Michigan head coach Juwan Howard has had his ups and downs in his first year as U-M’s head coach, but most of the downs have come when junior Isaiah Livers was on the bench with an injury. The Wolverines have won three straight with Livers back in the starting lineup and have a big opportunity for a road win at Rutgers Wednesday night.
It won’t be easy. The Scarlet Knights are 17-0 at home and have one of the best home crowds in the Big Ten. Many of them traveled to Madison Square Garden weeks ago when the two teams squared off in New York, and this game for Rutgers has huge implications in the Big Ten standings.
Lose two to U-M and any shot of winning a tiebreaker is out the window.
“You have to give credit to their crowd,” Howard, who admitted earlier that the game at the Garden felt like a road game, said. “Their home crowd as I was told gets really loud in that building. That’s their sixth man. They’re feeding off that energy. I understand it’s a very small environment, so the gym is a lot smaller than some other Big Ten areans. I assume that gives them a certain level of comfort.
“At the end of the day, it’s still just basketball. I have to not get caught up in the record or the success a team has had in their building. We are Michigan, and we have to come out and play our game, start to finish. Our game is play hard, be aggressive, defend, rebound and share the game.”
Rebounding was an area in which they didn’t get it done the first time around. Rutgers notched 26 offensive caroms in the first matchup and had an unfathomable 30-plus more shots than the Wolverines in U-M’s 69-63, one of the games in which Livers sat.
An effort like that Wednesday will probably result in a loss, Howard acknowledged.
“We’ve got to have a conscious effort of really boxing out knowing that their players are going to fly in there for offensive rebounds and when a shot goes up, check and see who is flying in, make sure we hit the box out and then go pursue the basketball,” he said. “We just did a poor job last game of turning our heads, walking to the basket, forgetting we had to start with the basic fundamentlas of boxing out.
“We had a chance to watch it on film after we played Rutgers last time, and we watched it again yesterday. We’ll continue to put a point of emphasis on it today in practice as well as tomorrow.”
The Wolverines have now won two Big Ten road games, albeit against two of the league’s bottom feeders in Nebraska and Northwestern. This will be a different challenge, but Howard hasn’t stressed winning on the road … just winning.
“We have improved overall, home games as well as road games,” he said. “But in general, we just want to focus on our guys, playing the right way offensively, sharing the basketball, making the right reads, eliminating turnovers. I trust we will make shots.
“Defensively, we’re more focused on our guys just playing hard, keeping a guy in front, taking a one-on-one challenge, making sure we contest shots, making sure there is help defense. Showing those attackers that they’re playing in crowds. As far as a coach, what I’ve learned, I’m learning every day. Game situations as well as practice … I go back and watch tape of our practices, see how we are as a staff and players and how they can improve, also how I can manage the practices a better way.”
NOTES
Livers will travel with the team and said Monday he expects to play, but Howard wouldn’t confirm he’d go.
“This is news to me,” he said. “I hope Isaiah’s out there tomorrow, but right now we’re just going to manage and see how he’s feeling today and tomorrow, and we’ll make a decision from there.”
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