Michigan Chokes in Madison, Loses to Wisconsin 54-48

By Sean · Thursday, January 21, 2010 · 7:31 AM |  Share | 1 Comment 

For most of last night’s game against Wisconsin, it looked like Michigan was going to get another much-needed upset that would look very nice on its rather empty tournament resume.  Michigan controlled the game from the very start thanks mainly to some awful shooting by Wisconsin.  Even when the Badgers fought back, Michigan would go on a run to pad its lead.  To the casual viewer it probably seemed like Michigan was going to win, but even when the Wolverines were up by double digits in the second half I had an uneasy feeling.  I don’t know if it was the opponent or the fact that, as the announcer pointed out a million times, Michigan hasn’t won at the Kohl Center this century, but the game just had a feeling like Wisconsin was going to end up winning.  Sadly, at the end of the night that feeling became a reality, because the Badgers came back and won 54-48.

The start of this game went about as badly as it could have on the offensive end for Wisconsin.  The Badgers were jacking threes left and right and nothing was falling.  Wisconsin started the game 1-13 from the field and something like 0-8 from three-point land.  You would think Michigan would have jumped out to an enormous lead as a result, but the Wolverines only went up by 11 during this stretch.  You may think I’m crazy when I say they led by only 11, but Wisconsin was playing just downright terrible basketball.  At the same time, Michigan was missing quite a few shots of its own, including a couple layups.  Although the 11-point cushion was certainly a pleasant surprise at the start of this game, I definitely felt like Michigan missed a golden opportunity to absolutely go off on Wisconsin early on.

Wisconsin went from not being able to hit a shot at all to simply shooting the ball poorly and managed to cut the lead down to 5 points before Michigan came back with a run to go ahead by 11 once again.  As the first half came to a close, however, Wisconsin went on a run of its own and managed to cut the lead down to only 3 points.  The Badgers trailed 21-18 at the half, which was a definite disappointment considering just how poorly Wisconsin played for most of the first 20 minutes.

The second half was all about runs.  It was relatively back and forth for a few minutes before Michigan went on a run and found itself up by 10.  Like in the first half, Wisconsin reacted by going on a run of its own and again cut the lead down to 3 points.  Stu Douglass hit a three on two straight trips down the floor to put Michigan on top by 9, but that was the last run of the game for the Wolverines.

Wisconsin slowly but surely cut the lead down and eventually went ahead for the first time all night with around 3 minutes left on the clock.  The Badgers never looked back, because Michigan couldn’t do anything right in the latter stages of the game.  The offense completely disappeared for Michigan, and Wisconsin did what it does best by flopping on multiple occasions, causing DeShawn Sims to foul out.  What’s more, the Badgers got to the free throw line often in last part of the second half thanks to some touchy fouls.  In the end, Wisconsin won 54-48, and although this game had the feeling of a choke job, I think we all got to see why teams have such trouble winning at the Kohl Center (and I’m not talking about the atmosphere).

Losing Sims at the end when he fouled out really stung, because he was Mr. Everything for Michigan.  Sims ended his night with 23 points and 13 rebounds and played what I believe was his best game all season.  Wisconsin could not stop Sims from scoring, and his stellar performance on the boards actually led to Michigan outrebounding the Badgers 33-32.  What’s interesting about the runs that Wisconsin went on is how they usually occurred when Sims went to the bench.  I’d love to see the +/- numbers on this game, because Michigan definitely seemed to struggle mightily every time Sims wasn’t on the floor.

As for the rest of the team, well, they didn’t do much.  Manny Harris struggled big time and scored only 11 points (6 of those points came on 2 three-pointers).  Stu Douglass had 8 points and Laval Lucas-Perry scored 5.  Darius Morris made a single free throw, but that was it for the rest of the scoring.  Michigan got points from a total of only five players, and what’s more, DeShawn Sims was only outscored by the rest of the team combined by 2 points.  It was definitely the opposite of what we saw against UConn, where there was a healthy contribution from the entire team.

Aside from the offense’s woes outside of DeShawn Sims, the main stat from this game that really pops out at me is turnovers.  Wisconsin only turned the ball over 5 times as opposed to Michigan’s 12 turnovers.  During the game this didn’t feel like a huge problem, but that’s probably because Michigan didn’t turn the ball over an abnormal amount; Wisconsin just took excellent care of the ball.  Bo Ryan’s teams always do a good job of taking care of the ball, and last night was proof of that.

Perhaps part of that stems from the fact that Wisconsin isn’t called for many offensive fouls, although as bad as the officiating seemed, Wisconsin only ended up with 6 more free throws and 6 less fouls.  That may still seem like a big margin, but to me it feels like the norm for a Big Ten game, as the home team usually comes out better in those statistical categories.  For example, in Michigan’s five conference games before last night, the home team averaged 17 free throws a game compared to 12 for the away team.  In that same span, the home team averaged 14.8 fouls a game, whereas the away team averaged 18.2.  As you can see, last night’s officiating performance was what you would expect to see in a Big Ten game.  I guess it came off as worse than usual because of the untimely nature of many of the fouls, which was annoying, to say the least.  The game looked like it was going to be one of the rare occurrences where the number of fouls and free throws were pretty even, but Wisconsin seemed to get all of the calls at the end of the game.

Michigan’s short-lived winning streak is now over, and it’s back to banking on an upset against Purdue and/or Michigan State.  Michigan missed out on an amazing chance to pick up a win in Madison but couldn’t finish off the upset.  Now the Wolverines will head to Purdue on Saturday (4 p.m. on ESPN) to battle a Boilermakers team that has been struggling lately but did win at Illinois on Tuesday.  I’m not sure which Purdue team will show up, but even if the struggling one does, as evidenced last night, Michigan will need to bring its A game to win no matter what.