Michigan Finishes Strong to Blowout Indiana 69-45

By Sean · Friday, January 15, 2010 · 4:48 PM |  Share | Leave a Comment 

Looking back on last night’s game, it’s pretty unbelievable that Michigan ended up winning by 24 points.  Aside from the fact that the first half was some of the sloppiest basketball ever, even when Michigan started playing better they weren’t exactly pulling away.  With 6:32 left in the game, Michigan was only up on Indiana 48-43.  It was at that point, though, that the Wolverines completely took over, ending the game on a 21-2 run where Michigan scored every time down the floor until they simply let the shot clock run out in the final minute.  It was quite the finish, to say the least.  Michigan went from having a rather slim lead to blowing Indiana out of Crisler Arena in mere matter of minutes.

Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims once again led Michigan in scoring.  Harris finished with 21 points despite being benched at one point in the game, and Sims had 20 points.  Laval Lucas-Perry ended his home scoring drought and finished with 7 points.  Zack Novak had 6 points and Stu Douglass had 4.  Coming off the bench, Matt Vogrich scored 5 points in 10 minutes of play.  Darius Morris finished with 4 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals, and only 1 turnover in 32 minutes of action.  Zack Gibson made a pair of free throws in the 2 minutes he played, but that was it for bench scoring.

Despite the downright awful first half, Michigan’s numbers didn’t turn out too poorly.  At the time it felt like Michigan should have been up by much more than 6 points at halftime, but then again, it’s a good thing Indiana was playing even worse than U-M.  That made for one terrible-looking half of basketball, but Michigan thankfully eventually got it going.  Indiana didn’t and played like the game was over with 6 minutes left to go in the second half.

Next up for Michigan is the most brutal stretch of the entire season: vs. UConn on Sunday (1:30 p.m. on CBS), at Wisconsin on Wednesday, at Purdue next Saturday, and vs. Michigan State a week from Tuesday.  To me, a single win during that stretch would exceed my expectations.  Anything more than that almost seems unimaginable.  I suppose I could see Michigan pulling off an upset against UConn, but the two road games seem beyond tough.  And sure, anything can happen in a rivalry game, but I’m not exactly optimistic about Michigan’s chances against Michigan State.  I suppose the one bright side to this torturous stretch is that if Michigan wants to even think about having a shot at making the NCAA tourney, it has plenty of chances to bolster its resume in the coming weeks.