6A — Thursday, January 24, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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By Roger and Kathy Wienberg
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/24/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

01/24/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, January 24, 2019

ACROSS
1 It can cause a 
bad trip
4 Renders 
speechless
8 Late-night host 
with an orange-
blimp running 
gag
13 Show of hands
14 Some Pequod 
crewmen
16 Tapped pic
17 Many Bach 
compositions
18 Sources of 
“Family Feud” 
answers
20 Soccer officials
21 Till this moment
22 Utah lily
23 Hush-hush org.
26 Rebuffed, with 
“off”
29 Mob scenes
31 In bygone days
33 Retailer with 
blue-and-yellow 
megastores
34 Does penance 
(for)
35 Clothing line
37 Go-aheads
39 Eye layer
40 Say
42 Hops hot spot
44 “Things Are Fine 
in Mount __”: 
Charley Weaver 
book
45 Augment
46 Unborn
48 Scale members
49 Preserves, in a 
way
51 Baton-passing 
event
54 Switch partner
55 Makes moist
57 Electrical 
generator
61 “The Matrix” 
actress Carrie-__ 
Moss
62 Clothing 
accessory, 
perhaps ... or 
what you can see 
in each of four 
groups of circles?
63 Cupcake 
decorator
64 Andean shrubs
65 Little piggies

66 Nero Wolfe 
creator Stout

DOWN
1 Center of power
2 Panels illustrating 
film scripts
3 High capital
4 “Hey, sailor!”
5 General 
concerns?
6 Unit of work
7 Let off
8 Solace
9 Responsibility
10 Wii forerunner, 
briefly
11 Onassis 
nickname
12 Foreign policy 
advisory gp.
13 Plastic choice
15 100 sawbucks
19 Place for pins 
and needles
22 Salts, say
23 King’s philosophy
24 Jousting mount
25 Test for purity
27 Scottish isle
28 Half a giggle
30 Letters for short 
people?
31 Equidistant
32 Sparkly stone

34 Boss’ backup: 
Abbr.
36 Witty remark
38 __ de toilette
41 Strict diet 
restriction
43 __ paper
46 Whole
47 Get to work again
50 Japanese 
aborigine
52 Subsidiary 
structure

53 Belgian river
54 Phi __ Kappa
55 Dish (out)
56 Son of Zeus and 
Hera
57 TV network 
with much 
Shondaland 
programming
58 Summer sign
59 Solace for a sad 
BFF
60 Ref’s ruling

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on page 2

‘M’ looks to win on road

At home this season, the 
Michigan women’s basketball 
team has won all eight of its 
contests.
On the road, it’s just 2-6.
Yes, the Wolverines have 
had 
a 
solid 
season 
thus 
far 
and 
find 
themselves 
squarely 
on 
the 
bubble 
for the NCAA 
Tournament, 
but road games 
have been their 
kryptonite. 
With 
recent 
losses 
at 
ranked 
opponents 
Maryland 
and 
Iowa, 
Michigan 
squandered 
two 
opportunities to boost its 
resume with victories away 
from Crisler Center.
With another road contest 
on the horizon Thursday 
night against Indiana, the 
Wolverines 
need 
to 
fix 
their road woes if they wish 
to return back to the Big 
Dance for the second year 
in a row under coach Kim 
Barnes 
Arico. 
A 
date 
with 
the 
unranked 
Hoosiers is the 
opportunity to 
right the ship.
Michigan’s 
players 
don’t see the 
upcoming bout 
against Indiana 
— 
which 
is 
currently 
projected 
to 
make 
the 
NCAA Tournament — as a 
daunting task. In the end, it 
appears that the team is more 
concerned 
about 
staying 
together and taking the Big 
Ten gauntlet one game at a 
time.
“It’s 
definitely 
different 
going 
to 
someone 
else’s 
house with their crowd,” 
said freshman forward Naz 

Hillmon. “In those moments 
we just really need to be a 
team and lock in and cheer 
for each other.”
Hillmon, 
who 
had 
20 
points and eight rebounds in 
Sunday’s 62-58 victory over 
Ohio State, has emerged as 
a key contributor along with 
freshman guard Amy Dilk. 
The two were 
instrumental 
in sparking a 
fourth-quarter 
comeback, 
something 
that the team 
had failed to 
do against the 
Terrapins and 
Hawkeyes.
“(That 
win 
showed) 
us 
that we can do it,” Hillmon 
said. “When we’re down, 
we’re going to know that 
we can get back in the game 
or we know that teams can 
do it to us so it’s a learning 
experience either way for us.”
Added 
senior 
forward 
Taylor Rooks: “We’re showing 
growth. 
We’re 
learning 
how to play 40 minutes and 
keeping our intensity all the 
way to the end of the fourth 
quarter.”
Senior 
forward Nicole 
Munger knows 
that 
every 
game left on 
the 
schedule 
will 
be 
a 
battle, but she 
knows that the 
team is hungry 
and ready to 
take 
on 
any 
opponent, even if it’s away 
from the friendly confines of 
Crisler.
“Every game in the Big Ten 
is gonna be like this,” she 
said. “It’s gonna be a grinder. 
We try to stay hungry and 
keep attacking each day, try 
to get a little bit better.”
If 
Michigan 
wants 
to 
achieve its goals, that starts 
Thursday.

