What started with 17 straight wins and the nation’s #2 ranking ends with no Final Four. No tournament championship. No regular season championship. Only frustration, humiliation, and ultimately elimination.
Entering the season as defending NCAA national runner-up brought so much promise, even with the loss of key components such as Mo Wagner, Duncan Robinson and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. Impressive early-season wins over eventual B1G champion Purdue and perennial power North Carolina, plus and a throttling of last year's national champ Villanova on their own court, stamped John Beilein's squad as legitimate contenders for a return to the Final Four. A stingy, smothering defense among the very best in the NCAA became the team's staple as they drove through the conference schedule.
The basketball team’s parallels to its football counterparts were uncanny. In particular, zero wins against their biggest rival in each sport, and soul-crushing defeats in the games that mattered most. Among Michigan’s three losses to Sparty were a pair of stinging setbacks costing them B1G regular season and tournament banners. Then on Thursday night, facing their first single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament, the Wolverines turned in an absolutely brain-scratching 1-for-19 three-point shooting performance in a 63-44 Sweet Sixteen blowout loss to Texas Tech, setting an NCAA record for fewest points ever by a #2 seed. They also broke Michigan's 71-year record for scoring futility.
When reserve guard C.J. Baird hit a meaningless three-pointer with less than a half minute remaining, it wasn't just the Wolverines' first make behind the arc all evening. It was the first points from the bench all evening. Had they simply matched the Red Riders' not-so-hot 6-for-19 three-point total, it would have been a four-point contest instead of a 19-point massacre.
It was billed as a match where points would be at a premium, with two of the nation's most unforgiving defenses facing off. Texas Tech forced themselves inside offensively and pushed Michigan outside defensively. As it turned out, one of the Wolverines' strengths throughout the season—their insistence on running their half-court offense down to the final seconds of the shot clock and shortening every game—proved to be their downfall. The Red Raider defense was allowing if not encouraging fast-break opportunities, knowing full well Michigan would refuse to run transition. The Wolverines unwittingly obliged.
Holding the ball deep into each offensive possession is effective when your players are providing points on offense. As the misses mounted Thursday, so did the pressure to create opportunities in the waning seconds of the shot clock. The Wolverines committed an un-Wolverine-like 14 turnovers against Texas Tech, nearly doubling their season average. Without a bonafide scorer to bail them out, they had no hot hand to fall back on. And when Simpson failed repeatedly to bank in his money shot, the running can't miss floating hook, the game was effectively over.
Beilein arrived in Ann Arbor after Tommy Amaker's six-year run as coach—a run that couldn't produce so much as a single at-large berth in the NCAA tournament. Back then success meant avoiding NCAA violations, and to his credit Amaker faihfully fulfilled the filthy task of lifting a program up from rock bottom. Standards are a full order of magnitude higher now. Beilein’s been to the brink of the promised land. He’s won two B1G titles and back-to-back conference tournaments. He’s cut down the nets at two regionals and won Final Four semifinal games twice, reaching college basketball's final. He has stood on the court as the tickertape fell watching Louisville and Villanova celebrate national championships that were so very nearly his.
He knows what we all know, that this latest team of his was better than how it performed when things really mattered.
So it's another bitter dose of medicine for Michigan athletics. In basketball as in football, the cold hard fact is that while very strong on a national level, they are both a distant second to the one rival they hate most, the one who keeps them up at night, the one they just can't overcome. Next year looks very promising for both Beilein and Harbaugh, and both may have even stronger teams to work with. But tell that to the Wolverine faithful, who are certain they felt really good many times throughout each team's season, only to be dealt the anguish of being embarrassed for all to see when each season ended. Just as it was difficult for them to remain optimistic about the football team while watching the Buckeyes win the Rose Bowl three months ago, it may be just as hard to find comfort in their basketball future when Michigan State sits just two wins away from their eighth Final Four under coach Tom Izzo.
Even if the the Spartans fall short, their dominance has made it clear that for now, the Wolverines can't even claim to be the best in their own state.
