Big Ten road wins are rare this year. Triumphs over a truly solid Rutgers squad built by Steve Pikiell have been rarer still. Walking out of the biggest arena in the game with the Victors…well I call that mighty nice.

Fortunately Michigan managed to survive selling a home game to a Madison Square Garden filled with Scarlet Knight partisans, and playing it without Isaiah Livers, not to mention some of the other surprising departures since this game was scheduled.

It helped that the Wolverines got their best effort yet from the guy replacing their star winger. Brandon Johns canned a trio of threes out of the first TV timeout to erase an early Rutgers lead and reach 12 points inside the first 11 minutes. His arc established, Johns began driving, racking up fouls and dishing out assists. He ended the half by tipping in a free throw miss by Austin Davis, and turned up the defensive heat in the second. Johns would finish with 20 points, 4/9 from three, 7 boards, and two assists to one turnover.

The surge from the four spot was responsible for some of the space this team hasn't seen since December. But most of Michigan's constant good looks were generated by their star point guard, whom Rutgers chose to double with high hedges all game. Xavier Simpson, back after a one-game suspension, could only get one of his nine shots from the floor to fall, and coughed up an uncharacteristic six turnovers. But the national assists leader was consistently able to break the doubles and dish to open friends. Simpson also sealed a win that was starting to get dodgy by shooting an uncharacteristic 7-9 on free throws down the stretch. X also channeled the demands of thousand of Twitter coaches when a teammate starting playing out of sorts.

Simpson's apology for stepping on the Diag M or whatever is accepted. [Campredon]

Both coaches had to work around foul trouble in the paint. Teske drew a foul on Rutgers center Myles Johnson on Michigan's first possession, and Johnson picked up his second trying to defend Johns again after Teske rescued a wild inbound Charles Woodson-style midway through the first half. That led to a short stint of Jon Teske abuse, the highlight of which was a one-handed posterization of Caleb McConnell. However Teske picked up two quick whistles, one a cheap offensive foul and the second on the floor while battling for position to send him too to the bench. Michigan used another stretch without Johnson to push the lead out as far as 14. They also got 12 good minutes from Austin Davis, who tied a career-high of 8 points, only some of that on dunks set up by Simpson.

That was about the extent of Michigan's bench usage other than an ineffectual six minutes from David DeJulius, including a short stretch where Juwan Howard went with a lineup of Simpson, DDJ, Nunez, Wagner, and Davis. Geo Baker's gumby arms wrecked this and it was quickly jettisoned.

There were many arms. [Campredon]

The Wolverines also used tight interior defense to force Rutgers into bad shots, many of them near the end of their clock. At first it felt like the Curse of the Trident would continue as Pikiell's squad of not-great shooters started 5/8 on threes (and 3/20 on twos at that point). Players on both sides were jacking triples from the NBA line, but while Michigan's were all uncontested, they were able to force their opponents into taking increasingly bad ideas: Rutgers would finish 6/24 from behind the arc, Michigan 9/19.

The Knights battled back by dominating on the offensive glass. Johnson had seven, and the box score credits the team with 26, a third of which can be chalked up to bad outside chucks that clanged back out of the paint to the waiting forest of Rutgers's characteristic length. Franz Wagner, who had an up-and-down game, in particular was not up to bodying out the various large persons caroming into him off Rutgers misses. This was never more evident than on one possession where Rutgers got six opportunities at a putback (making none).

So things got hairy at the end. The nine-ish point lead Michigan held all game was chipped to five in the last minute when Simpson missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 40 seconds left. On Rutgers's ensuing possession Caleb McConnell's pull-up three went wide and Myles Johnson appeared to knock it out of bounds over Johns, but the side judge gave the ball to the "away" team. A short review incontrovertibly showed the ball went of off Johnson, but the call was upheld, and Jacob Young—a menace all game for his high-effort play—canned a pull-up. Simpson made his next two free throws but Michigan's lead was shaved to two when one of Geo Baker's long contested threes finally going down. Wagner canned the next two free throws, Simpson stole a cross-court pass from Myles Johnson, and drilled the last two. Fittingly the last long bounce-out came back to Michigan's #3.

The Wolverines have some punchy passing to clean up, but this was a much-needed team victory over a quality opponent, no matter how differently we thought all this would go down when Beilein, Warde Manuel, and the Big Ten agreed to it. They get a real home game on Tuesday versus a no-longer-quite-so-scuffling Ohio State, before the big basketball rival comes to town a week from now.

[A box score after THE JUMP]