TEDDY GUTKIN
Daily Sports Writer
O

n Saturday, then-No. 2 
Michigan went into the 
Kohl Center and was 
repeatedly stymied. It was a 
frustrating afternoon that saw 
the Wolver-
ines shoot just 
40.7 percent 
from the field, 
score a season-
low 54 points 
and drop their 
first game of 
the season.
But despite 
the woeful 
offensive 
performance, 
Michigan coach John Beilein 
remained unconcerned — at least 
outwardly. The loss, he insisted, 
was a product of Wisconsin’s 
stifling defense. Though Beilein 
made sure to remind reporters 
that he never wants to lose, it 
was seen as a welcome opportu-
nity for the Wolverines to reflect 
and improve after two months of 
straightforward wins.
“Credit Wisconsin, they had 
a great game plan defensively,” 
Beilein said. “They made us 
score over them, like Wisconsin 
teams always do. … So it’s just a 
typical loss to Wisconsin.”
And for three days after the 
loss to the Badgers, that line of 
reasoning held water. Wisconsin 
ranks ninth in adjusted defense 
and has allowed just four oppo-
nents to top 70 points this sea-
son.
Then, Minnesota came to 
town.
Wisconsin is objectively good 
at defense. Minnesota is not, 
ranking 12th in the Big Ten in 
adjusted defensive efficiency.
And still, Michigan couldn’t 
score. For over two months, 
the Wolverines had not dipped 
below 60 points in a game. On 
Tuesday, they did so for the sec-
ond time in four days.
This time, Michigan escaped 
with the win, thanks to a base-
line jumper by redshirt junior 
forward Charles Matthews 
that beat the final horn by mil-
liseconds. But despite the win, 
Beilein’s postgame presser car-
ried a much different tone.

“We gotta grow a lot,” he said. 
“We gotta grow a lot. We lost 
a 13-point lead late. How many 
times do you see that happen at 
Michigan, where we let it go like 
that?”
Beilein was, of course, refer-
ring to the four-minute, 51-sec-
ond scoreless stretch before 
Matthews’ buzzer-beater, in 
which the Wolverines went 
0-for-6 from the field and missed 
a pair of free throws. But that 
sentence — How many times do 
you see that happen at Michi-
gan? — could be used to describe 
to any number of stretches from 
the past two games.
It could describe the 2:52 
Michigan went before scoring 
its first point Tuesday. Or the 18 
minutes the Wolverines went 
without hitting a 3-pointer down 
the stretch. Or the nine-minute 
stretch of Saturday’s second 
half when they scored just five 
points, allowing a four-point 
lead to become a six-point defi-
cit.
“We definitely didn’t play 
our best game,” said freshman 
forward Ignas Brazdeikis on 
Tuesday. “And 
(Beilein) let us 
know about that 
for sure.”
The big-
ger problem, 
though, is that 
Michigan has 
no discernable 
solution. On Sat-
urday, Beilein 
attributed 
the offensive 
woes to his team’s 16 turnovers. 
Against Minnesota, the Wolver-
ines slashed that number to six, 
but were equally unimpressive, 
undone by a lack of ball move-
ment.
“The ball’s stuck a lot and the 
ball’s not moving,” Beilein said, 
when asked to diagnose Michi-
gan’s struggles.
Then, he paused and offered 
up the type of candidness that he 
has rarely needed to display this 
season.
“And here’s another thing, 
the fast break. Sometimes, fast 
break, we shouldn’t even do 

it. Cause we’re jogging up the 
court, we gotta sprint. We don’t 
run. (Minnesota’s) numbers in 
defensive transition, they’re not 
great. But we jog up the court 
and so, we can’t do it. So this is 
what they get, you end up get-
ting scores in the 50s and 60s if 
you’re not willing to bust your 
butt to get up the court.”
That sloppiness on the fast 
break reared its head on Tues-
day, when junior guard Zavier 
Simpson threw a pass away in 
transition, allowing the Golden 
Gophers to curb 
an 11-point Wol-
verines’ run and 
kickstart their 
13-point come-
back. Against 
Wisconsin, it was 
sophomore for-
ward Isaiah Liv-
ers who couldn’t 
find Matthews a 
2-on-1 fast break 
that would have 
put Michigan up by five with 
8:41 to play. The Wolverines 
never led by more than one 
again.
But even when Michigan 
checked its sloppiness at the 
door and moved the ball like 
Beilein wants it to, it couldn’t 
find bottom.
At one point midway through 
the first half, trying to cut into a 
nine-point deficit, the Wolver-
ines ping-ponged the ball around 
the perimeter, from sophomore 
guards Eli Brooks and Jordan 
Poole to Matthews and, finally, 
to Brazdeikis in the corner. It 

