Michigan trailed Purdue for nearly 35 minutes at Crisler Center on Tuesday night. The Wolverines had trouble stopping Braden Smith in the first half, and when they finally kept the star point guard in check, Trey Kaufman-Renn took over.

Combine the two 20-plus-point performances with a steady dosage of Fletcher Loyer throughout the game, and it appeared Purdue was going to take a commanding 1.5-game lead over the Wolverines in the Big Ten standings.

But Danny Wolf, Vlad Goldin and Rubin Jones were clutch down the stretch to lift Michigan over the Boilermakers by a score of 75-73.

The win propelled Michigan, which was a half-game back from Purdue in the conference standings, into first place in the league. Michigan players and coaches said after the game that they were completely aware of the implications of the game.

"That was in the back of our head, talked about, very aware," Will Tschetter said after the game.

Dusty May discussed the magnitude of the game following the victory.

"Obviously, you're competing against another team that's at the top of the standings," May said. "So, if you drop this one, you don't have to hope that someone else [loses]. You control your own destiny, and we play the teams at the top now. To win a championship, you have to take care of home, and you have to go on the road and be able to find ways to win. And we've done that up to this point, but we've got some tough games in front of us. But this is exciting to be in mid-February playing extremely meaningful games, competing for a championship with programs, coaches and players that are at the top of college basketball."

Michigan certainly has taken care of home court. The Wolverines are remain perfect at home this season, improving to 12-0.

"Obviously a big win, but I don't think we view this any differently," Tschetter said. "Our motto going into the game was, 'We don't owe it to them.' Obviously, they kicked our butt the last time we played them, but we owe it to ourselves to go out and play for that Big Ten Championship. So I think that's kind of how we're viewing the rest of the season. ... We're in control of our own destiny. It's just up to us to come out and play hard and get things done."

Michigan forward Danny Wolf, who led the Wolverines in scoring with 15 points, said that Michigan still hasn't reached its potential of how good it can be as a team.

"Coach says it all the time: 'No one outside of our locker room knows what we're capable of and knows how good we really are,'" Wolf said. "I said it a few times, but the exciting part is we're no where near where we can be. And this is just one step in the right direction, because we have really big goals and it was a very important win, because we don't have another shot at Purdue until potentially the Big Ten Tournament. And we want to hang a banner, and this was just one step."

Michigan will take on Ohio State on Sunday at 1 p.m. in Columbus. The game will air on CBS.

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