8 — Tuesday, December 4, 2018 Sports The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com With OSU loss in past, Michigan looks forward Growing up, Josh Metellus’smother would tell him not to set his expectations higher than reality. “You’re always going to (get) let down when you do that,” the junior safety explained Monday afternoon, “because you’re never going to reach those goals you really, really want.” The expectations — those goals Michigan really, really wanted — are off the table now. There’s no Big Ten title for the Wolverines, nor an upcoming College Football Playoff appearance. Instead, reality came crashing down 10 days ago in Columbus, and now, players are left picking up the pieces. Perhaps anti-climactically, the season will end in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Ga., on Dec. 29 against No.10 Florida — an opponent the Wolverines will have faced three of the last four years. “We had a lot of big goals — National Championship goals — at the beginning of the year. Obviously those now are unattainable,” said junior guard Ben Bredeson. “But we’re definitely very motivated to try to win that last game.” Bredeson insisted the mood around the team has stayed positive. Some guys, he says, will sear the pain of the 62-39 loss to Ohio State in their memories, pooling it for motivation in the years to come. Bredeson, on the other hand, watched the game once, picked out what he did well and what he did poorly, then moved along. He found no use in dwelling. “Nobody came here with this gloomy, drowned face,” said redshirt junior tackle Jon Runyan “… We know what happened, we’ve got to move forward from that, pick each other up, and go forward and get this win that everybody wants. That’s the cure for it, another win.” For the most part, attention has shifted past the demoralizing loss and toward the future. Junior defensive end Rashan Gary has already declared for the NFL Draft and decided he will not play in the bowl game. Ben Bredeson all but said Monday he’d be returning to school next year, though “it’s not official,” he clarified. And wide receivers coach Jim McElwain was announced Monday as the next head coach at Central Michigan. More decisions — most notably from junior linebacker Devin Bush, junior cornerbacks Lavert Hill and David Long, and junior quarterback Shea Patterson — are likely forthcoming. Despite the moving parts, players insist that winning the Peach Bowl is important for this team and for the trajectory of the program. Michigan has won one bowl game in the last seven years. “It matters. We’re really sick of losing the last game of the year,” Bredeson said. “This team, we’ve had adversity worse than any team I’ve been on since I’ve been here. So if there’s one group that will bounce back and get a big win at the end of the year, I think it’ll be this one.” Prior to Harbaugh’s arrival in 2015, Michigan hadn’t finished with double-digit wins in back-to-back seasons since 2002-2003. With 10 wins, the Wolverines have done so in three of the last four seasons. Against Florida, Michigan will go for 11 wins for the first time since 2011. “We’ve lost to two rivals and everyone tries to make it out like we had a bad year, but we finished 10-2,” Bredeson said. “It’s not the year everybody wanted, but it’s a great year nonetheless, and I think we really just need to cap this off with a great bowl win, and everybody will remember it as a great year.” Others might beg to differ. But, really, in the end it’s all relative to expectations. Just ask Josh Metellus’ mother. KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily Junior safety Josh Metellus and the Michigan football team set lofty goals this season but were unable to reach them after losing to Ohio State. MAX MARCOVITCH Daily Sports Editor “We’re definitely very motivated to try to win.” Now the ‘hunted’, the Wolverines prepare to take on Northwestern Three hundred and one days ago, the Michigan men’s basketball team fell at Northwestern. The Wolverines entered Allstate Arena on Feb. 6, 2018 still searching for consistency, their NCAA Tournament berth still far from secure. Despite this, they fell flat on their faces, putting forth 40 minutes of sluggish, uninspired basketball in a 61-52 loss to a Wildcat team that would finish 10th in the Big Ten. Michigan hasn’t lost a regular season game since. The last 301 days have been a whirlwind, and the Wolverines have blown away almost everything in their path. They won the Big Ten Tournament as a fifth seed and made it all the way to the National Championship Game, losing to a historically great Villanova team. In a November rematch this season, they clobbered the defending national champions. Michigan is 8-0 and sits at fifth in the most recent AP Top 25 Poll. Wednesday, it drubbed No. 11 North Carolina. Saturday’s victim was No. 19 Purdue. The Wolverines have won every game this season by at least 17 points. Thus, Tuesday’s matchup with Northwestern in Evanston couldn’t look more different than it did last year. As Michigan prepares for its second true road game of the season, it sits firmly in the national conversation. The target on the Wolverines’ backs is bigger than it has been in quite some time. “I don’t think when we went to Villanova we were the ‘hunted’,” said Michigan coach John Beilein on Monday. “ … Now we are, so we’re going to have to be that type of team that’s going to go on the road, knowing that you come in there with that target on your back. … The other team’s got extra juice when you’re playing a highly-rated team.” Northwestern fits the definition of “trap game” to a tee. Last season’s loss, while a disappointment for the Wolverines, was hardly new — it’s been five years since they won there. Tip-off is set for 9:00 pm, and Beilein has previously noted the challenge of such late-night games for players. The Wildcats’ home arena, the 7,039-seat Welsh- Ryan Arena, reopened this season after renovations, and Beilein expects a vocal, capacity crowd to greet his team. Meanwhile, Northwestern appears to be somewhat improved from last season, at least in the early going. The Wildcats sit 6-2 and