Thursday, March 13, 2008

Michigan advances in Big Ten Tourney, plays Wisconsin Friday

No, really.

Michigan will play Wisconsin in the quarterfinals on Friday, coming off of a dominating performance today against Iowa. Only Michigan didn't really dominate Iowa.

Michigan led 44-29 with 15:51 left in the second half. Nine nail-biting minutes and eleven heart-racing seconds later, Michigan still had 44 points, and Iowa had climbed all the way to 35. It was 44-35.

That's just six points scored in over nine minutes. That's what happens when two not-so-fantastic teams face off in a Big Ten battle for the ages.

Why does it always seem like these boys try to give the game away? The scoring droughts are consistently enormous, including a notable one in the season-finale against Purdue that completely took Michigan out of a game that they were very much a part of up until said drought.

It's like "We're ahead by a bit too much. Let's let them back into it a little."

Ten minutes later, Iowa kindly informed their opponents that they didn't really want to move on to the quarterfinals and embarrass themselves. So we traded baskets for the rest of the game and won, 55-47.

Player of the Game.

Hm. I guess it'd have to be Manny Harris, as he led the team with 19 points and 3 assists (yeah, that led the team), going 5 for 6 from the charity stripe. Although DeShawn Sims' double-double (14 points, 10 rebounds) was a great effort as well.

What'll we do against Wisconsin?

Same thing we always do, most likely. Start off well, it'll be close at halftime, and we'll have a scoring drought of at least 3-4 minutes and lose it in the middle of the second half before going into panic mode and finishing off the game shooting twelve straight three's and making two of them.

Prediction: 78-65 Wisconsin

Prove me wrong, boys. Prove me wrong.

Go Blue!

Photo Courtesy AP/Michael Conroy

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I thought today the team looked good. However, and I hope this changes next year, too long of a scoring drought as we have seen all year long. I hope we can pull one out tomorrow. We have played Wisky tough this year in their own building. So lets hope.

GO BLUE!

Unknown said...

The droughts have been killing us for sure. If we can score consistently -- not every possession, but consistently, we might be able to pull it out.

Unknown said...

Completely agree. If you back on this season, we easily couldve beaten a few more teams...i.e Purdue, Wisconsin, UCLA, Ohio State at their place. The list goes on. Next year I truly think we can compete maybe not for a Big 10 title but a possible tourny spot. We will be at least 500. Looking forward to the game tomorrow at high noon.