minute but, of course, Watts then hit another shot he had missed all season long.
Despite everything, I think they would have won fairly handily if their shots had been falling at a normal rate.
Both Livers and Juwan disagree with you.
NOTHING to play for?
they were playing the dirtiest team with the most low level coaching staff (tactics) in the league and there was nothing to play for?
don't agree at all
I could, rather easily. Illinois lost to this same garbage MSU team, as well as Rutgers, OSU, and Maryland. The fact they beat UM is a feather in their cap, but if we're going down that road MSU might as well raise a banner.
Honestly, I thought Illinois looked sorta bad against OSU and I think they're more beatable with Ayo sucking up possessions than the dynamic, free-flowing offense we saw when he was out.
100 percent disagree. The effort was strong. We did not match MSU who played like a team possessed and with total desperation. We didn't have that level because we weren't desperate, and you can't manufacture that level, our players are not machines.
We also appeared to have tired legs as many shots were short and that is a tip off.
Eli's injury was bad luck. If Franz is hurt that really sucks, I din't want any starter playing 35 minutes today.Though I understand why they did.
I watched a different game, I guess. MSU didn't look desperate, or even particularly impressive. They made a few tough shots, but they were hardly on fire. Our team just disappeared on offense, and it wasn't due to smothering defense or outstanding hustle by Sparty. Livers and Wagner were just bad and looked uninterested.
If you’re a competitor, if you’re a winner, if you want to be great, there’s always something to play for!
In this particular case, you are also playing to lock in a 1 seed for the NCAA tournament.
Add to that you are playing a rival. And if you were to win, and potentially beat your rival again in the Big 10 Tournament, odds are, they wouldn’t even be invited to the NCAA tournament.
Think about that, you have the opportunity to beat MSU 3 times in a row, and deliver a knockout punch!
You become the dominant program!
With all that on the line, you would think you would be so fired up, you could barely contain yourself!
Except they didn't play like they wanted to deliver a knockout blow or that they really cared about beating their rival today. They played like they were in a game that didn't matter. They didn't show up. If you're going to do that, don't bother.
The first half yesterday was just like the first half Thursday. Thursday, our shots started to fall in the second half and we made our FT's. MSU got discouraged and the rout was on.
Yesterday, in the second half, the open 3's never fell and we missed FT's that would have kept it tight. It's basketball; you can get all the good, open shots you want but if they don't go in, you are going to lose to an opponent who is making enough shots.
Your post literally contradicts itself.
Well, I don’t think the Michigan team of the last week is the best in the Big Ten but I think the schedule may have had something to do with it. We had to scramble to get back in shape after the pause and then had to play a condensed schedule with few off days. Then today we had to go shorthanded. It is a coincidence that we’re 0-2 when Brooks has missed all/most of a game?
We finally get a breather now. Let’s just hope Brooks/Wagner are OK.
I agree, Illinois is the best team.
Michigan has to prove it.
Our stagnant offense began as a novelty, but is unfortunately becoming a trend.
Dump to the post, stand and watch, post player does not score, go back and play defense. Ugh.
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