Michigan Basketball: Wolverines Bounced from the Big Ten Tournament

Michigan basketball couldn’t strike gold for a third straight day in the Big Ten Tournament and fell to the Purdue Boilermakers.

After two thrilling last second wins over the past two days, Michigan basketball‘s Big Ten Tournament ended with a whimper. The Wolverines got taken to the cleaners by Purdue, losing 76-59 in a contest that didn’t seem that close for much of it.

The squad missed their first three shots, then hit eight of their next ten to basically keep pace with Purdue in the first half. The problem was that Michigan wasn’t taking high percentage shots and Purdue was. This team doesn’t have the size or the scheme to keep a lid on AJ Hammons, and he wasn’t going to have another inexplicably bad game against a much smaller, defensively challenged Michigan front line.

Hammons went for 27 points on 11/17 shooting with 11 rebounds and 3 blocks. He and his fellow big men were able to catch the ball within arm’s reach of the basket consistently, and they took advantage ruthlessly.

Mo Wagner, Mark Donnal, Ricky Doyle, and even DJ Wilson all looked completely overmatched against a bigger, better Purdue front line. This isn’t the first time that frontcourt play has hurt John Beilein’s squad; not only were they physically overwhelmed, they were consistently in poor position, allowing possession after possession of three point line to inner circle passes that resulted in easy hoops. Not a good look when going up against Hammons and co.

Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman led the way for Michigan with 15 points on 7/11 shooting. That’s about the only good thing that can be said about the offense. It’s been sloppy the past two games (as it has been for the past month or so), but they’ve been able to get away with it because Northwestern can’t match up and Indiana is just as mistake prone, but Purdue made them pay.

The Boilermakers are a great defensive team, but the Wolverines should not have looked as overhwlemed as they did. Other than a few nifty back cuts (it’s nice to see that play back in the mix after being conspicuously missing from the offense for much of the season), no one got to the rack, and aggressive perimeter defense kept the Wolverine guards out of sorts all day (I’m not sure if it’s a running problem with Beilein teams or not, but no one makes contact on screens on the three point line. Like, not even close).

Overall, this game looked a lot like the stretch run of the regular season: opponent jumps out to lead, Wolverines fight their way back in and are down single digits at halftime–though everything seems precarious–then they come out and get their doors blown off in the second half. Frustrating to watch, but you can see how much the team misses Caris and Spike in those situations.

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The big question moving forward, of course, is how this will impact Michigan’s tournament hopes. We came into the tournament under the impression given by ‘bracketologists’ that the Wolverines needed two wins to feel secure about an at large bid. After yesterday’s win, though, those same prognosticators were saying that the chances were a coin flip and to really cement a bid the team needed a win today. It seems insane that a 20+ win team with 10+ wins in the best conference in the country wouldn’t be a lock for the tournament, but here we are; it’s all over but the waiting. At least the past two days were fun, though, right?

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