eli brooks

On November 16, 2021, the University of Michigan gave a five-year extension to Men's Basketball Head Coach Juwan Howard, something your author called "a no brainer". At the time, Michigan was #4 in the country, 2-0 on the young season after knocking off Buffalo and Prairie View A&M. To that point, Howard's record as Michigan's head coach was 44-17, coming off a Big Ten regular title and an Elite Eight appearance. The team he was coaching was hyped, with sky high expectations following 2020-21's roaring success and adding a recruiting class that public scouting services loved. It all made sense. After all, Michigan Men's Basketball had established itself as a giant of the B1G over the preceding decade, winning three regular season titles and two conference tournament titles, making the Sweet 16 six times, the Elite Eight four times, and the Final Four twice. 

That night, after the extension was announced, Michigan played host to a so-so Seton Hall team that would make the NCAAs as an eight seed. They lost that game, the first sign that the 2021-22 team was perhaps not going to be what the expectations have conveyed. In hindsight, it was the beginning of a larger slide into despair for the Michigan program. Beginning with that game, the men's basketball team is 43-47 in their past 90 games, leading up to the present. They slipped into the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed, then missed the tournament the following season, culminating in this year, when Michigan is 8-16 and has a chance to be the first Michigan team to win only single digit games in four decades.

How did it all collapse so quickly? Today we will look back through the journey and perhaps glean some overarching lessons on where and how it all went wrong: 

[AFTER THE JUMP: How it all went wrong]

When you enter a game in which your team has a size advantage, especially at the center position, you expect to dominate at the rim. That was the thought entering Thursday night's game in San Antonio for Michigan against Villanova, where the Wolverines hoped to own the paint agains the hot shooting, five-out Wildcats. Michigan had no such advantage, as a team-wide malaise on finishing at the rim doomed the Wolverines despite a strong defensive performance against Villanova. The Wolverines hung tight for much of the contest, but couldn't buy a made layup or free throw when it mattered and in the process, fell 63-55 in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. With that, it's curtains on the 2021-22 Michigan Men's Basketball season. 

The game got off to a quick start before slowing down dramatically. There were 19 points scored between the two teams just over 5.5 minutes in, with each team trading early scores. Caleb Houstan made an early three that seemed to bode well for Michgian's shooting, but it did not hold up moving forward. Villanova pulled ahead to an 18-11 lead with 10:32 to go in the first and Juwan Howard called a timeout, seemingly furious at Brandon Johns Jr. for a defensive mistake. After that point, Michigan would lock Villanova down defensively, allowing only 13 points the remainder of the first half. Johns himself would turn it around defensively, playing some of the best defense of his career in the latter section of the first half. 

Michigan reclaimed the lead 22-20 with just under 4 minutes left in the half after a quick DeVante' Jones-led spurt, including a coast-to-coast layup and then a three pointer. Jay Wright called timeout and got his own 5-0 spurt from star Jermaine Samuels to restore the 'Nova lead, who converted an and-one that tacked Hunter Dickinson with a crucial second foul at the 3:42 remaining mark. The teams each made a couple buckets in the final two minutes and the half ended 31-28 Villanova. Michigan's scoring was evenly distributed between players in the first half, and the Wolverines shot 44% from the floor and 43% from three. The issue were the appalling 1/6 from the free throw line, as well as several missed layups. It felt like Michigan should have led at halftime, given the excellent defense they had played. 

[Patrick Barron]

The second half didn't represent a marked change from the slog of the first half. The Wolverines scored just three points in the first seven-and-a-half minutes of the second half (!), continuing to struggle at the rim and with free throws, in addition to a few sloppy turnovers. The balls clanged off the iron time and time again, as precious time dwindled off the clock. The defense held strong to keep the game competitive, but after Eric Dixon knocked down a three to make it 40-31 Villanova, Michigan was in a pinch.

Eli Brooks stepped up in that pinch, breaking Michigan's offense out of the funk temporarily, nailing a couple threes that cut the game to a six point edge (a Justin Moore three sandwiched in between). The score was 47-41 in favor of the Wildcats with little more than eight minutes remaining when a Collin Gillespie three came up a little short. The rebound kicked out and DeVante' Jones leapt for it, colliding with a Wildcat in what seemed like an obvious foul call. No whistle came, Villanova retained possession, and seconds later, it led to a Caleb Daniels and-one off a touch foul from Moussa Diabate. Daniels swished the free throw and it was 50-41 with 7:52 left. 

[Patrick Barron]

Villanova's passing over this period of the game was extremely impressive, it should be noted. They moved the ball very well, exploiting Michigan defenders who had gotten out of position, finding the open guy and leading to buckets. That allowed Villanova to convert some key makes to retain a mid-size lead, even as Michigan's offense began to come back on line. When Eli Brooks nailed a three to cut the lead back to six (54-48), there were under four minutes to go in the game.

