Michigan Basketball: 3 takeaways from a sloppy loss to Villanova

It certainly wasn’t the prettiest of contests in Michigan basketball’s season-ending loss to the Wildcats on Thursday night.

The 2021-22 campaign that was anticipated to be so bright from November onward, comes to a bitter end in late March. Villanova didn’t do anything noteworthy to take out the Wolverines, but Michigan basketball hurt itself the most with too many easy mistakes. The Wolverines went 12-29 on dunks or layups. That’s a telling stat that ultimately doomed their chances of grasping a win they probably should have had.

Here are the three takeaways.

1. Michigan’s offense was pedestrian at best

An ice-cold 34% shooting from the field is what the maize and blue mustered on the night. It felt like it was closer to 24% than 34% though. Their rhythm was way off because of it. Hunter Dickinson and Eli Brooks had a combined 29 points, but they did it on a total of 30 attempts from the floor.

Shooting 50% from the charity stripe against the best free-throw shooting team left in the dance is a recipe for disaster as well. This, along with the missed layups and dunks, are grade school mistakes that should never happen this deep into the year by a team who just advanced to their fifth straight sweet 16 appearance.

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DeVante’ Jones played valiantly but was never himself in this tournament which made him unaccountable. Guys like Moussa Diabate and Caleb Houstan who have their eyes on the next level were impactless. Terrance Williams did what he could in the time he was in there playing the most meaningful minutes of the game over Diabate.