The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsMonday
Monday, March 11, 2019 — 3B
Wolverines
collapse in
second half,
lose 75-63
EAST LANSING — With 13 seconds
left in the game, Cassius Winston
traveled.
Normally, it would be a quick play
stoppage — a few substitutions and then
an inbound. But this was no normal
timeout. Rather, it was more of an
extended flex.
The PA announced the seniors, wing
Matt McQuaid and forward Kenny
Goins. Both got down on the floor and
kissed the Spartans’ logo as they pumped
up the crowd.
No. 7 Michigan (26-5 overall, 15-5 Big
Ten) could only sit and watch as No. 9
Michigan State (25-6, 16-4) milked every
last moment of its 75-63 win on the way
to a Big Ten title.
For 30 minutes, it seemed like the
Wolverines could do what seemed
unthinkable two weeks ago.
After
losing
to
Michigan
State
at Crisler Center two weeks agoo,
Michigan’s Big Ten hopes were on life
support. But when the Spartans lost to
Indiana the next weekend and Purdue
lost to Minnesota, the door was once
again wide open. Win at the Breslin
Center, win the Big Ten.
But when the clock ran out, it was
Michigan State cutting down the nets.
“We weren’t poised when we needed
to,” said Michigan coach John Beilein.
“We needed to be poised at the time and
we weren’t. We didn’t show.”
It started out well for the Wolverines.
Junior guard Zavier Simpson grabbed
steals on back-to-back possessions to
open the game, which led to five quick
points.
Michigan didn’t trail the rest of
the half. But freshman forward Ignas
Brazdeikis and sophomore forward
Isaiah Livers each picked up two fouls,
sitting on the bench for much of the
period and thrusting the bench into
action. All of them played well for
patches, but the Breslin Center is not a
conducive environment for freshmen
with scarce playing time.
The Spartans closed the half on
a 6-0 run that coincided with a 3:12
scoring drought for the Wolverines. The
crowd rose to its feet multiple times
as Michigan seemed more and more
flustered. Though the Wolverines led by
six at halftime, there was a sense it might
not last.
After a few minutes of trading baskets
with Michigan, Michigan State found
a little bit of separation. With 11:39 left
in the second half, Goins got the ball on
a fast break and was left wide open for
three, hitting it to cut the lead to two.
“(We had) a couple possessions of
miscommunications,” Livers said. “
… Just getting them easy shots, easy
buckets. Just, they didn’t have the
pressure that we were supposed to give
them.”
After taking the lead on a Winston
3-pointer, the Spartans systematically
suffocated the Wolverines. Michigan
missed
eight
consecutive
shots
as
Michigan State hit 10 in a row, starting
with Goins’ triple.
When the Wolverines finally took a
timeout with 7:45 left, the Spartans were
up seven and had a lead they wouldn’t
relent. Winston, meanwhile, bullied
Michigan into submission. He drew
several fouls and got what he wanted
at the rim, finishing with 23 points and
seven assists.
Everything
the
Wolverines
tried
came up empty. Everything the Spartans
tried found the net. Michigan’s scoring
drought ballooned to 4:15 and Michigan
State’s run to 20-2. Brazdeikis, who
scored 20 points in just 22 minutes,
fouled out with just over five minutes
left.
“It started from the defensive end,”
said freshman guard David DeJulius.
“Because the first half, a lot of our
defensive end translated to offense and
we were able to get down a lot and then
the second half we just couldn’t get no
stops.”
The rest was a mere formality.
For 30 minutes, the title was within
the Wolverines’ grasp. But for the last
10, the Spartans played like conference
champions, and Michigan played like
a team that had already lost.
E
AST LANSING — Jordan
Poole stood in a back hall-
way that snakes around the
Breslin Center talking to a scrum of
reporters that went three deep. You
could barely hear him over the sound
of Queen’s We Are
the Champions.
“They were just
able to get runs
and make shots in
the second half,”
he said. “And we
didn’t answer.”
