4B — January 22, 2019
SportsTuesday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘M’ offense flails in loss at Wisconsin
MADISON — Thirty minutes
after Michigan’s first loss of
the season, John Beilein was
asked about the Kohl Center. He
started to give a stock answer,
complimenting the crowd, the
venue and so on. Then he stopped
himself.
“People don’t lose here because
it’s the Kohl Center,” Beilein said.
“They lose here because of the
style of play that Wisconsin plays.
They don’t beat themselves, and
they’re just tough to play. There’s
so many good places in the Big
Ten and this isn’t one we say, ‘Oh,
we don’t wanna go to the Kohl
Center.’ We say, ‘We don’t want to
play Wisconsin, cause they’re so
good.’ ”
This year, it’s unclear just how
good the Badgers are. They sit at
12-6 after boosting their resume
by handing the Wolverines their
first loss of the season on Saturday,
64-54. They are likely on track to
make the NCAA Tournament but
still sit a tier below the Big Ten’s
best.
What is clear is this: Wisconsin
forced Michigan to play on its
terms Saturday.
Each team had 64 possessions.
They were slow, monotonous
and ended in frustration more
often than not. That’s Wisconsin
basketball.
The Wolverines didn’t make
a 3-pointer until late in the first
half. By the time the game was
over, they had made just 5-of-18.
When they tried to get inside, they
were met by a wall in the form of
Nate Reuvers. When they tried to
run the floor, they turned it over.
When they tried to play in the
half-court, they turned it over still,
finishing with 16.
And Michigan, a team whose
calling card has been that five
different
people
can
be
its
offensive lodestar, had no offense
at all.
Redshirt junior forward Charles
Matthews, the Wolverines’ most
comfortable midrange shooter,
scored all of five points when the
Badgers spent the game daring
Michigan
to
take
midrange
shots. Sophomore guard Jordan
Poole, who managed to carry the
offense in the first half, found
himself in foul trouble and scored
just three points in the second
after Wisconsin switched up its
coverage.
Freshman
forward
Ignas Brazdeikis, a day after being
asked about top-ranked Duke
and declaring, “We feel like we’re
definitely better than them,” was
held scoreless.
The locker room, boisterous
and loud with the fight song after
each win, fell quiet when Beilein
walked in.
“I didn’t realize it, we always
sing the fight song after every
win,” Beilein said. “It’s the first
time the guys have never sang the
fight song.”
A loss after 17 straight wins is
as inevitable as it is painful. Any
loss is a learning experience, but
this one was a harsh reminder
that Michigan still has bumps to
smooth over — its offense being
exhibit A.
“Tomorrow’s film session will
dig in for our guys,” Beilein said.
“It wasn’t exactly easy when
you’re trying to get your guys to
run because you’re mad at them
after they just beat Northwestern
by 20 points. … We have a lot of
weaknesses. And we gotta shore
them up.”
Other than junior center Jon
Teske, who finished with 15
points on 5-of-10 shooting and
turned it over just once, it’s hard
to pinpoint anyone who played
particularly well on the offensive
end throughout. Those games do
happen, and for the Wolverines,
they have been few and far
between. That won’t change today
though.
“We try to make it our
team against their team,” said
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard. “Our
team defense has to be better than
their team offense.”
Just before that, he had been
asked what the Badgers’ defensive
priorities were going into the
game.
“Don’t let Michigan score,” he
said.
“Don’t let (Zavier) Simpson
score. Don’t let Teske score. Don’t
let Brazdeikis score. Don’t let
Poole score. Don’t let (Isaiah)
Livers score. Don’t let Matthews
score. Don’t let (Austin) Davis
score. Don’t let (Eli) Brooks score.”
They didn’t.
Wolverines struggle down stretch
MADISON — For the better
part of three months, the Michigan
men’s basketball team has strolled
to wins with minimal barriers
along the way. With the exception
of a 62-60 win over Northwestern
six weeks ago, each of its 17
victories had come by at least eight
points.
So when the Kohl Center crowd
rose to its feet as Wolverines coach
John Beilein signaled for a timeout
with four minutes to play and his
team trailing by six, Michigan had
no answers.
“We just needed to capitalize,”
said sophomore guard Jordan
Poole. “But we also haven’t been
in a situation like this too many
times.”
Instead of capitalizing, the
Wolverines came out of the timeout
and allowed the same type of
basket they had all night — a hook
shot by Wisconsin forward Ethan
Happ, his 21st and 22nd points of
the afternoon that sent the Badgers
on their way to a 64-54 win.
On the ensuing possession,
junior point guard Zavier Simpson
uncharacteristically
drove
into
traffic and saw his layup attempt
stuffed at the rim. But when junior
center Jon Teske hit a 3-pointer to
cut the deficit to three a minute
later, Michigan had its opportunity
to regain control of the game.
After a free throw from Happ,
Teske — perhaps buoyed by his
previous make, but perhaps rattled
by the unfamiliar situation — let
loose again from deep. Only this
time, there was a man in his face
and the shot barely scraped the
front of the rim. A D’Mitrik Trice
miss afforded Michigan another
opportunity to trim the deficit
but shot selection again stifled the
Wolverines on their next trip down
the floor.