Michigan needed to make a run, and they began to put a push together. Brooks was hammered on a moving screen, and Terrance Williams II was hacked on the ensuing Michigan possession. T-Will made both free throws and after a 'Nova miss from three, Williams pulled up on a heat-check look from distance that would've cut it to one. The three was well off the mark, and that's the closest Michigan would come to making a comeback. 

Jermaine Samuels toasted Hunter Dickinson for a layup and Dickinson would miss one on the other end. At that point, it was getting dark for Michigan and the dagger came only moments later. Collin Gillespie got an open look from beyond the arc and canned a three. 59-50 Villanova, 1:49 left to play. The final 109 seconds of Michigan's season slipped away like sand in an hourglass and the final score read 63-55 in favor of the Wildcats. Game over, season over. 

[Click the JUMP for takes]

[Shirt? Shirt!]

3/17/2022 – Michigan 75, Colorado State 63 – 18-14, 11-9 Big Ten, Round of 32.
3/19/2022 – Michigan 76, Tennessee 68 – 19-14, 11-9 Big Ten, Sweet 16.

This year played out like a message board hypothetical. You know, the one where a guy posts something like "would you trade a win over OSU and Big Ten championship in football for a disappointing bubble season from the #4 ranked basketball team?" You're like "ehhhhh… okay" because the universe doesn't work like that. And then maybe the universe does work like that.

Perhaps there is a maximum amount of swag to go around and whatever barrels football tapped as they pumped it up this fall came from Michigan's strategic reserve. Or maybe we've got Zavier Simpson in a basement with tubes sprouting from him like so many spring clovers.

ELI BROOKS WITH THE SKY HOOK 😱

The Wolverines can taste the #Sweet16@umichbball #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/UuR0UjW2cE

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 19, 2022

I will walk away from this particular Omelas in three weeks, tops. Promise.

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As a person who lives in Ann Arbor and gets asked "what do you do for a living" with some frequency, I have a lot of experience with people being weird or dismissive about sports. Ann Arbor is the archetype of a liberal college town, of course, so anyone who doesn't already know who I am is almost certain to fall on the Sportsball Continuum. On the nice end of this continuum are people who apologize to me for not knowing anything about sports; on the not so nice end are people who actually deploy the world "sportsball." I have had many interactions with people who are puzzled or irritated that I am a guy who does the sports liking.

Sometimes I have tried to explain myself, or at least thought about what I would say if anyone seemed interested in an explanation. (For reasons likely related to cultural ubiquity, Sportsball Continuum people evince a profound lack of interest in why anyone would be off the continuum.) What I've come up with is this: sports aren't just numbers adding up over a set period of time. They are story machines.

One of the great delights of college sports is that the timeframes are generally long enough to see a player become what they're going to become and short enough that there is always someone new to see develop. The pros are more static, with colossi (Brady, Lebron, Baseball Man) bestriding the sport for a decade or more. In college whenever someone hits that they're gone and you've got to see what the freshman with dreadlocks might be up to. The stories are more than Who Is The Goatest, Skip?

These stories exist on various levels: players. Seasons. Programs. This game wrote down some history on all of these levels. It provided the definitive Eli Brooks Game for the longest-serving player in program history. It rewrote this disappointing season, at least somewhat. It reinforced the vibe around Michigan basketball—and unfortunately for Tennessee fans, reinforced the vibe around their program as well. This Jonathan Wilson passage I referenced after the USA-Algeria World Cup game always floats up at times like these:

Perhaps some of the Europeans there – certainly the French journalist opposite – were driven by anti-German feeling, perhaps some were instinctive Slavophiles, but when the three locals at the MTN (South Africa-based mobile telecommunications company) desk reacted to the final whistle with a group hug and collective dance, the appeal of Serbia's inner turmoil becomes difficult to deny. Unless they'd had a bet, I suppose, but when asked one said he'd decided to support Serbia because "they seemed to be trying to lose".

This is an intimately familiar feeling for any basketball fan, but it must be completely unintelligible to the Sportsball Continuum people. Explaining is difficult. Maybe it's less difficult now?

Now I can just say "Imagine that a fifth-year player everyone wanted to run off campus because he seemed terrified of basketball appropriated the delightfully weird shot a previous player—one denied a career culmination by covid—had painstakingly developed over the course of a few years; imagine that this one-time wilting flower of a player would uncork an audacious hook shot at a crucial juncture to defeat a heavily favored opponent, thus writing himself into annals of program history. If you were invested in this sort of thing, watching the maturation and development of this young man would not just be a guy hitting a shot, but the climax of a character arc. It's like Game of Thrones except the source material never runs out. Once you have the context that gives the numbers meaning the drama outstrips any planned fiction. Joy and pathos intermingle. We reach down into the vast beating heart of human striving and drink deeply of its nectar.

"Also sometimes Wisconsin shoots 9% from three."

This would not work because the other person would wander away and talk to someone else about organic hummus brands, but I could do it.