Danger Time
Michigan has plummeted to 12th place in the Big Ten. Next stop, the NCAA Tournament bubble if the Wolverines don't figure something out.
Michigan's once-promising basketball season threatens to downward spiral out of control, unless Juwan Howard has some answers he clearly didn't have in a ragged and uninspiring home loss Wednesday night to Penn State. It's the first time the Nittany Lions have won in Ann Arbor in a decade, and it was no fluke. Except for one 11-0 Michigan run in the first half, they were by far the better team the other 35 minutes to claim a rare prize in Big Ten basketball -- a road win.
You're tempted to hope the return of Isaiah Livers, whenever that is, will be the antidote to the Wolverines' woes. And certainly the return of one of the most-gifted offensive weapons in the conference can only help.
However, some fundamental flaws in Michigan have now been exposed, which have more to do with the Wolverines losing four of their last five than Livers being injured and out of the lineup. The first is Michigan can't get any key stops on the defensive end, and are playing horrifically bad defense as a whole right now. See this stat:
Furthermore, Teske can't stop anybody in the post, when a season ago he was the best defensive center in this conference. Yet he's hardly alone. Opponents can routinely get any look they want, as Penn State did whenever Michigan tried to make a run. Whatever defensive wizardry Howard had as an NBA assistant has not translated over to his first season at Michigan so far. Not to mention this Michigan team is solar systems away from playing the type of shutdown defense this team played the previous two seasons.
Then there's the fact there just isn't enough playmakers on this team, unless Simpson comes up with something like he did against Purdue. That didn't happen against Penn State, sadly. Simpson had one of the worst games of his career.
Obviously Livers' return would alleviate some of that, but the complementary pieces still aren't there. Every time you think David DeJulius or Brandon Johns have taken a step forward, they seem to take one back. Colin Castleton has not developed, and right now is buried on the bench. Maybe the return of Livers will open things up more for Franz Wagner, who doesn't always shoot it well but doesn't ever lack for confidence, either.
Yet again, though, that's assuming Livers returns sometime soon, and his groin injury has already gone from day-to-day to month-for-month.
In the meantime, it's up to Howard and his staff to right the ship. Unfortunately, Wednesday's showing didn't create any warm fuzzies in that regard -- more like the vapors. For example, Howard was forced to take timeouts in both halfs before the first TV timeout because of brutal play by the Wolverines. Either he didn't have his team prepared, or they didn't want to be prepared.
This loss is not the ideal way to begin a defining stretch in the schedule for the Wolverines, who are currently projected as a 7 or 8 seed in most NCAA Tournament bracketologies. But in a deep league like this, it doesn't take much to start circling the drain, and it takes much more to make it stop. An experienced head coach like Chris Holtmann is struggling with that very thing at Ohio State right now, too, which reinforces Howard has his work cut out for him.
Speaking of Ohio State, this was Michigan's worst home loss since a brutal showing against the Buckeyes back in 2016. The kind of loss that had plenty of folks wondering where the John Beilein era was headed, let alone that season. Thankfully, Beilein's Wolverines responded with one of the best three-year runs in the program's history.
Here's hoping Howard has at least some of that mojo.