Poole took a dribble handoff
beyond the arc with 20 seconds
on the shot clock as two defenders
closed in on him. Rather than
assessing his options as he had
done in a familiar 11-point first half,
he dribbled into traffic and hoisted
a three that never had a chance of
finding bottom.
“I think it was only the
Northwestern game was the game
that we went down to the wire like
this,” Poole said. “You know, which
shots you can take, which shots you
can’t, clock management. It’s just
little things like that that you won’t
be able to see in the game if you win
by eight, nine, 10.”
Added Beilein: “Those are not
good plays down the stretch. If we’d
already gone through that once, it
might have helped us today.”
Even after the Badgers extended
their lead to six on the next
possession, Michigan wasn’t quite
dead yet. Sophomore forward
Isaiah Livers hit a three on the next
possession to bring the Wolverines
within three, but it remained
uncharted territory.
So, faced with a situation that
he hasn’t been in for nine months,
Beilein
called
for
freshman
forward
Ignas
Brazdeikis
to
intentionally foul Happ — a 49
percent free throw shooter — off
the ball.
The only problem? The rule
book.
A flagrant 1 personal foul is
a personal foul that is deemed
excessive in nature… Examples
include but are not limited to: …
Fouling a player who is clearly away
from the ball who is not directly
involved with the play.
The Wolverines had not had to
overcome a late deficit all season,
and it showed. The basketball
execution was there — Brazdeikis
did exactly as he was told, Livers’
three was a beautiful step-back
jumper and Simpson forced a pair
of steals down the stretch. The
decision making — on and off the
court — was not.
“One of the big things is we
haven’t had the opportunity to
grow from losses,” Beilein said.
“And we needed that growth today,
because we weren’t as good as we’d
like to be.”
On the other sideline, Wisconsin
had already lost a trio of Big Ten
games by a combined 15 points.
Down the stretch, their motto was
“unfazed.”
“It’s strictly about mentality,”
said Badgers coach Greg Gard.
“And the mentality to fight through
adversity. You’re gonna have some
days when things don’t go well,
how do you respond?”
The problem for Michigan? The
last time it had one of those days
was in April.
MADISON — On the floor of the
Kohl Center, there was madness.
Players and fans and coaches
rushed the court, a mass that
exuded exuberance.
In the Michigan locker room,
there was quiet.
After every other game this
season, the No. 2 Wolverines (17-1
overall, 6-1 Big Ten) had sung the
fight song. On Saturday, for the first
time, they didn’t. That’s a festivity
reserved for wins, and Michigan
had fallen, finally, to Wisconsin
(12-6, 4-3), 64-54. There were
turnovers and missed baskets
and an all-around ugly offensive
performance
and
finally,
the
Wolverines, undefeated no more.
“We just weren’t able to knock
down shots,” said junior center Jon
Teske. “The mistakes, we forced.
… We had some dumb turnovers.
That’s not us.”
The turning point came with
Michigan up one six minutes into
the second half. Teske fought for a
board and attempted a half-court
pass to sophomore guard Jordan
Poole, but Poole couldn’t corral it
and Badger forward Ethan Happ
grabbed the ball just before it went
out of bounds, then took it down
the court for a layup. Suddenly,
Wisconsin was up one and it only
cascaded from there.
Once Wisconsin took the lead,
Happ took over, icing the game
almost
single-handedly.
Alley-
oop. Another dunk. Hook shot.
Rebound. A couple free throws.
The Wolverines, ultimately, had no
answers as the Badgers slowly built
their lead.
“We always feed off (Happ’s)
energy,” said Wisconsin guard Brad
Davison. “ … It’s infectious to the
rest of the team.”
The first half was relatively
inconspicuous for both teams.
For long stretches, sophomore
guard Jordan Poole was the only
Michigan player who could find
the basket — and during the final
stretch of the game, he sat on the
bench with four fouls. At one point,
neither team scored for 2:54 before
Poole hit a jumper that capped off
an odd 8-0 run for the Wolverines.
Then things started getting
ugly for Michigan. Wisconsin
took a timeout after a charge on
sophomore forward Isaiah Livers
and promptly went on a 7-0 run
spurred by Happ and forward
Aleem Ford to put the Badgers up
four.
At halftime, the Wolverines’
two-point lead seemed almost
undeserved, given the number of
missed shots, bad possessions and
turnovers, not to mention a 1-for-
7 mark from 3-point range. And
in the second half, it caught up to
them.
“When you’re playing a really
good team, anybody has (16)
turnovers against a team that
doesn’t turn it over is not gonna win
any games,” said Michigan coach
John Beilein. “Their defense is just
so good in contain.”
And though Michigan had some
good individual performances —
junior guard Zavier Simpson, Poole
and Teske all finished with double
digit points — it was all ultimately
too much. The crowd and the
turnovers and too many trips down
the court with nothing to show for
it left the Wolverines gasping for
air.
