As the Michigan men’s basketball team unraveled against Arizona in the Roman Main Event championship game last week, the Wolverines found themselves in uncharted waters.
More often than not under Juwan Howard, Michigan has been the team running up the score — not the other way around. This year’s roster, in particular, features a core of players who lost just five games all of last season and eight new faces who watched the Wolverines earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Michigan had no way of stopping the Wildcats’ run, however. Arizona closed the first half on a 16-8 run and outscored the Wolverines by an eye-opening 18 over the remainder of the game.
“When teams make runs like that, we’ve got to be able to reel ourselves back in,” Howard said last week. “That’s where we did not do a good job of that. When we got frustrated, there were times where we felt like we didn't want to be coached. Not all guys, only a few. We also allowed their defense to speed us up so, offensively, when we ran some of our offensive sets, there were two or three guys that didn’t know what spots they were in because they didn’t know the play. That’s where the disconnect started. From there, we could never gain it back.”
The end result was Michigan’s second loss to an unranked team in a one-week span. And now, just two weeks after jumping into the top five of the AP Poll, the Wolverines have plummeted 20 spots to No. 24. It’s become clear they need to work through issues like screen defensive, ball pressure, 3-point shooting and defensive rotations.
Still, the ceiling remains high. Between All-American center Hunter Dickinson, reigning Sun Belt Player of the Year DeVante’ Jones, three McDonald’s All-Americans and the winningest player in program history in Eli Brooks, the pieces are there for a final four run.
But that’s a long way away. In the meantime, it’s about assembling those pieces. Roles and rotations remain in flux, as they often do this early in the season. With a trip to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge slated for Wednesday, the Wolverines will look to continue working through growing pains as the beginning of conference play approaches.
“As a team, I think just because we’re young, last year people got a little spoiled just because we were a lot more experienced than we are this year,” Dickinson said Tuesday. “We’ve got a lot of new pieces. We have two new starters — if you count (Brandon) Johns we have three — so we’re still trying to click there. … Guys are coming into new roles. I think that’s something we’re still trying to figure out, each other’s roles.”
The loss to Arizona revealed Michigan’s floor — a poor outside shooting team that struggles across the board defensively. In Las Vegas, the Wolverines barely looked like a nationally ranked team. If that’s the case, what does the Wolverines’ ceiling look like?
Dickinson maintains it’s nothing like Michigan’s early-season struggles.
“Right now, obviously we’re not where we want to be, but that’s fine,” Dickinson said. “You don’t want to peak at the beginning of the season, you want to peak at the end of the season when winning matters more. For us, taking it one step at a time and really having guys buy into the Michigan system and what we’re trying to do here offensively and defensively, I think it takes time. It’s not going to be a thing that happens in a week or even in a month.
“But I think towards the end of the season, when games are more important, we’ll become that team that everyone thought we were going to be at the beginning of the season.”
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