For 20 minutes, Ohio State
pounded the Michigan men’s
basketball team. The Buckeyes
forced out sophomore point
guard Derrick Walton Jr. with
two
early
fouls,
then
went
to
work on a
backcourt of
junior Spike
Albrecht and
freshman
Muhammad-
Ali
Abdur-
Rahkman.
They
scored,
forced turnovers and scored
some more. They opened up a
15-point lead at halftime.
And then things got ugly.
Not only did the deficit
increase — Ohio State went on a
13-0 run to open the second half
and pull ahead 52-24 — but the
cut ran deeper.
Late in the game, the out-
come long since decided, a fan in
the student section unveiled an
“NJIT Basketball” shirt, reopen-
ing memories of the Wolver-
ines’ embarrassing Dec. 6 loss.
A moment later, the students
started chanting “Just Like
Football!” reminding the crowd
of Ohio State’s rivalry win over
Michigan, to say nothing of the
Buckeyes’ national title victory
24 hours earlier.
Lessons don’t come as much
from games like the Wolverines’
Dec. 13 blowout loss at Arizona,
after which Beilein said it would
have taken many games for
Michigan to beat the Wildcats.
They don’t come from home
upsets by NJIT or Eastern Mich-
igan. They come on the road in
cavernous Big Ten arenas when
the crowd starts to file out with
6:57 left.
This wasn’t like any of those
December losses. The Wolver-
ines knew then that they were a
learning, improving team. Com-
ing into Columbus at 3-1 in the
Big Ten, they might have expect-
ed better this time.
In the end, Michigan tidied up
the deficit and lost by 19, three
points fewer than the margin
between the Ohio State football
team and Oregon a night earlier.
But the Buckeyes weren’t try-
ing to hammer the Wolverines
by that many.
“No, we were trying to win
by 50,” said senior forward Sam
Thompson. “That didn’t work
out. We just wanted to send a
message.”
Early in the second half, as
the deficit piled up and that
message became clearer, Ohio
State forward Amir Williams
blocked
Michigan
freshman
guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-
Rahkman on a drive. The Buck-
eyes’ Marc Loving grabbed the
rebound.
And then Ohio State started
the fast break.
At the other end, Thompson
found Shannon Scott for an easy
layup, plus a foul on the Wol-
verines’ Kameron Chatman, a
freshman forward.
Michigan coach John Beilein
sat back in his chair with his
hand on his chin, watching as
his young team took a beating.
The Buckeyes were putting on a
clinic, and he wanted his team
to witness every painful second.
“Every loss stings me the
same way — just talking per-
sonally, I don’t know about
the team,” Beilein said. “We
grow from it — that’s it. We
grow from it. By the time we
get home, I’ll have watched the
whole game, and we’ll try to
find some answers to what we
could do better.”
The Buckeyes showed pass-
ing
when
freshman
guard
D’Angelo Russell fed a no-
look dish to Williams for an
open dunk in the first minute.
They showed X’s and O’s when
Thompson got open for an easy
jumper off an inbounds pass
with 10 minutes to go in the
first half. They showed quick-
ness when they scored a layup
with 5:18 left, then immediately
stole the inbounds pass and laid
it back in for two.
They
showed
interior
defense when Williams swat-
ted a shot halfway to the state
border in the second half. They
showed perimeter defense with
11 steals, five by Thompson and
four by Russell. They showed
alertness in the first few min-
utes when Walton lobbed an
alley-oop pass to freshman for-
ward Ricky Doyle, only to have
it knocked away by Russell.
The beating was far from
over. Beilein’s first substitution
was Abdur-Rahkman for Wal-
ton at the 16:37 mark of the first
half. Abdur-Rahkman played
a career-high 15 minutes, usu-
ally guarded by either Russell
or Scott, one of Ohio State’s six
seniors.
For Abdur-Rahkman and the
other freshmen, the game was a
baptism by fire, one that start-
ed with the pregame fireworks
during
Ohio
State’s
player
introductions and lasted until
the final buzzer.
The
Buckeyes
outplayed
Michigan’s regulars and preyed
on its inexperienced reserves.
“We were trying to send
(a message) from the jump,”
Thompson said. “No matter
what lineup they had on the
floor, no matter what lineup we
had on the floor, we wanted to
show that we were the better
team, and we wanted to do it
decisively.”
Mission accomplished.
The Wolverines won’t own
this rivalry this season as they
did last year. With memories
of a loss, a T-shirt and a chant,
they’re headed back home.
But it’s a good thing Beilein
didn’t let them leave with 6:57
left, like the fans did. They
might have missed an impor-
tant lesson.
The old wounds are open
again. Now it’s about how fast
Michigan can close them.
