I don't know if this is the official end of the 2022-23 Michigan Basketball season, but for all intents and purposes it is. They could still accept an invite to the NIT or some other non-NCAA postseason tournament I suppose, but as far as it goes for meaningful games anyone wants to play, it's over. No Sweet 16, no deep run in the Big Ten Tournament, no NCAA Tournament at all. Michigan's 62-50 loss in their first game of the conference tournament in Chicago to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights seals the season, ejecting the 8th seeded Wolverines and burying them far away from Selection Sunday's bubble. You can use any descriptor you like, a failure, a disappointment, deeply unpleasant and difficult to watch. All those words describe the Michigan season, but they also describe the game we watched today. 

Against an offensively challenged Rutgers team today, Michigan was dragged into the mud and engaged in a brutal rock fight for the first half until they dropped their rocks in the second half and were bludgeoned by the opposition. For the first nineteen minutes of the second half, Michigan made one field goal, a humiliating graphic popping up on the Big Ten Network scorebug every little bit to remind us of the depth of despair that the Michigan offense had fallen into. Hunter Dickinson came to play on offense but every other player was a no-show and the teem meekly schlepped to 50 points even. For most of us watching, we just wanted it to end. 

The first half was the vaguely watchable one for Michigan partisans, even if the aesthetic quality of the basketball being played was in the gutter. The Wolverines started strong on defense, with Hunter Dickinson protecting the rim with excellence and Rutgers had no perimeter scoring ability to make up for it. The Wolverines bolted out to a 9-2 lead in the first five minutes and still led 13-7 approaching the halfway point of the opening stanza. Dickinson led the way for Michigan, but their offense was sputtering to get through the teeth of the terrific Rutgers defense, leaning on their own D to maintain the lead. Michigan was 1/8 from three to start the game, and those struggles explain why they couldn't stretch the lead higher while their D was clicking. 

MG was not in Chicago so here's some older pics [David Wilcomes]

The Scarlet Knights had little in the way of offensive solutions for the opening ~14 minutes of the half, leaning on offensive rebounding (especially from an unlikely Paul Mulcahy) to stay close enough until the shooting started to come on-line. Cam Spencer made a couple shots to get the Rutgers offense moving again, as the team had opened the game a ghastly 4/23 from the floor. Michigan led 23-17 after a Jett Howard three with four minutes to play before Rutgers stitched together an 8-0 run to seize the lead late in the half. Dickinson tied it with a hook in the final minute of play and then a Joey Baker three just before the horn sent Michigan to the locker room up 28-25 in a nasty first half that neither team was too pleased about. Still, Juwan Howard had to feel alright about taking a lead to the back half of the game. 

Unfortunately, Michigan's offensive showing in the second half could best be described as "apocalyptic", scoring the occasional points at the free throw line due to Rutgers' foul-happy tendencies but otherwise being completely impotent from the floor. The Wolverines scored three total points in the first 4:48 of the half, all on free throws, and then Hunter Dickinson drained a three from the corner, which would be Michigan's sole field goal until there were 59 seconds left to play. Yes, if you have transported via time machine to March 9, 2023, to read this recap, you read that previous sentence right. Michigan made one field goal in 19 minutes of basketball. One goddamn field goal. 

Michigan's only inspiration on offense was Dickinson post touches, with the rest of the team being helpless. Kobe Bufkin, a star for Michigan down the stretch run of the season, was missing in action. After turning it over four times in a lackluster first half, he turned it over three more times in the second half for a total of seven, not making a shot from the floor in the second half until the game was long since decided. He and Jett Howard were cold from the perimeter and gobbled up by the Rutgers defense when they tried to drive downhill into the paint. Bufkin at least added a sweet fast-break block on a 3v1 rush for the Scarlet Knights but we're grasping at straws. Combined, Bufkin and Jett were 1/8 from the floor in the second half. 

[David Wilcomes]

Dug McDaniel, whose perimeter shooting touch from his better games this season could have helped Michigan's spacing problems against this tough Rutgers defense, was also MIA. Dug was invisible for the entirety of the game, attempting just three total FGs in 37 minutes of play and missing all of them. The fours, Will Tschetter and Terrance Williams II, were nonentities again. Tarris Reed Jr.? No help on offense either. Bereft of all other possible options, Michigan was reduced to simply feeding Dickinson over and over again as Steve Pikiell's defense converged on Hunter like a swarm of angry bees, coaxing him into putting up low-percentage shots. Dickinson finished the second half 2/7 from the field, with both makes being from three. Inside the arc the only hope was that HD would get fouled, which did happen a decent amount (Hunter was 5/8 from the line). 

What're you left with? A second half offense that was 4/21 from the field and prior to a 3/4 finish in garbage time, were 1/17 over the period spanning all competitive minutes of the second half. Appalling. Before that little spurt at the end, Michigan had scored 14 points in 19 minutes of basketball. And every minute or so that "last Michigan FG - X minutes ago" graphic would pop up on the television screen to remind us of the incompetence that this offensive showing was. At some point, all you could do was laugh at the cartoonish failure as a way to cope with the pain. 

Rutgers was far from a world beater offensively in the second half, still trudging through the mud like always, but it was enough to pull away from Michigan's "tossing bricks at the backboard" effort. They started the half on a 9-1 run, with Cliff Omoruyi, who struggled in the first half mightily against Dickinson's defense, getting it going before Derek Simpson, Cam Spencer, and Mulcahy each added a bucket. Michigan trimmed the lead down to 40-39 on the backs of free throws midway through the half and for a moment, it seemed as if we'd have a competitive game on our hands. But the Wolverine offense stepped on an upturned rake again while Rutgers put together a 12-0 run that buried Michigan. 

