Fab Five: Thoughts & Takeaways From Michigan's Loss At MSU

MSU loves to push the ball in transition off of missed shots and rebounds, or on the inbound after a made shot. The Wolverines had done a great job of slowing down that transition game under former head coach John Beilein, but in Juwan Howard's first shot at the Spartans, it was flat-out not good enough.

This year, U-M has crashed more guys to the offensive glass, and that's been the identity of this team. The Wolverines did get 14 offensive rebounds, but the 11 second-chance points generated by those those weren't nearly enough to offset the 21 fast-break points the Spartans got. While U-M struggled to get open looks on offense, MSU's shots came much easier. That starts with the transition buckets.

"They're a great transition team," sophomore forward Brandon Johns said postgame. "I think at certain times, there was just miscommunications. Obviously, that happens in loud environments like this."

Even if a big part of the plan was to stop the transition (sounds good in theory, right?), there was not enough of an emphasis put on it before the game and during the game. We're not at practice and in the huddle, but we've seen these same guys in maize and blue do better than that, in that respect. The formula to beating MSU starts with making it run a half court offense, and you go from there. With Livers out, you could almost live with losing due to not having enough shooting or offensive firepower, but this area of the game is tough to swallow if you're a Michigan fan.

With all of this said, the half court defensive performance was no gem, either. U-M was late on far too many rotations, allowing some wide-open shots in the corner and on the wing. MSU shot 7 for 15 (47 percent) from beyond the arc. Simply put, not good enough, but the more puzzling performance was the lack of stopping the ball in transition.