Nobody said all the problems are fixed, but sometimes it just feels good to see one go through.
At long last, it was Michigan basketball’s locker room playing the music. U-M’s locker room with the dance party on Wednesday night, delivering the best 51st birthday gift coach Juwan Howard could ask for.
The Wolverines (8-15, 3-9 Big Ten) snapped their five-game losing streak, and their stretch of 10 losses in 11 games — tied for the program’s worst stretch in 16 years — after outlasting No. 9 Wisconsin, 72-68, by doing so many things they hadn’t done for weeks.
Locking into defensive adjustments. Making timely free throws. And most of all, playing with pride.
“It hurts my heart to walk in the locker room when you see guys with their head down, guys with their eyes red and your team is just pouring and pouring it out there,” Howard said of the struggles of the past few months. “Tonight, it was just nice to see guys with a smile on their face and noise in the locker room.”
The script was playing out the way it had so many times before this season: get out to a first-half lead with good shot-making, go on a lull near the half, let the lead slip away early after the break and fall apart down the stretch.
It all happened, with the exception of that final collapse. The Badgers strung together a 26-13 run from the end of the first half to the early portion of the second half to take a 48-44 lead, and looked ready to deliver the haymaker.
Then, the Wolverines punched back.
It starts on defense
U-M allowed the Badgers to make three straight layups in the final four minutes of the first half to trim their deficit to four going into the break.
Then, on the other side, Wisconsin made five consecutive layups as the stretch completed with 8 makes on 10 attempts, all 16 points of which came in the paint. Once AJ Storr caught a lob to go up 43-42, Howard called a timeout.
“For us it was an adjustment on the ball screens,” explained Tarris Reed Jr., who finished with 12 points and six rebounds. “Coach Howard says you’ve got to play defense with a strong chest and just play better defense. Like, it’s crunch time, so we knew what we had to bring to the court.”
The adjustment wasn’t as simple as making sure to always go under the screen, always go over the screen, or even for the big to necessarily always hard-hedge. Michigan’s focus was on communication, and a Howard staple of defense.
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“Ball, you, basket,” explained Terrance Williams II. “Keep the ball contained, that was the biggest thing. … That’s a Coach Howard term, keeping the ball in front, not vacating and letting them get an easy lane.”
Moments later, another Storr layup gave the Badgers 32 points in the paint as well as a 48-44 lead, before U-M held Wisconsin to just four more baskets near the rim across the final 13:47 of the game.
When it flipped
Jaelin Llewllyn, largely the back-up point guard who’s been used as a road option while Dug McDaniel serves his away-from-Crisler-Center suspension, grabbed an offensive rebound to keep the ensuing possession alive and find Williams who hit a mid-range jumper as time ran down on the shot clock.
That sparked an 8-0 run, which saw Olivier Nkamhoua score three straight points and Will Tschetter drill a long ball to give Michigan a lead that it would never relinquish.
Tschetter, who finished with 11 points, made a number of big plays.
It included a charge he drew on Steven Crowl, his fourth personal, midway through the second half and an offensive-rebound and put-back with 8:48 to play to put U-M up by six. But the biggest play was the 3-pointer that rolled around every part of the rim and dropped with 5:45 to play to give Michigan a 63-54 lead.
“He’s a culture guy,” Howard said. “Every coach would love to have an opportunity to coach a guy like Will Tschetter.”
Tschetter didn’t do it alone. His fellow big man, Reed, helped spark the 19-6 run that started with the Storr layup and ended with that Tschetter 3. Twice Reed made both free throws during the spurt, while he also added a dunk and a block to help Michigan extend its lead to eight when he personally scored six straight.
McDaniel, who scored a team-high 16 points, and Nkamhoua, the team’s second leading scorer who finished with eight points and 12 rebounds, both watched from the bench during the game-changing stretch, but returned for the closing moments.
“We had a great group that was doing good things on the floor,” Howard said. “Defensive stops when needed and also good offensive opportunities on the other end … maybe like almost the three minute mark, it was time to put Dug in and run (after the timeout) and he came in to score.”
Doing the right things
It was far from a perfect game for Michigan, which got outscored, 40-20, in the paint, but for a team that’s spent the better part of the last month in the Big Ten basement, there was much that went right.
The Wolverines made 19 of 26 free throws (including 14 of 18 in the second half), outrebounded Wisconsin 34-28, limited the Badgers to two fast-break points and quite notably, won the battle of the bench 18-6.
Michigan got back to its desired balanced scoring, as six players finished between eight and 16 points and for the first time in a long time, Howard didn’t have to run its starters into the ground. Nobody played more than 31 minutes, while seven different players played at least 20 minutes and eight players saw the court for 13 or more minutes.
The well-rounded production was a stark contrast from the previous game, when U-M blew a 15-point lead vs. Rutgers and Howard didn’t just question his team’s heart, but suggested he play his walk-ons because he knew he’d get their top-notch effort.
“I wouldn’t have known what to do either,” Reed reflected Wednesday. “That’s motivation for all of us and let us play harder. To be in this position is tough and a lot of people don’t understand what he’s going through.
“So I mean, it made us play harder, so I liked it.”
To salvage the season remains a monumental task, but it has to start somewhere and Wednesday could be that place. It’s not like there’s a shortage of opportunity as the Wolverines stretch of six consecutive Quad 1 opponents continues Saturday in Nebraska, which has lost three of its past four.
U-M’s problems aren’t magically gone. It helped that Wisconsin made just 5 of 19 (26%) from 3s, 13 of 19 (68%) free throws and turned the ball over 12 times, a handful of which appeared self-inflicted.
But Michigan was 5-19 since the start of last year in games that were decided by six points or fewer or in overtime prior to Wednesday, so to finally get that tight victory, who knows what else could follow.
“It’s been a grind,” Howard said. “We will continue to grind.”
Contact Tony Garcia at apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @realtonygarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: At long last, Michigan basketball figures out 2nd half, ends skid
