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.