Michigan Friday: A Bit of a Funk

101-81

When you look at the final score and winning by 21 or knowing Michigan was up 30 at one point.  You might think, "no problems here".   That really didn't tell the story of the game, did it?  Michigan wasn't focused or playing hard in the first half and found themselves up only 4 points at halftime.   Like the Wisconsin game in the the Big 10 tournament, Howard had to do 2 things to win this game, shoot the lights out from 3 and not turn the ball over.   In the first half, they did both and drained 10 three point shots.  

In the 2nd half, they couldn't do either very well and lost the game by a big margin.  Both Duke and Michigan came into Thursday thinking they were going to have a cake walk, instead they got a pie in the face.  

The box score was also interesting:  Rez Johnson led the team with 21 points and 10 boards (offically was 8-8 from the field), Mara had 19 in a dunk-a-thon, Burnett had 15, and Gayle added 14 in front of family and friends.  The names you don't see is Yax who had 9 and Cadeau who had 5.  

Happy for Rez who had a terrible trip to Chicago and Gayle who preformed well in front of his fans.  Tschetter did add 6 points but continues to struggle with defense and turnovers. 

Michigan has to play better defense for the entire 40 minutes of the game.  These teams can play and most of them have shooters.  Michigan does have an advantage in the low post but that doesn't mean they can let 3 point shooters take wide open 3's all day and just hope they miss. 

Michigan in Chicago and now in Buffalo looks like a tired team to me.  Working on rest & recovery and focusing on defense will do this team very well in the next 24 hours.   

You know what also doesn't hurt and is the perfect tonic for what ales the Wolverines?  this quote:

"I hope we smack the crap out of them (Michigan) worse than we did Georgia." East Lansing native Cam Hutson got to play in his first NCAA Tournament game for St. Louis tonight.