was their best offensive posses-
sion to that point, but as soon as 
Brazdeikis — who was shooting 
42 percent from deep just five 
games ago — released, he took 
two quick hops of resignation, 
instantly knowing that he had 
missed his ninth three in a row, 
dating back to Jan. 10 at Illinois.
It ended up as one of six 
missed threes for Brazdei-
kis, who finished 1-for-7 from 
beyond the arc and 4-for-18 
overall — part of a 3-for-22 team 
performance from deep.
“We just gotta make them 
when we’re open,” Beilein said. 
“Some of our guys aren’t getting 
open, it’s because they’re chang-
ing the basketball rules, saying 
we don’t care. Wisconsin took 
a player and just face guarded 
one of our players. And he didn’t 
have any help D, but that was the 
thing, ‘this guy’s not getting a 
look.’ And they’re making other 
people do it. And every game is 
different how they play us.”
Then, a reporter brought 
Beilein back to his comments 
after the Wisconsin loss, when 
he called the loss a teaching 
opportunity.
Were you expecting more 
growth?
Beilein, again, had no choice 
but to be candid.
“I was. I was. … Probably 
foolish of me to think, ‘Geez, we 
watched two days of film and it’s 
just gonna carry over.’ ”

Mackie can be reached at 

tmackie@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @theo_mackie.

Wolverines meet Nittany Lions 
with both teams at a crossroads

 At the beginning of the season, 
Michigan was ranked fourth in 
the country and Penn State was 
ranked fifth. Now, the Nittany 
Lions are last in the Big Ten, with 
the Wolverines only one point 
ahead of them.
Out of all the teams in the tight 
Big Ten this year, there might 
not be two with more similar 
season-long trajectories meeting 
than when the Wolverines and 
the Nittany Lions face off at Yost 
Ice Arena Thursday and on the 
national stage at Madison Square 
Garden on Saturday.
When the two teams split 
November’s series at State College, 
Michigan found itself in a sizeable 
hole in each matchup through the 
first two periods. But in the blink 
of an eye, the Wolverines racked 
up a four-goal third period to win 
the first game, and another one to 
send it to overtime in the second, 
only to watch Penn State’s Nikita 
Pavlychev score six ticks into the 
extra period.
At that point, the Nittany Lions 
seemed set. With college hockey’s 
most dominant offense and All-
American candidates like Evan 
Barratt and Alex Limoges, Penn 
State seemed destined to establish 

itself as one of the best teams in 
the Big Ten. 
But since then, Penn State and 
Michigan are 4-7-2 and 2-4-6, 
respectively, since that roller-
coaster of a series. After lurking 
around the top 10 of the Pairwise, 
the Nittany Lions find themselves 
at 18th. Like the Wolverines at 
the beginning of the season, 
Frozen Four hopes were not an 
unrealistic ideal. But also like 
Michigan, it’s on the outside 
looking in.
“They’re a good team,” said 
Michigan coach Mel Pearson. 
“They can score a lot, they’ve 
scored 40 more goals than us 
on the year. I was looking at it — 
they’re dangerous. Just because 
they have an off-week or month 
doesn’t mean they’re not still 
dangerous. … It’s been a shot here 
and a bounce there, we’ve actually 
played pretty good. You can look 
at the record and say that’s not 
true, but a few breaks and bounces 
here and everything is different.”
The parallels don’t end just 
quite there. To Michigan’s loss of 
sophomore forward Josh Norris 
to an undisclosed tear suffered 
at World Juniors, Penn State 
can raise its own World Juniors-
induced loss of freshman forward 
Aarne Talvitie and his 16 points.
The 
difference? 
The 

Wolverines have been here before 
— and it shows. When they lost 
then-sophomore forward Will 
Lockwood for the season last year, 
they still rebounded and found a 
way to get hot. Since losing Norris, 
Michigan has started a similar 
momentum with top-10 wins over 
Ohio State and Notre Dame.
“(Penn State’s) going through 
what we’ve had the last couple of 
years,” Pearson said. “Now they 
haven’t had that before, I don’t 
know how they’re going to handle 
it, but it’s a similar situation.”
To vault back up into the top 
of the Pairwise, both teams need 
this series to be more than a 
mirror of their inconsistent last 
one-and-a-half months. Michigan 
had a chance to sweep Ohio State, 
but let it slip through. But for all 
of the Wolverines’ blunders and 
inconsistencies, they still have a 
chance to be where they want to 
be.
“Even if they’re 8-4-4, if we 
play our game, we’re going to be 
fine,” Pearson said. “And that’s 
what we need to make sure 
we’re doing, all the little things 
we need to do to have success. … 
We’ve been in every game since 
November 9th.”
Getting back to the promised 
land, though, will mean more 
than just being on track.

It’s definitely 
different going 
to someone 
else’s house.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

We’re going to 
know that we 
can get back in 
the game.

RIAN RATNAVALE
Daily Sports Writer

ALEC COHEN/Daily
Michigan coach Mel Pearson’s team must do more than split a series with Penn State, as it did in November.

Michigan’s offense must improve

THEO
MACKIE
NATALIE STEPHENS/Daily
Ignas Brazdeikis finished Tuesday’s game 4-of-18 from the field.

We just gotta 
make them 
when we’re 
open.

