Michigan vs. Howard Tactical Breakdown: Three Ways the Wolverines Can Beat the Bison

After falling to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament Championship game, Michigan will have to regroup quickly as they will have to go to Buffalo, New York to take on the Howard Bison on Thursday night. Howard beat UMBC in their play-in game on Tuesday night to advance to take on the Wolverines.

Howard this year went 24-10 and won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, both regular season and tournament. Howard is a much smaller team than Michigan and they like to play a slower pace of basketball than Michigan does as well. Howard did actually play Duke in the non-conference and got blown out 93-56 so they have played another elite opponent this year and it did not go well for them. Let's dive more into the three ways Michigan can avoid the upset and beat Howard below.

Dominate the paint

This one is fairly self explanatory, but Michigan really needs to be able to dominate in the paint with their imposing front line in this game. Michigan is already bigger than almost everyone they play and that will be especially true in this one. Howard's biggest member of the starting five is listed at 6' 7" so to say Michigan will have the size advantage is an understatement. In order to avoid the upset, Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr, and Yaxel Lendeborg all need to play aggressively and take it to this undersized front line of Howard. It's the easiest way to avoid an upset in this game is to dominate the paint at both ends of the floor.

Protect the basketball

This is true for Michigan in just about every game remaining, but they really need to protect the basketball better in the NCAA Tournament. When they've tended to play down to their opponents, it's largely been because of turnover problems. As long as Michigan doesn't have a crazy bad turnover game in this one, they should be able to win comfortably. Howard's defense is tenth nationally in turnovers forced on defense so they will absolutely try to turn Michigan over a lot in this one if they can. That's a bit concerning for Michigan, because it's been something their offense has struggled with all year. If Michigan can take care of the basketball in this game and not turn it over, they should be able to cruise past Howard.

Avoid foul trouble

One of the other things Howard is really good at is forcing their opponents to commit fouls. They're 36th nationally in opponent fouls per game and that could be especially true in an NCAA Tournament game that will probably be called quite a bit tighter than the Wolverines are used to having their games called in the rugged Big Ten. Michigan has also been susceptible this year when Elliot Cadeau and Aday Mara in particular have been in foul trouble and Michigan will need to make sure both of those guys avoid the dumb fouls and stay out of foul trouble in this game. If Michigan is forced to go further into their bench than they want to, that could be a recipe for a tighter game than they want this one to be.

Michigan will obviously be the heavy favorite in this game and that should be the case. They went an incredible 31-3 prior to this NCAA Tournament and won the Big Ten regular season by four games. In order to avoid the upset against the Howard Bison, they will need to dominate the paint, protect the basketball, and stay out of foul trouble. Hopefully they'll be able to do all three of those things and they can cruise to an easy first round win against the 16 seed, but this is March Madness so you never know what can happen.