It’s pretty rare to be able to pinpoint the exact moment a team’s season changes.  On the morning of January 7, the Michigan women’s hoops team stood at 7-0, having just blown out a Top-15 Northwestern team led by B1G POY candidate Lindsay Pulliam.   A few weeks earlier they’d beaten a good Notre Dame team (by 10, in a game that they controlled throughout) and future Horizon League champ Wright State.  Nobody had really challenged.  They were rolling on both ends – the addition of Leigha Brown as a dependable secondary ball-handler and scorer had cracked open every other player’s offense.  The ball moved.  Everybody got open shots, all over the place.  The team was locking teams down defensively and (mostly) dominating the boards.  Michigan looked like a team poised to finally make a Leap, or something close to it.

BTN opened their broadcast of that night’s Nebraska game with the news that Leigha Brown was out due to COVID isues, and that’s when it all went to crap.  Not right away – Michigan would struggle to beat a lousy Nebraska team that night, but that was okay – hey, Leigha Brown was averaging 20 a game.  Of course the offense would be off-kilter.  They’d beat crappy Illinois and Wisconsin teams to get to 10-0.  Wisconsin was notable in that they doubled and tripled Naz Hillmon to an almost absurd degree.  She’d finish with 6 points, but everyone else got open shots in great profusion and made a bunch of them.  Maddie Nolan got 21.  Ohio State took the opposite approach, apparently thinking that double-teaming her was a Bad Idea.  She got 50, but the ladies lost.  Those two games masked what was happening.

What was happening was this:  Michigan was stagnant on offense, and nobody had stepped up as a consistent second scoring option.  Amy Dilk had been productive (if not a great scorer) with Leigha Brown around. When she went out, Amy fell off a cliff – she’d been 22 of 53 with Brown and an brutal, semi-interested 20 of 84 without.  Hailey Brown had gone 10 of 24 from 3 with Brown on the court, then went 7 for her next 34 and looked completely lost for six weeks.  Naz continued to excel, but there were long stretches where it was not only the only thing working but also appeared to be the only offense they even attempted.  For those of you who don’t watch the women, you’ve seen a similar stretch – the Michigan men when Isaiah Livers went out last season.  They won some games, but they were a very different team with him in street clothes.

THEN, when she did return, she…well, she still played well here and there.  On an individual level, if she was a possible first-team All-B1G before the break (and she was, in my opinion), she was clearly not that after it.  Worse, on the team level, the on-court chemistry has not returned to the level it was during The Start.  Pace is terrible, turnovers have gone up, Amy Dilk has gotten benched for long stretches…the defense and rebounding have even taken a downturn.  KBA has been scrambling, trying different combos, pulling out the full-court press (to diminishing returns), but they haven't really cruised since January.

They did win some biggish games down the stretch, playing fairly well and beating Sparty, Ohio State, and Northwestern to clinch a double-bye in the B1G tournament.  But they also got their doors blown off by Iowa and Maryland, and lost a terrific game at Indiana despite playing pretty well.

Which leaves us…where?  I have no idea.  They open B1G tournament play against Northwestern.  They seem to have their number, having beaten them three straight times, one of which being an upset of the top seed in last year’s B1G tournament.  Maryland looms. 

They will make the NCAA tournament – they still stand firmly around the 5/6 line – but they seem to be a fragile team right now.  Throwing out the Iowa game for pure weirdness, they were able to counterpunch Maryland for a couple of runs before they ultimately succumbed.  Could they do that again, for longer stretches?  Sure, but they’d have to play their best game of the season to beat them.  They haven’t done that in a while.

At one point, this looked like it would be the best season in program history.  That’s still a possibility, but they need to find their legs again.  Here’s hoping.  Michigan vs Northwestern today at 1:30.