With just a minute left, freshman
forward Ignas Brazdeikis — who
scored zero points for the first
time all season — was called for an
intentional foul off the ball, sending
Happ to the line, where he hit 1-of-
2. On the ensuing possession, Happ
made a layup, then a defensive
rebound that led to a dunk.
Another turnover and another
foul
on
the
Wolverines
sent
Davison to the charity stripe with
four seconds left. He made both
free throws to provide the final
dagger.
After the game Michigan had, it
was all too appropriate.
A
fter a mostly meaningless
December win against
Binghamton — a game
in which Michigan didn’t play
particularly
well, but still
blew by the
Bearcats —
you couldn’t
be faulted
for looking
forward.
Big Ten
play was
about to
resume. The
Wolverines were undefeated
with a program-record start
within reach. The questions
were inevitable.
Do you think about being unde-
feated?
Michigan men’s basketball
coach John Beilein shot down
any such idea instantly.
“We talked about, the goals
this year weren’t to be undefeat-
ed,” Beilein said. “The goal was
to win all our home games, so we
did that. Compete for a Big Ten
championship, that’s still in front
of us. … So just take it a little bit
by little as we go forward, but we
don’t talk about going undefeat-
ed and there hasn’t been a team
go undefeated since ’76, is that
right? So we don’t talk about it.”
The thing about a winning
streak, though, is that it’s impos-
sible to avoid talking about
it, especially when it meets
its demise. On Saturday, the
fifth-ranked Wolverines fell to
Wisconsin, and the questions
switched from handling the
pressure of a streak to how they
would move on.
There was another significant
thing Beilein said at that press
conference after Binghamton.
The question was again about
being undefeated. But the
answer was about learning.
“It’s really hard to keep that
going,” Beilein said. “We’d prob-
ably prefer it the other way. …
That certainly was sometimes
where they needed to get their
memory jogged about how we
got to that point was incredible
defense, incredible attention to
detail, et cetera.”
Beilein said he’d prefer an
early-season loss or two because
it’s harder to remind the team
of that when it hasn’t faced
adversity. In that sense, Satur-
day — where the defense failed
to contain the Badgers’ Ethan
Happ and Michigan gave away
16 turnovers — was one hell of a
memory jog. Going forward, that
could help the Wolverines.
Friday afternoon, freshman
forward Ignas Brazdeikis was
brash and confident, letting
the world know that he wasn’t
scared of any team. The next
day, he scored zero points and
was instructed to intentionally
foul Happ off the ball, leading
to a flagrant foul that completed
Michigan’s unraveling.
Brazdeikis hadn’t had a day
like that before. He’d scored
double-digit points in all but two
games and never put up a goose
egg. He’d never experienced the
eerie silence of a post-loss locker
room, a stark contrast to the
loud, confident atmosphere after
a win.
For everyone else, too, it
had been a while since they’d
made mistakes like that, been
outplayed like that or lost like
that. Other than a 62-60 scare
in Evanston in early December,
there hadn’t been any semblance
of trouble all season. Now that
they’ve hit some struggles, the
Wolverines are better equipped
to correct them.
“We don’t usually make those
mistakes,” said junior center Jon
Teske after the game. “But for
some reason we did, and we’ll
learn from this and we’ll grow
from this.”
That, above all, is what Beilein
was talking about after the
blowout against the Bearcats.
There’s a reason the last team
to go undefeated was over 40
years ago. Every team, no matter
how good, is going to have one
of those games. All of Beilein’s
goals are still attainable. Michi-
gan is still perfect at home. The
Big Ten title is still within reach.
Last weekend, the Wolverines
were simultaneously reminded
about what made them great
before and what mistakes to cor-
rect in the future. The schedule
will only get tougher as the sea-
son goes on, with road contests
against Indiana and Iowa and
home games against Minnesota
and Ohio State in the next two
weeks. So as tough as it is to see
any streak end, perhaps the loss
came at just the right time.
“You’re a victim of your own
success in the sense that any
losses will magnify, and that’s
really not the truth,” Beilein
said. “The truth is the schedule
is much different in the first 18
than it is in the last 13. … So, it’s
when you try to explain that to
your team, without taking away
confidence and without scaring
them for the future. You try to
make sure they know who our
team really is, what we’re capa-
ble of, things like that. A loss is a
loss, learn from it and move on.”
Inevitably, the questions
about the streak will die down
now that it’s over. No longer will
every win be potential history,
and no longer will any loss be the
end of something. Instead, Mich-
igan can focus on the strengths
that led to the streak in the first
place and the weaknesses that
ended it. It is only with both of
those together that the Wolver-
ines can become the best version
of themselves.
And that’s just the way Beilein
wants it.
Gerson can be reached at
amgerson@umich.edu and
on Twitter @aria_gerson.
Streak snapped
THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer
ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
Michigan takes first loss at Wisconsin, 64-54, ending 17-game winning streak to start season, now must learn from it
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Redshirt junior Charles Matthews scored just five points as Michigan suffered its first loss of the season at Wisconsin.
ARIA
GERSON
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis went scoreless on 0-for-5 shooting at Wisconsin on Saturday as Michigan’s offense struggled to find points in a 64-54 loss.