Fifteen minutes
later, the Wolver-
ines left the build-
ing. The Spartans
had yet to leave
the court. As one team boarded its
bus lamenting what could — what
should — have been, the other
climbed ladders and cut down nets,
milling around to take in the scene,
wanting to stay and take it in.
Well over an hour after the
final buzzer, they stayed — family
members and players and coaches
and people who had some type of
indiscernible tie to Michigan State
basketball — because the Spartans
beat Michigan, 75-63,
taking a champion-
ship trophy straight
from the Wolverines’
hands.
This was supposed
to be Michigan’s
celebration and
Michigan’s trophy.
If things went the
way they were sup-
posed to, this game
wouldn’t have been
played for anything
but pride.
Fourteen months ago in the same
building, Poole walked down the
tunnel jawing at the Izzone after
a win. On Sunday, he chewed on a
towel with a sullen look on his face,
walking to the losing locker room as
the celebration started behind him, a
reminder of an opportunity lost.
Michigan played the first half with
two of its stars in foul trouble and a
third, Charles Matthews, sitting on
the bench with an injury. It took a
six-point lead into the break anyway.
That was supposed to be the disaster
it averted on the way to a title.
In the second half, though, with
Ignas Brazdeikis and Jon Teske
back on the floor, the Wolverines fell
apart. Up 50-45 with 12 minutes to
go, they let up a 20-2 run, looking
shell-shocked and lost as Breslin’s
pressure-cooker burst.
“I think we imploded a little bit on
a couple of occasions,” said Michigan
coach John Beilein. “They blocked
a couple shots during that time, and
that was huge. And then we missed
some shots. We even had a couple
airballs. That’s really tough for us.
“Now, they’re out and they didn’t
miss on their end. We lost some cov-
erages in transition. They put you
in great rotations. We tried to stay
on that more than we did last time.
They got to the foul-
line like crazy.”
That implosion
cost the Wolverines a
regular-season cham-
pionship. But really, it
shouldn’t have come
down to Saturday in
the first place.
Seventeen games
into the season,
Michigan was 17-0.
Had it won the 18th,
the Wolverines would
have likely ascended to the top rank-
ing in the country.
And 10 games into Big Ten play,
Michigan was 9-1, firmly in the
driver’s seat. The lack of a banner
commemorating it has less to do with
Saturday than Jon Teske getting into
foul trouble in Iowa, the entire team
coming out flat at Penn State and a
blown lead against the Spartans the
first time around.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” said
assistant coach DeAndre Haynes.
“But the better team won.”
He was talking about Saturday’s
game. He might as well have been
talking about the last six weeks.
Right now, this isn’t the same
team that went to Villanova and ran
the national champions off their
home floor, and it isn’t the same team
that made Roy Williams stand at a
podium in November and rant that
his Tar Heels “sucked.”
Michigan started this season
by messing with every opponent’s
psyche, winning with style. As
Saturday’s game wound down, the
Wolverines needing buckets in the
biggest moment of their season, they
had nobody to go to, no consistent
answer. Across the floor, the Spar-
tans’ bench whooped and hollered
as Cassius Winston played just that
role, scoring 16 points with four
assists in the last 20 minutes, putting
the whole building on a string.
There are flashes that Michigan
can be the same team again. Just
look to the first 28 or so minutes of
both games against Michigan State.
The potential for a deep NCAA Tour-
nament remains. “We’re pretty good
at winning,” Beilein said Saturday,
and even after a crushing loss, he has
a point.
But as good as the Wolverines
started — this game and this season
— it’s the finish that counts.
Sears can be reached at
searseth@umich.edu or on
Twitter @ethan_sears.
ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
NATALIE STEPHENSN/Daily
Michigan coach John Beilein said the Wolverines “imploded a little bit,” losing poise late in Saturday’s 75-63 loss at Michigan State.
