Michigan Takes Cold Shooting to New Level in 51-44 Loss to Illinois

By Sean · Wednesday, February 24, 2010 · 3:36 AM |  Share | Leave a Comment 

The Penn State game on Saturday was awful because not only did Michigan lose to the worst team in the conference, but also because its shooting percentages were downright ugly.  Well, that was nothing compared to Michigan’s performance against Illinois last night.  Michigan was awful from start to finish and shot the ball worse than I can ever remember, going 24.6% from the field (16-65) in a 51-44 loss to Illinois.  The Fighting Illini struggled to shoot the ball well also, but Michigan was on a level of bad all by itself.

For nearly the first eleven minutes of this game Michigan only had 6 points, and all 6 of those points were off of Zack Novak three-pointers.  Simply making shots was a struggle, which is why Michigan only had 18 points at halftime.  The good news was that the Fighting Illini only scored 26 points in the first half as a result of some shooting problems of their own.  Illinois did lead by as many as 11 points in the first half, but at halftime Michigan trailed only by 8.

Michigan played its best basketball in this game at the start of the second half.  Illinois went scoreless during the first five minutes of the second half, and during that time Michigan made a run to take a 27-26 lead.  6 of Michigan’s points came from Manny Harris (including an awesome dunk after an Illinois turnover), and the other 3 came from Zack Novak.

Illinois quickly regained the lead and never trailed again during the rest of the game.  Michigan managed to keep it close until there were less than nine minutes left, at which point Illinois took a 41-33 lead.  Michigan tried to battle back in the final four minutes and got within 4 at one point, but it just couldn’t capitalize on mistakes Illinois made.  A perfect example of this was when Michigan played great defense and forced Illinois to heave a three-pointer at the basket because the shot clock was running down.  The shot clanked off the rim and Illinois managed to grab the rebound.  The Illini quickly turned the offensive rebound into an alley-oop to increase the lead to 6 points with about a minute left.  That was basically the nail in the coffin since Michigan’s hard work defensively was all for naught because it couldn’t get a rebound.  I will say that it looked like an Illinois player traveled a few seconds before the desperation three, but the refs were so awful during the second half that it’s no surprise the call was missed.

After shooting 20.7% from the field in the first half, things didn’t get much better in the final 20 minutes.  As I already mentioned, Michigan shot 24.6% from the field in this game, which is just unbelievably bad.  From behind the arc Michigan went 6-31, good for an even worse number of 19.4%.  Similar to Manny Harris in the Penn State game, Zack Novak went 4-10 from three-point land against Illinois.  If you don’t include his numbers and look at what the rest of the team did, the three-point percentage drops to an astounding 9.5 (2-21).

It’s not surprising how bad the team was shooting-wise when you look at the stat lines for players like Stu Douglass and Laval Lucas-Perry.  Douglass went 0-8 from the field and 0-5 from behind the arc.  LLP continued to just flat out suck at Crisler Arena, going 0-3 from the field (all of his shots were threes).  Those stat lines stand out because of the lack of made shots, but the rest of the team was just as bad.  Darius Morris went 1-7 from the field and scored only 3 points.  DeShawn Sims struggled big time, going 3-12 from the field and ending up with only 7 points.  Although Manny Harris led Michigan in scoring with 15 points, he went 5-17 from the field and 1-5 from three-point land.  Zack Novak had 12 points and was 4-11 from the field (only one shot he attempted was not a three).  Matt Vogrich played only two minutes and didn’t even come close on his only shot (a three-pointer) of the game.  Pretty much the only person who played remotely well was Zack Gibson.  He got 20 minutes of playing time and scored 7 points and shot the ball 50% from the field (3-6).

It’s hard to believe after how bad some of the games were earlier this season that Michigan could actually be regressing, but that is exactly what has happened in the last two games.  Michigan went from winning two games in a row on the road to having the offense disappear in two losses at home.  Actually, if you go back to the Wisconsin game earlier this month, the offense has disappeared in the last three home games.  Michigan put up only 44 points in two of those games, and in the other one it only scored 51 points.  I don’t know why this team has had such issues shooting the ball at home lately, but maybe it’s a good thing that Michigan’s next game is at Ohio State.  I still think Michigan will get destroyed in Columbus on Saturday (12:00 p.m. on ESPN), but hopefully the change in scenery will help them get out of this ice cold slump they’re in right now.