Jake Lourim can be reached at
jlourim@umich.edu and on
Twitter at @jakelourim.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 — 7A
BUCKEYE BLITZ
OHIO STATE, 71
By DANIEL FELDMAN
Daily Sports Editor
COLUMBUS — It was far
from the typical raucous envi-
ronment one comes to expect
at a major Michigan-Ohio State
sporting event Tuesday night.
“The last two times we came
in here, one time we were unde-
feated (and then) last year, you
couldn’t hear yourself think,”
said Michigan basketball coach
John Beilein. “It was just quiet
from the beginning.”
With a contingency of Buck-
eye supporters still on their
way back from college football’s
National Championship in Dal-
las on Monday and an entire
segment of the student section
empty, Value City Arena seemed
nothing like the hostile venue
Michigan has known it to be
over the years.
But even with seemingly
friendlier confines, the Wolver-
ines (3-2 Big Ten, 10-7 overall)
fell flat, losing 71-52.
“From the very beginning, it
was a little different than what
I was expecting,” said junior
guard Spike Albrecht. “Because
usually at Ohio State, it’s a big
rivalry, they jump out at you —
all the rah-rah and things like
that — but they didn’t do that.
We just kind of coasted along
with them for the first four min-
utes and then I just felt like we
stayed in that coast mode for the
first half, and they picked it up.
We just didn’t match it.”
Uncharacteristically
for
Michigan, foul trouble plagued
its guards. The Wolverine back-
court of Albrecht and sopho-
more Derrick Walton Jr. picked
up two first-half fouls apiece,
as did junior swingman Caris
LeVert. But with the deficit inch-
ing toward 15 points, Beilein was
forced to keep both Albrecht
and Walton Jr. in to counter the
Buckeye onslaught at the end of
the first half.
“I thought we had to,” Beilein
said. “I thought all of a sudden it
could get over 20. We had to try
to withstand it. They were only
in for three minutes. They were
told not to foul, unless they felt
(so). We wanted them to com-
pete. We rarely do that, but the
flow of the game was very bad at
that point.”
Desperate or not, Michigan
seemed dead to begin the sec-
ond half, allowing Ohio State
(3-2, 14-4) to open up on an 8-0
run before finally calling time-
out with 15:15 left. At that point,
following three turnovers and
an alley-oop dunk by Ohio
State forward Sam Thomp-
son, Beilein finally threw in
the towel, inserting freshman
guards Muhammad-Ali Abdur-
Rahkman and Aubrey Dawkins,
freshman forward Kameron
Chatman and senior forward
Max Bielfeldt.
Adding even more insult to
injury, Michigan went until the
13:25 mark of the second half
before scoring its first points of
the stanza, with the Buckeye run
extending to 13-0. Thanks to a
Bielfeldt basket, Michigan man-
aged to cut the lead to 26 — at
the time, that number matched
its point total.
“I think they’ve been down
10-15 points every game in the
last (several) games in the sec-
ond half,” said Ohio State for-
ward Sam Thompson. “We know
they can come back to send it
into overtime. We knew the
game wasn’t over at halftime.
We knew they were still very
capable of making a run.”
But that run never came.
While the Wolverine back-
court
struggled
to
stay
in
the game, Ohio State guard
D’Angelo Russell’s play enabled
the Buckeyes to pull away. Tal-
lying 21 points and six assists,
the freshman helped spread the
scoring for the Buckeyes, who
had five other scorers with at
least six points to go along with
34 points in the paint.
Things didn’t start entirely
terribly for Michigan, though.
The Wolverines actually led
14-13 after a Dawkins put-back.
But after that basket, everything
seemed to fall apart.
The Buckeyes went on a 25-9
run over the final 12:02 of the
first half, taking advantage of
Michigan turnovers and sec-
ond-chance baskets to take a
commanding
39-24
halftime
lead, with Walton, the defender
Michigan was determined to
stick on Russell, playing just
eight first-half minutes.
“Whether (Walton) is in foul
trouble, it’s going to happen
again,” Beilein said. “Our guys
— he, Caris — they’re going to
get in foul trouble. And we need
to be able to get better off the
bench.”
Even with the hushed crowd
a non-factor, Michigan was con-
stantly outworked on the offen-
sive glass. Totaling 11 offensive
rebounds, the Buckeyes out-
scored Michigan in second-
chance points, 13-7. Meanwhile,
Michigan turned the ball over
13 times, resulting in 19 Buckeye
points off turnovers.
Photos by Allison Farrand
Layout by Emily Schumer
One step forward,
one step back
Michigan falls flat in loss
MICHIGAN, 52
JAKE
LOURIM