A 23-point loss to then-No. 12 Purdue and a come-from-behind victory over a talented Penn State squad.

Two very different Big Ten games. That’s what the Michigan men’s basketball team has on its resume so far this season.

There were just five days between the two games. No one gained weight, grew a few inches or altered their shot.

But the Wolverines that played in those matches were completely different.

The team that took the floor against the Boilermakers looked outmatched. Twenty of Purdue’s 80 points came off Michigan’s 14 turnovers. The Wolverines looked frazzled facing Purdue’s suffocating man-to-man defense and were unable to attack the gaps that are created when a team stretches its defense that far.

Yes, Purdue beat Michigan soundly. But the Wolverines had a hand in it.

Against Penn State, the Wolverines came out and found themselves down at halftime once again. But this time, they rallied, held it together and closed out a game against an experienced Nittany Lion crew led by senior and preseason all-everything nominee Talor Battle.

So where was this squad less than a week earlier? Maybe Michigan wasn’t better than Purdue, but they definitely weren’t 23 points worse.

But that’s what Michigan coach John Beilein has been struggling with all season — the upswing of talent on his young squad. He recruited kids that can play the game, but that doesn’t mean sometimes their hands or brains don’t retreat back to the speed they played at in high school.

In the second half of Michigan’s game against Penn State, with the Wolverines down four, sophomore Darius Morris drove the right side of the lane, drawing three defenders and forcing Tim Hardaway’s player to sag off him. Morris threw a beautiful scoop pass while flying out of bounds, and the crisp throw went right through Hardaway Jr.’s hands. He looked up in disbelief, down in frustration, then turned and walked down the court. All the while, his hands were perched in front of his body in the proper form for catching a pass, as if he was reminding himself, “Tim, this is how your hands should be. This is how you catch a ball.”

He knows how to catch that pass — the freshman is the team’s second-leading scorer. He has probably caught that exact pass in practice before. But it was a lapse. A single moment where Hardaway Jr. actually looked like an 18-year old.

Time and time again this season, Beilein has said he told his players to play within themselves and stick to the plan. But the reality is, that three of Michigan's starters only have 14 games worth of experience in sticking to his plan.

It takes time to adjust to the college game and speed, to become poised under the pressure. And even though the Wolverines had an extra 10 practices before the European trip to start the season and an incredibly short holiday break — just two days off — it doesn’t mean that they’ve completely adjusted to the pace of Big Ten.

There will be glimpses of the team’s youth in every Big Ten win. In every loss, it will probably be a driving force. It’s when those errors pile on and the Wolverines lose their calm and poise that they begin to beat themselves, like they did against Purdue.

In the late John Wooden’s autobiography, “They Call Me Coach,” Wooden wrote about his 10 national championships and some advice he gave to his players.

“I constantly cautioned our teams: ‘Play your game, just play your game. Eventually, if you play your game, stick to your style, class will tell in the end,’ ” he wrote. “This does not mean that we will always outscore our opponent, but it does insure that we will not beat ourselves.

“It always seemed to me that more games are lost than are won.”

The Wolverines cannot allow Michigan to beat Michigan. There are 10 other teams in the Big Ten that will do everything they can to put Michigan away — the Wolverines can’t allow another name to be added to the list.

So, for the rest of the season, the eight or nine names on the statistics sheet will remain pretty familiar. But the team's fate will depend on which players decide to show up.