Michigan State 70, Michigan 62
Miles Bridges hit some key shots late. [Bryan Fuller]
Even against a Michigan State team that's not up to Tom Izzo's usual standard, Michigan needed a lot to go right if they wanted to pull out a win in the hostile confines of the Breslin Center.
Very little went right.
The Wolverines struggled to score, shooting 40% on twos and 27% on threes. Zak Irvin had the worst game of his career, going scoreless on eight shots with three turnovers in 36 minutes. Derrick Walton was a bright spot with his aggressive drives to the basket, but while he scored 24 points and went 14-for-15 from the line, he couldn't get dialed in from long range, making only 2-of-9 threes. Moe Wagner, the only Wolverine who could consistently score from the field, only got up six shot attempts while saddled with foul trouble, and his fourth foul came on a preposterous double technical.
There were times when Michigan looked like the superior team, but they couldn't sustain them for long. The deciding stretch came early in the second half; starting at the 17:23 mark, when M trailed by a mere two points, the normally turnover-averse Wolverines coughed up the rock seven times in eight minutes. Suddenly, MSU had a double-digit lead, and the closest Michigan could get the rest of the way was four points as Miles Bridges, Nick Ward, and Cassius Winston closed the game out strong.
Given their offensive performance, Michigan was lucky to be this close. On the flip side, they managed to hang tight with MSU on the road while playing far from their best game. They'll have the whole week to work out this afternoon's issues before taking on a very beatable Ohio State squad at Crisler on Saturday. Two days later, they'll get a chance for revenge against the Spartans, and they'll need Irvin to show up for that one if they want a different result.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:27 PM ^
I disagree. We have to win a road game eventually and this was one of our easier ones. Tough to see us winning @Indiana, @Minnesota, or @Northwestern, giving us Rutgers and Nebraska as our last chances for a single road win this whole season.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:36 PM ^
I don't know that those are unwinnable games. I mean, we could have easily won in Madison and that's a tougher trip than any of those.
Assembly Hall has traditionally been a house of horrors for us, but we just destroyed IU. We should at least have confidence going there.
I'm not sold on Minnesota and Little Ricky. We've played well in the Barn under Beilein.
Northwestern? Eh, who knows.
We're capable of winning or losing pretty much any game from here on out. Hard to say where we'll end up. It'd be nice if we could get both seniors to play well at the same time.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:39 PM ^
They're not unwinnable but I'm certainly not betting the house on us winning them. Northwestern, Indiana, and Minnesota are all better than MSU (30th, 36th, 44th on KenPom compared to 51st for MSU), and as you mentioned Bloomington is simply a place where we never win. I don't see us winning any of those games, and @Nebraska will be a challenge as well.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:51 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 5:19 PM ^
Either way, all these games are essentially equal in difficulty. Minnesota and Indian are tough places to play, and Northwestern is a good team this year. If we looked this bad @MSU (and generally have looked bad on the road save for Wisconsin), it's hard to see us winning any of the 3 aforementioned games.
January 29th, 2017 at 6:07 PM ^
I'm more optimistic that Michigan can win at Minnesota, NW, or Nebraska than at IU or MSU. There are certain arenas and games where you just have to play out of your minds to win on the road, and I think UM played about as poorly offensively as they have in a couple of weeks in this game and still nearly pulled it out. Days like this are wins other places.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:11 PM ^
Blackmon is hurt now too.
If there is any year we are going to win at Bloomington it's this o... (checks our road record).
Nevermind, we're fucked.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:37 PM ^
Can't go 0-9 on the road. Purdue and Wisky will be tough games at home. They need to get a couple wins on the road and as you mentioned, unless they pull an upset on the road, there are only a couple games that at this point you look at and think could be wins.
January 29th, 2017 at 6:04 PM ^
vs OSU & MSU to get to 6-5 above 0.500. Then we can finish 4-3 w/ at least two road wins (we better not drop @Rutgers) to end up @ 10-8 in decent shape heading into the BTT.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:37 PM ^
is a better team than all those teams. They're better than the 51st team in the country with Bridges right now and the freshmen getting better every game. Their big three killed us today. Their early blowout losses featured a lot more tum tum, McQuaid, Ellis, and the rest of their weak upperclassmen. That brings down the ranking.
