Michigan Basketball: 3 takeaways from a vital win at Northwestern

The Wolverines have now won the last seven over Northwestern and head coach Juwan Howard is unblemished on his resume when coaching against the Cats.

Michigan basketball won its second true road contest since December after beating Northwestern once again. Hunter Dickinson did his usual thing with 19 points, but the surprise of the night was the play of Joey Baker. He had arguably his worst outing in the Penn State loss on Sunday and he responded with a performance that he sorely needed.

Here are the three takeaways.

1. Michigan basketball picks up its most pivotal win to date

There’s no debate about it, if Michigan basketball wanted to salvage this season, then the Wolverines had to go into Evanston and pull out the victory. They did just that by capturing a quad one win, on the road nonetheless. With their NCAA tourney hopes looking very bleak, the Wolverines may have just extended their lives a little bit longer.

Northwestern was a team in the field going into Thursday night according to most, however they lost their last two now. They are currently in a tie for third with five other teams, including Michigan, but that will certainly change come this weekend. Northwestern heads to Wisconsin on Sunday evening.

Boo Buie was the primary bright spot for the Cats. He had 23 and made all three of Northwestern’s triples in the loss. He had 22 in Ann Arbor a couple of weeks back and is on quite the scoring streak dating back to November. Unfortunately for him he’ll end his career winless versus Michigan unless they see each other in the Big Ten tournament again.