Compared to its football rivals, Michigan basketball has recently found ways to lose rather than hold on for victory. But defeating the rival Buckeyes was the one game this season that the Wolverines truly needed and desired.
OSU is 12-4 going into the game, while Michigan is 6-10. However, the Bucks are just one game better than the maize and blue, sitting at 2-3 in the conference.
Despite their seeming disarray, the Wolverines managed to score a lot of points. Michigan led by nine points at the half following a pair of 8-0 rallies in the first half, but they would need to hang on to win the second half.
Michigan held a 12-point advantage, but with ten minutes left, the Buckeyes closed the gap thanks to defensive errors and fouls. OSU led by one point after just fifteen minutes. After thirty seconds, Ohio State had a four-point advantage.
Would the Wolverines play out the script as usual, giving in to pressure and losing despite controlling the most of the game?
Michigan eventually extended its advantage to six points once more, but OSU was mounting a comeback with a few minutes left in the game. With the maize and blue down just four, Nimari Burnett was penalized for a blocking foul even though it seemed like an Ohio State player had elbowed him in the face. With 1:14 remaining in the game, Michigan was still leading by four points when Olivier Nkamhoua made a floater to extend the advantage to six. With 52.8 seconds left, OSU guard Bruce Thornton made a floater on the other end to preserve the score at four points.
But Terrance Williams’s subsequent clutch 3-pointer allowed the Wolverines to gain the upper hand and defeat the rival Buckeyes, 73-65.
While the Michigan basketball attack hasn’t always been at its best, it’s getting harder to even guess at what the offensive is even attempting to accomplish. There is just no discernible identity to what this Wolverines iteration is attempting to do, whether it be through ball screens that go nowhere or several passes that result in terrible shot selection. Suspicious ball movement is prevalent, with the ball being kicked to the player who is well-covered instead than the open man. This squad just doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do on that side of the floor very often.
That said, in this game, it was successful because enough shots were made. primarily because