Will Wade On Michigan: 'They'll Be An Extremely Tough Out For Anybody'
LSU grabbed control early against Michigan, but senior Eli Brooks came through again to keep the Wolverines within shouting distance. Many of the shooting guard's 21 points (and his five triples in nine attempts) came when U-M was playing catch-up in the first half with the Tigers making everything.
LSU head coach Will Wade saw his team break out to a lead in the second half, too, before senior guard Mike Smith and Brooks hit back-to-back triples to tie it again.
The counterpunches were too much to overcome in the end.
"We had a pretty good working margin, got off to a great start, [then] had a great working margin," Wade said. "To be down one at half ... we went on a scoring drive out there for four or five minutes. We got the lead in the second half by six. They made some huge threes. We just had some poor closeouts, some poor switches below the ball, and weren't able to overcome them.
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"We could just never string together enough stops to make a run and to expand our lead. We could never get the lead above 10 in the first half. Second half, after we got the six-point lead, we gave up a couple threes, we missed a floater in the lane. We could never sustain what we were doing."
A lot of that had to do with Michigan's second-half defense. After giving up 42 points in the first stanza, U-M clamped down and contested everything. LSU finished 39 percent from the floor, 29 from three-point range, and though guards Cam Thomas (30 points) and Javonte Smart (27) were as good as advertised, the Tigers made only two triples in the second half.
Michigan, meanwhile, made 10 of 25 (40 percent), six of 13 in the second half. Brooks and Brown led the way with two each, and they were also aggressive in attacking the rim
"They lead the Big Ten in three-point shooting. You can't take away everything," Wade said. "We've kind of lived and died by giving up some threes all year. We had to give something up to take away the points in the paint, to take away everything in the post. That's what we did.
"But the threes they hit on the runs really weren't inside-out threes. They were off-the-bounce threes, poor switch-outs, things of that nature. That was stuff we can control that we didn't do a good enough job on."
Wade was pleased, though, with the job his team did on freshman big man Hunter Dickinson. The frosh finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds, but he also turned it over three times.
"I thought we did a good job trapping him, confusing him down there, making him work," Wade continued. "We had active hands. When we got tired, they just got way too comfortable. I think they had 13 assists on 16 made baskets.
"The problem in the first half was our closeouts, driving our closeouts. We just did a poor job with that."
As a result, his team will be going home while U-M advances to play Florida State.
There was no shame in losing to the Wolverines, he added, predicting good things for Michigan the rest of the way. His team looked the part of a Sweet 16 squad, but U-M finally found its game and was just a bit better.
"We played well. We ran into a great, great team," Wade said. "We could have done some things differently. We could have made a few more shots, finished a few more in the lane, had a few better switches defensively. We certainly could have won the game.
"... Chaundee Brown is a great player, we knew that. They're a great team. They're a tremendous, tremendous team. Coach [Juwan] Howard and their staff, their offensive execution, the way they move, the way they guard — they're a very, very good team. They're going to be an extremely tough out for anybody."
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