Winston
bests
Simpson,
leads MSU
EAST LANSING — Zavier Simpson
sat on the bench with a blank stare. 33.9
seconds remained in Saturday’s game and
Cassius Winston stood at midcourt, egging
on the crowd as Aaron Henry walked to
the free throw line to put the final touches
on a championship season.
When the buzzer sounded, Michigan
State beating Michigan 75-63 and winning
a share of the Big Ten regular-season title,
Winston found Spartan guard Foster Loyer
and jumped straight into him. Simpson
stood in the handshake line stoically,
watching the scene unfold.
Two weeks ago in Ann Arbor, Winston
got the best of Simpson, playing all 40
minutes, scoring 27 points and putting
up eight assists, leading Michigan State
to an upset win on the road. On Saturday,
Winston threw a pass out of bounds as the
Wolverines held a four-point lead with
15:30 to go and his face locked up like a kid
getting bullied on the playground.
That was Winston’s third turnover,
after a first half in which he scored just
seven points, shot 1-of-5 from the field
and sat eight minutes after getting into
foul trouble. The seesaw in this one-on-
one rivalry, it seemed, had tilted towards
Simpson.
Five minutes later, it tilted right back.
With the game tied and the Breslin
Center reaching a fever pitch, Winston
pulled up for three. It banked in. That was
Michigan State’s first lead of the game — a
lead it would never squander, as Winston
held the rest of the game in the palm of his
hand.
“I believe it was a confidence thing,” said
freshman guard David DeJulius. “First
half, we kinda got under his skin a little bit.
Big runs. And then second half, he kinda
got a little groove going. When you let good
players get a groove, sometimes it can be
difficult to stop.”
Winston was all but impossible to stop.
He found passing lanes through traps
and impossible angles, hit floaters over
the 7-foot Jon Teske and meandered his
way into the lane at will, wreaking havoc.
The Wolverines tried committing every
defender they had to bumping Winston 30
feet from the basket, fully in desperation
mode down by 10 with a minute to go. He
kept the ball on a string, refusing to turn
it over, then, from an impossible angle,
hit a wide-open Matt McQuaid under the
basket for a dunk.
By that point, Simpson had left the
game for good. Winston didn’t want to sit,
calling for the ball to dribble out the clock
and, when Tom Izzo called timeout with 13
seconds left to honor the Spartans’ seniors,
Winston stayed on the floor with the walk-
ons and reserves.
He wanted to savor this win — one in
his building, for his team, over his rival,
for a championship he earned. Winston
scored 16 points with four assists in the
second half, playing all 20 minutes as the
deciding force, capping a season that will
likely culminate in a Big Ten Player of the
Year award.
“Boy, like the reason he is, to me, the
most valuable player in this league, is
because when it was winning time, he
made some winning plays,” said Michigan
State coach Tom Izzo. “That’s what great
players do. He did it, and I’m really proud
of him.”
In the Michigan locker room, Simpson
stood up and took the blame. “I gotta do
better guys,” DeJulius recalled him saying.
“It’s my fault.”
Simpson has been the Wolverines’ ethos,
and the personal rivalry with Winston one
of the linchpins by which his character
has been constructed, for the last two
seasons. He doesn’t get beat on defense,
and certainly not by Winston.
And yet, twice in two weeks, that’s
exactly what’s happened. Otherwise, it
might be Michigan celebrating a Big Ten
title right now.
“We didn’t do a good job of stopping
(Winston) from turning the corner,” said
assistant coach DeAndre Haynes. “Even
Zavier being the defensive guy that he
is, we couldn’t stop him from turning
the corner. He turned the corner at will,
anytime he wanted to on our bigs or our
point guards.
“He was just a problem to deal with
tonight. Best player on the floor.”
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
‘M’ blows title chance
Spartans will their way to 75-63 comeback win
EAST LANSING — Isaiah Livers
paused. Then he shook his head.
A reporter had just asked how it felt
to get so close to winning the Big Ten
regular-season title. The sophomore
forward was understandably at a loss.
