If Michigan basketball wins the national championship, the bench will be a big reason why.
As it stands, the Wolverines might not have clinched a share of the Big Ten championship without the efforts of the bench on Tuesday, which outscored Minnesota by an incredible margin of 35-0.
That's one way to win a game 77-67. Just imagine if Michigan's bench wasn't the best in college basketball, which it has proven to be time and time again.
Michigan basketball uses bench points to dominate again
L.J. Cason and Trey McKenney aren't perfect. But they were deadly from 3-point range on Tuesday. They each made four triples and combined for 26 points, most of them coming in the second half as Michigan basketball finally pulled away from a pesky Gophers squad missing six scholarship players.
Minnesota scored 1.04 points per possession. That's good enough to win against Michigan, if Minnesota was able to get a stop. It wasn't, allowing the Wolverines to shoot 60 percent on 2-pointers and 42 percent on 3-point attempts (14 makes).
The Gophers made 12 3-pointers and were outscored at the 3-point line 42-36. If the Wolverines had shot 24 percent as they did against Duke on Saturday, we might be talking about a massive upset.
Instead, 35-0 in terms of bench points and a 42-point effort from three helped the Wolverines wrap up a share of the Big Ten title with a 10-point win. Michigan also had a 9-1 edge on the offensive glass. U-M rebounded 37 percent of its misses compared to three percent for Minnesota.
With that kind of domination in three categories, it makes you wonder how the Wolverines only won by 10. Then, you remember they turned it over on 22 percent of their possessions.
That was a black eye. The defense was, too. Yet, the Wolverines were so dominant in bench points and offensive rebounding, even a deadly 3-point shooting effort from Minnesota didn't matter.