Michigan Basketball: 3 Takeaways from tourney win over Maryland

The Michigan basketball team didn’t start hot in its quarterfinal game of the Big Ten tournament Friday but the Wolverines ended as hot as Juwan Howard was when he was tossed by officials in the win for U-M.

Hopefully, we will find out what made Howard go after Mark Turgeon, which got Juwan ejected after two technical fouls were called.

However, in the end, it didn’t make much difference in the outcome as Michigan basketball rallied from 12 points down in the first half to win the game by 13.

Here are three takeaways:

Mike Smith saved the day

When Mike Smith transferred to Michigan basketball from Columbia, he came as a high-level scorer, and while he hasn’t had to be that player often this year, he took the game over Friday with 18 points and a Big Ten tournament record 15 assists.

The Wolverines made 31 shots from the field and Smith had a hand in 21 of those. He also had two steals, made both 3-pointers in the win, and was 4-for-4 from the free-throw line.

Certainly, the Michigan defense tightened up near the end of the first half and in the second and that was huge too, but when the Wolverines were really struggling, Smith kept them in it and then shut the door on the Terps in the second half.

Brooks delivers in the clutch

If people questioned the impact of Eli Brooks, it was on full display Friday. He started off slowly, missing his first four shots from the field, but Brooks is a gamer. He scored 18 points and connected four times from beyond the arc.

When Maryland crept within five points following the ejection of Howard, Brooks scored five straight points of his own and pushed it back to 10.

Brooks is always credited with being a great defender and he is, however, he doesn’t get the credit he deserves on the offensive end of the floor and on Friday, his effort was massive to the point that Michigan basketball doesn’t win without him.

Michigan is now a No. 1 seed for sure

Even if the Wolverines lost on Friday to Maryland, they probably still would have been a No. 1 seed heading into the NCAA tournament, but it would have been much dicier.

Losing three out of four games isn’t the way you want to head into the postseason and if another team got hot, who knows?

But now, after beating another team that’s likely in the NCAA field, on a neutral floor, Michigan basketball stemmed the time of the negative momentum.

Now, their only loss would come to someone like Illinois, Ohio State, Purdue, or Iowa and the Wolverines aren’t going to get punished for losing to a good team in a conference semifinal or championship game.

The goal this weekend is to raise another banner but Michigan basketball has achieved another important thing and that’s locking up a top seed in their bracket for March Madness.