No. 46 in KenPom, up from 85th last season. While one of their losses was a 19-point blowout at the hands of Fresno State, the other was a down-to- the-wire defeat at Indiana this Saturday. Northwestern will mostly rely on two key players. Forward Vic Law — a former high school teammate of Michigan guard Charles Matthews — scores 17.6 points and records 2.8 assists per game, leading the team in both categories, while hitting 44.7 percent of his treys. Dererk Pardon, the Wildcats’ starting center for the last two seasons, averages close to a double-double. “They’re playing a little differently,” Beilein said. “They’re playing mostly man-to-man right now, they played almost all zone last year. Really aggressive man- to-man. Their offense is quick, it’s crisp, it’s good. They just had a bad game against Fresno, but other than that, they were ahead 40-20 on an ACC team (Georgia Tech) at halftime. So they’ve got a lot of tools there, and I expect it’s going to be a really difficult game.” Beilein’s top priority leading up to Northwestern has been preparing for the intangibles. That means making sure his team is ready to take on the specific challenges that conference road games pose — in particular, “trap” games like Tuesday night — and ensuring his team is aware it will receive everyone’s best shot for the rest of the year. “We went into that hornet’s nest at Villanova and played well, but we gotta go do that again and I don’t think you ever get used to that. You never go win there and say, ‘This is normal,’ ” Beilein said. “ … Handling the crowd, handling another away game, a Big Ten game, that’s probably the biggest thing.” For all Michigan has achieved in the season’s first four weeks, Tuesday represents its culmination. Win at Northwestern, and the Wolverines will have shown they can do so as the hunters and the hunted alike. Win at Northwestern, and they’ll make a statement that normally wouldn’t be made following a win over a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten team. The reason why? It’s been a while since Michigan’s been hunted like this. “Coach (Beilein) talked about just staying humble,” said sophomore forward Isaiah Livers. “We’re going to have a big target on our back just because we went to the national championship and did what we did last year. “ … Everybody’s going to be coming for us, we just got to be ready.” JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Writer MEN’S BASKETBALL ‘M’ finishes fifth at the Cliff Keen Invitational It was as dramatic an ending as anyone could’ve hoped for. The bout neared its final moments and redshirt junior 174-pounder Myles Amine desperately clung to a one-point lead over Missouri’s Daniel Lewis. It was the championship match at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas (CKLV) Invitational — arguably collegiate wrestling’s toughest tournament outside of the NCAA Championships — and Amine wanted the crown. Using a strong approach on top, Lewis controlled Amine for the majority of the third period, close to securing the additional one point of riding time to send the match to overtime. Wanting to end the bout in regulation and seal his place as one of the weight classes’ most feared competitors, Amine took advantage of some awkward positioning to score a two-point reversal right at the match’s close. The clock read zeros, and Amine had once again downed a ranked opponent. Strung along by Amine’s heroics, the Michigan wrestling team (2-0) placed fifth at the tournament despite lackluster outings from a few of the team’s other contributors. For Amine, though, this victory was a long time coming after he placed third in the last two years’ CKLV Invitationals. “It feels really good to be able to bring home one,” Amine said. “Placing third the last two times, it’s kind of a bittersweet taste when you finish winning your last match, but you still feel like you came up short.” Besides Amine, redshirt sophomore Kanen Storr, redshirt junior Logan Massa and sophomore Drew Mattin all had solid outings in Vegas, placing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Despite entering as the tournament’s top seed and fifth- ranked wrestler nationally, Massa finished fourth after dropping two close matches. In the semifinal match, Massa fell to the eventual champion, Nebraska’s Isaiah White — an opponent he defeated at last year’s dual meet. As the two wrestlers went head-to-head, the match ended up being one of the tournament’s closest, with Massa falling 6-2. On two separate occasions, Massa had White dead to rights on two takedown attempts, but due to some awkward positioning, he was unable to secure the points. Despite the losses, getting experience wrestling ranked opponents is crucial for the Wolverines, particularly this early in the season, and there’s no better place to get that experience than at the CKLV Invitational. With ten ranked wrestlers per weight class for a total of 110 wrestlers out of 200 possible, the road to the finals leads through multiple ranked opponents. Win or lose, Michigan used the meet as an opportunity to both demonstrate its dominance and to see what areas need improvement. As a team, Bormet asserts that his team needs to develop in two key areas — mental composure and bottom positioning. “There’s always a lot of mental errors to work on, just composure and wrestling wide open in all three positions, so there’s a certain mental component to it,” Bormet said. “Then from a technical standpoint, I think we need to continue to improve our set-ups on bottom position wrestling a little as a team.” Seemingly having the least room for improvement, Amine insists there is still work to be done even while basking in his most recent achievement. “It’s good to see all the hard work and dedication that I’ve put into the room this summer and am continuously putting in is starting to pay off,” Amine said. “And so yeah, it means a lot, but at the same time, it’s right back to the drawing board. The season’s far from over. It’s a big stepping stone, but still a lot to improve on.” WRESTLING JACOB KOPNICK Daily Sports Writer Read the full story online at MichiganDaily.com