IU will be the toughest remaining. I like our chances at Minn and NW though (coin flips approx) and we should be favored at Rutgers and Neb even though we'll prob lose one of them #bigtenroadgames. We'll win at least two road games though. That won't be enough if we don't win the next two home games.
January 30th, 2017 at 2:12 PM ^
are complete frauds; IU especially now. UM will win at least one of those, and will also have a decent shot against NU.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:15 PM ^
Just four more opportunities now to get road wins. There is zero chance of an at-large bid without one, and its highly questionable whether @Rutgers alone would be sufficient.
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January 29th, 2017 at 5:20 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 5:44 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 6:44 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 8:57 PM ^
the only goal? This was not a luxury game. At our in-state rivals house with a chance to actually get a decent seed is a game we really want to win.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:11 PM ^
All road games are a luxury for UM basketball. All of them.
#science #math
January 29th, 2017 at 4:34 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 4:35 PM ^
The bizarre thing about Beilein's teams over the years is that although his offenses have generally been predicated on abundant threes, time after time after time his supposedly ace shooters go stone cold from outside the arc.
January 29th, 2017 at 4:54 PM ^
January 30th, 2017 at 10:43 AM ^
OK, I get it that Irvin had the flu. But, if he is well enough to go out and play, adequate performance is expected. If you watch his performance, it wasn't tough to see that he couldn't contribute; so you get him out as soon as you see that you are not going to get the kind of performance you need. This was a beatable MSU team that didn't play all that well.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:09 PM ^
Lousy on the road and thats on Belien..He CANNOT get his team to play hard on the road..soft and weak...can we PLEASE get a new coaching staff already?
January 29th, 2017 at 9:07 PM ^
Impressed with the effort on defense. We just did not play well mentally though. Too many dumb fouls, too many bad shots and too many turnovers.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:12 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 5:20 PM ^
we are flaming garbage
January 29th, 2017 at 5:22 PM ^
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January 29th, 2017 at 5:53 PM ^
I guess you missed the Indiana game.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:40 PM ^
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January 29th, 2017 at 5:53 PM ^
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January 29th, 2017 at 7:25 PM ^
We got some calls too
January 30th, 2017 at 7:22 AM ^
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January 29th, 2017 at 5:43 PM ^
January 30th, 2017 at 1:16 PM ^
And the same apologists too. Hope you don't hurt your neck pulling your head out of the sand.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:52 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 6:20 PM ^
They recruit like a typical Beilein team does. The problem this team had is that the two top guys (Walton and Irvin, top-50/75 recruits) are complimentary players. Wilson looks good, Wagner looks good. He had terrible luck in 2016, considering Michigan had a number of guys either signed or strong leads before they all evaporated. Here are Michigan's class rankings since 2009 (Morris' sclass):
| Year | Ranking |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 35th |
| 2010 | 48th |
| 2011 | 28th |
| 2012 | 7th |
| 2013 | 13th |
| 2014 | 28th |
| 2015 | 108th |
| 2016 | 31st |
The outliers are 2012 (whose best players were the more underrated Stauskas and Caris), and 2013 was Walton and Irvin. 2015 is weird because they only too Wagner and only expected to take 1 or 2 guys anyway.
What sunk them was missing on a lot of guys they took in 2014 and then guys like Langford and Winston not staying Blue. That happens. But Beilein is a very consistent recruiter in the sense that he pulls in solid classes but have never been national caliber save one great class.
January 29th, 2017 at 7:35 PM ^
are misleading. You need to look at the average rating per player...and UM is even worse than their rankings when you look at the average rating per player. 2014 doesn't look that bad when looking at the class rankings but if you look at the average rating per player, UM is well behind the other teams ranked in the 20s.
In 2014 Michigan had an average rating per player of 85.15. Purdue had the 31st ranked class but their average rating per player was 88.23.