But the Michigan men’s basketball
team wasn’t just close in the sense
that, in the last game of the season,
it was competing for a conference
championship. With three minutes left in
the first half, the Wolverines were up 12,
the title firmly within their grasp.
And
then,
methodically,
their
championship
hopes
collapsed
as
Michigan State took over. What began
with two steals by junior guard Zavier
Simpson and an ice-cold 3-pointer from
freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis
ended with chants of “Little Sister,”
a postgame playing of “One Shining
Moment” and a litany of Spartans still on
the floor an hour after the buzzer, little
pieces of the net tied in their “Big Ten
Champions” hats.
Michigan State officially took the lead
with 10:47 left in the second half. But the
problems began before then.
“What won the game for us was
only being down six at halftime,”
said Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.
“Because it could’ve been 16, and that was
a big difference in the game.”
At times, Michigan seemed on the
verge of running away with the game,
but it never quite broke through. The first
crack was foul trouble.
Livers, Brazdeikis and junior center
Jon Teske all picked up fouls in the first
eight minutes. Teske was sent to the
bench. Livers and Brazdeikis stayed in,
but two minutes more and they forced
Michigan coach John Beilein’s hand by
picking up a second.
The rest of the half, a mishmash of
freshmen and seldom-used bench players
rounded out the rotation. All held their
own, but their inexperience prevented
the Wolverines from building their lead
— and by the end of the half, when the
Spartans had whittled the deficit to six, it
seemed the lid was about to blow off the
pressure cooker.
And when the starters came back in
after the half, they were no longer in the
same perfect sync.
“You get in foul trouble, it messes up
your rhythm,” Livers said. “You finally
get back in the game, so when you sit
out a long time in the first half, there’s
no excuse but we get out there, it’s just,
you’re not in the same rhythm as when
you left.”
Michigan never got back in its groove.
The Wolverines scored 13 points in the
first eight minutes, then went seven
minutes and 20 seconds without another
field goal. It was eerily similar to Feb. 24 in
Ann Arbor, when a five-minute field goal
drought let a Michigan lead slip away.
In each game, sophomore guard
Jordan Poole sunk a few shots to keep
things slightly interesting — but both
times, it was too little, too late.
With five minutes left on Saturday,
Michigan State was up 10. Brazdeikis,
the Wolverines’ only reliable scorer, had
fouled out just seconds before.
“We haven’t scored (a field goal) in
seven minutes,” Livers said. “So I kinda
just, it was kinda bad and I feel like at that
point, a couple guys started cracking and
that’s, can’t do that … against your rival.”
As Michigan struggled to find the
basket, Spartan guard Cassius Winston
went off, dribbling through defenders
and dazzling at the rim en route to 23
points. Forward Xavier Tillman blocked
five shots, wreaking havoc when the
Wolverines’ smaller guards tried to get to
the rim. Michigan’s early energy had fully
transferred to Michigan State.
The Wolverines aren’t a team that
frequently loses their composure. As
Beilein was quick to point out, they’ve
won
in
tough
road
environments
before — Villanova’s Finneran Pavilion,
Minnesota’s
Williams
Arena
and
Maryland’s Xfinity Center, to name a
few. But none of those had the stakes, or
the sensory overload, of Saturday’s game
at Breslin. And none of those teams were
the caliber of the Spartans, who showed
in the last matchup just how quickly they
can suck the life out of you.
“We did not lose our poise in all seven
of our road wins,” Beilein said. “We lost
some poise today.”
Michigan was that close, leading the
game it needed to win with just over 10
minutes to go. But as the Wolverines’
poise crumbled in the Breslin Center
whiteout, what remained of their title
hopes slipped through their fingers.
Lack of composure haunts Michigan on road
ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
ETHAN
SEARS
We needed to
be poised at the
time and we
weren’t.
(Winston) was
just a problem
to deal with
tonight.
I think we
imploded a little
bit on a couple
occasions.