[David Wilcomes]

Starting the run was this game's entry into the "play to encapsulate the Michigan season" contest. With 10:45 remaining and the score 40-39, Rutgers' Derek Simpson went to the free throw line to shoot two. He made the first and then missed the second off the front iron. Michigan's players all committed to boxing out the Scarlet Knights to the side of them and to the perimeter, but no one bothered to touch Simpson himself, who ran right down the lane, snatched the board, and laid it in uncontested. Elementary school mistakes. After that facepalm, Rutgers continued to throttle Michigan defensively and chip in on offense every so often, a layup and three from Cam Spencer, and a couple fast break points off Michigan turnovers, one a driving layup for Caleb McConnell and the other an emphatic dunk from Simpson. 

The score now sat at 52-39 with 5:52 left and given the way Michigan was going of offense, the game was over. Indeed, the Wolverines never made it to 52 points and time ran out on an offense with no directional ability at all. As the clock ticked down, Michigan fans took to social media to express their rage and frustration with a squad that had let them down all year long, with Thursday's showing in Chicago being the final installment. Of course, the Wolverines couldn't even take that hilarious "one field goal made in the second half" stat to finality, with three late shots in the final minute to play (down double digits) putting faint lipstick on the world's fattest pig. Rutgers had their 62-50 win when the horn sounded, likely clinching a tourney bid for the previously slumping Scarlet Knights and affixing a dunce cap to Juwan Howard and the Michigan team's collective noggin. 

I usually use this space to describe the box score and run over a few notes as to what happened today, but I did a lot of that in the summary already and there's nothing much else to say. Michigan Men's Basketball's offense stunk to high heaven today because Hunter Dickinson was the only player who bothered to put on his sneakers. He scored 24 points and the rest of the team had 26. The team defense did fine (though often tough to separate that from the putrid Rutgers offense) but there are very few games you're going to win when you play like the Maize & Blue did on offense today. Period. 

[Click the JUMP for some thoughts - IF YOU'RE A MASOCHIST]

[Bill Rapai]

Instead, I want to put a few parting words in for the season and the feel of the program. I don't know if the 2022-23 team will play another game this season, maybe they will in a meaningless end of season tournament, maybe they'll put us out of our misery and decline any invitations. But like I said at the top, this is the end of the portion of the season that anyone cares about and it's probably time to reflect a bit. Michigan finishes the year 17-15, 11-10 in games against B1G opponents and that's a reflection of what they were, firmly mediocre. Entrenched in many close games, of which they lost nearly all. Sure they were a few buckets in each game away from having a very good record, but they were also in close games with mediocre to bad non-conference opponents like Ohio, Lipscomb, EMU, and CMU. That doesn't have the feel of a team that was a true contender for much of anything even if they'd gotten better luck in the B1G. 

From that second game against EMU on, something felt off about this team. They had happy moments here and there, but will mostly be remembered for gacking when it counted. And this game today, with their season on the line, was a neat bow to be tied on what the narrative of this season was. No one will feel wronged or ripped off when Michigan is left out of the NCAA Tournament field on Sunday. It'll be the fate they rightly deserved. From a fan sense, I will remember this team as one of the least likable, hardest to watch teams of any sport that I can remember, playing difficult games to enjoy routinely. They looked disjointed, battled apparent effort/motivation problems, and far too often displayed the basketball IQ of a Pet Rock. And then just when they'd seemingly had a game won and it reached the climax, they'd tie you to a pole and line up for a karate kick straight to the groin. 

The admissions fiasco with Terrance Shannon was perhaps the one off-ramp this team could've had, but that was settled long ago. Jaelin Llewellyn's injury damaged the team's chances by forcing too much on Dug McDaniel too early, but the team had already gone to OT with Ohio, been punked by ASU, and choked late against Virginia by the time that happened. You'll struggle to convince me the squad would've been drastically different without that injury. Inexperience at PG (transfer + true freshman) mixed unfavorably with a black hole at the 4 to make two spots on the floor weak spots at any given time. Michigan got 279 total points from Terrance Williams II, Will Tschetter, and Jace Howard across 32 games (cumulative 8.7 PPG). A big fat goose egg, forcing them to try Reed at that spot perhaps more often and earlier on than Juwan Howard would've liked. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Then you have the three productive players, Kobe Bufkin, Jett Howard, and Hunter Dickinson, all of whom had asterisks. Bufkin didn't blossom until the second half and then went missing in the biggest game of the season. Jett Howard's passing interest in rebounding or playing any semblance of defense made him one of the great empty calories scorers CBB has seen in some time, and he faded hard down the stretch. Dickinson's efforts ran hot and cold at times, stronger in the back-half of the season but unsatisfactory an alarming amount of the time early on. Some will say Michigan had two first round NBA talents and an All-American college player on their team and still missed the tournament, but the reality is that neither of said NBA talents were elite (or even good) college players for large chunks of the season and Dickinson was far from an All-American caliber guy this season. Put that next to two weak perpetual weak spots and a bench that provided almost nothing and you can see why this team is where they are. 

The upcoming offseason will be one of the most fascinating in recent history, as the range of outcomes is ginormous. On one hand, there's a scenario where nearly the entire team returns and Michigan runs it back with a few tweaks as a very good team in 2023-24. On the other hand, there's a scenario where all of Bufkin, Jett Howard, and Dickinson depart and the team is left with ????????. Regardless, I would have to imagine there will be some tweaks to the coaching staff coming, as public heat on Juwan Howard is being cranked up substantially. The honeymoon is over and the B1G Championship of 2020-21 is a fading memory. The program has the undeniable feel of backsliding and it is up to the coach to fix it. Whether that means portal hunting while processing players or relying on internal development, I don't know. But something has to change. The standard of Michigan Basketball from the past 10 years is high and this season? Well, it wasn't even close. 

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