2017 is also a great example so far. Michigan has the 34th ranked class with an average rating per player of 92. Kansas has the 31st ranked class but their average rating per player is 98.68, which in terms of average rating per player is 3rd behind only Duke and Kentucky.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:11 PM ^
Well, 2014 is a bit unfair because it includes Austin Hatch, who wasn't a "nromal" recruit given the circumstances. Throw out his non-ranking and the average for that class was 88.18, which virtually identical to Purdue's and UM had the "best" recruit in Chatman.
I don't disagree about Kansas, but that's what happens with such small classes most college bring in. My bigger point was that this is how Beilein typically recruits. Hell, his one top-10 class was due as much to having 5 decently-ranked recruits, a class size that tends to happen only once every 3-4 years to most programs.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:22 PM ^
our 2015 class should be top ten. Average rating per player was 4 stars. So no, that's not what you need to look at over an extended period of time like this. We have six 4-stars in our eight man rotation and four of them have at least three years of experience. That's more than all but 10-15 teams in the country. Plenty of talent. We've either done a poor job of developing talent, IDing talent or coaching to get the maximum out of that talent, but regardless of which of those are the culprit, the coaches are underachieving with this team.
January 29th, 2017 at 11:54 PM ^
wouldn't be top ten. If you take Brent Hibbits out of the equation and assume they just signed Wagner, Wagner's rating of 92.27 wouldn't be enough to put UM in the top 10 of average player rating. Wanger's 92.27 would put UM around 29th.
I agree with your last sentence though. UM's inability to find someone who can take their defender off the dribble either to create their own shot or cause the defense to help and dish to someone else for a shot is a huge achilles heel with this team (and really the last 3 teams, granted Levert's injury played a role on the previous two teams). When the shot clock winds down UM is fighting an uphill battle. Whether that is Beilen putting a premium on recruiting shooters and not players who can create off the dribble, or the inability of the staff to develop that ability, I don't know. Walton's ability to beat Winston off the dribble was about the only thing that allowed UM to stay in the game in the second half. As someone mentioned in one of the pregame threads, Winston isn't that quick for a point guard. Walton was able to take advantage of that today, but usually Walton isn't able to beat his defender off the dribble.
January 29th, 2017 at 5:54 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 7:35 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 9:07 PM ^
If he gets Mo Bamba, then it becomes academic for now. If he does not, maybe an agreeable "time for a change." If he won't go along, then Manuel will have to earn his money IMO and make the move.
Depends also on who you can get, but this ain't going anywhere.
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January 29th, 2017 at 9:32 PM ^
I am tired of this "toughness" argument people keep trotting out about Beilein. It's like when everyone fell in love with Hoke talking about "manball" offense and then conveniently ignored for over a year the fact he couldn't run the damn ball to save his life. Beilein's offense this year is #11 to Kenpom, above teams like Duke, IU, Baylor, and Creighton. He's doing this with sub-optimal parts and very young/inexperienced bench. Last year, without an NBA first-rounder for most of the season? #30. The 2015 season, full of nothing but injuries and lost players? #74. Basically the same as Minnesota this season.
His team lost on the road at the Breslin Center with one of their best players having the worst game of his career and an unfavorable whistle. This isn't a sweet 16 team by any means, but I guess it's a testament to his coaching ability that everyone expects that level of success every season.
January 29th, 2017 at 7:37 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 7:41 PM ^
Despair.
January 30th, 2017 at 10:48 AM ^
Our effort defensively and on the glass was respectable. We lost this one on offense.
January 29th, 2017 at 7:42 PM ^
January 29th, 2017 at 9:07 PM ^
Looking at their freshman (minus Bridges) and our freshmen, it's going to be a great next few years for us!!! No worries though - we recruit at a high level.
January 29th, 2017 at 9:35 PM ^
I assume this is sarcasm.
Izzo had a great class last year and looks to have a good one this season. But I think UM has a lot of young depth for next year, and I think an offense featuring Wilson and Wagner could be really scary if they can get some decent penetration from the guard spots. I slag on Irvin(especially) and Walton, and they've had fine careers, but this offense can be stagnant when they try to take over the playmaking role too often.
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