NCAA Tournament: Michigan Basketball wins ugly against Montana

Michigan basketball beat Montana in the NCAA Tournament Thursday, but it wasn’t pretty or very impressive.

Survive and advance. That’s what Michigan basketball needed to do against Montana Thursday and when it was all said and done, that’s exactly what it did. No more, no less.

After spotting Montana 10 quick points in the second round of the NCAA Tournament Thursday night in Wichita, Kansas, Michigan basketball finally came to life, long enough to win the game 61-47.

Charles Matthews, the transfer from Kentucky, played a huge role. Montana did a great job of taking Moe Wagner out of the game, so Matthews took over and scored a game-high 20 points. He also grabbed 11 rebounds and threw down some key dunks.

After a slew of turnovers, including a travel on the first play of the game by Wagner, Michigan fell behind 10-0 early. In fact, the Wolverines didn’t lead until the 4:04 mark in the first half, following a 3-pointer by Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman.

At the break, the Wolverines led 31-28, but the lead still felt shaky. However, in the second half, Michigan started to look like Michigan. The Wolverines started dominating on defense and this triple from Simpson put them up eight.

As Michigan was heating up, Montana was cooling down. UM held the Grizzlies scoreless for nearly 10 minutes in the second half, which allowed the Wolverines to build a double-digit advantage.

The Grizzlies kept battling back and were still within nine with 5:30 minutes to go, but a three from Duncan Robinson with 5:14 remaining put UM up 12.  Looking back, it might have been the dagger.

Michigan finished the game shooting 44 percent from the field, but just 31 percent from 3-point range. Montana, on the other hand, shot 32 percent overall and 20 percent from deep.

Outside of Matthews, the only other Michigan player to reach double figures was Rahkman, who had 11. Robinson had seven points off the bench, Jaaron Simmons finished with six. John Beilein improved to 14-7 in NCAA Tournament games at Michigan. He’s also 7-1 in opening games at UM.

Michigan will play Houston on Saturday after the win. The winner of that matchup will advance to the Sweet 16. The Cougars beat San Diego State earlier in the day, thanks to 39 from Rob Gray.

Certainly, beating the sixth-seeded Cougars won’t be easy and the Wolverines will need more than five points from Wagner to do it. They will also need to start much faster and shoot the ball much better.

Next: Top 15 Michigan quarterbacks of all time

The name of the game is to survive and advance. And no matter how ugly it was against Montana, that’s what the Wolverines did.