BLOOMINGTON — There’s a highway driving philosophy that usually never fails me: If I get pulled over for speeding once, it’s highly unlikely that I’d get pulled over again on the same trip.

After all, in Indiana, speeding on interstates is about as common as cornfields. So if I was pulled over, I was just a really unlucky driver. And if I kept going the same speed that got me into trouble, I’d probably be golden the rest of the way, right?

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this — fellow men’s basketball beat writer Zak Pyzik and I were totally not pulled over twice for speeding on our way home from Bloomington on Saturday night. And it was definitely not embarrassing to see the expression on the second officer’s face after he ran the license and noticed that we had been slapped on the wrist with a speeding warning just 20 minutes prior.

I sat in silence in the passenger seat for the next hour of the trip, clutching the $120 ticket in my hands as Zak set the cruise control to 65 and my mind starting wandering.

I thought about a lot of things — how my mom lied to me when she said lightning couldn’t strike twice, how there are far too many highway patrolmen in the state of Indiana, how I wish flying wasn’t so damn expensive.

Eventually, Zak and I loosened up and started making light of our situation. What choice did we have? We weren’t going to mope about it for the next five hours. We made fun of the officer’s Midwest twang, joked about it with a gas station employee and pondered whether or not we can mark off the fine as a Daily expense.

We also drew parallels and realized that our miserable start to the road trip was awfully similar to Michigan’s play on the court lately.

Sure, that sounds like a stretch, but stick with me — Zak and I had a long car ride to work this out.

For the most part, analysts were impressed with the Wolverines’ play against then-No. 3 Kansas and then-No. 2 Ohio State last week. Few predicted that they’d lose by such narrow margins — seven points in overtime and four points, respectively. And although the players will tell you there’s no such thing as “moral victories,” the Michigan locker room was relatively upbeat for a team riding a three-game losing streak heading into Indiana.

The Wolverines (1-4 Big Ten, 11-7 overall) believed they were on the cusp of getting things right — if they just persisted and continued to keep games close, they could win some marquee matchups. Sure, they were still making some freshmen mistakes — picking up off-the-ball fouls, forcing shots that weren’t there, not crashing the boards on the offensive end — but if they could still almost topple the second- and third-best teams in the nation, that stuff doesn’t matter, right?

Well, let’s just say it matters about as much as speeding after being pulled over and getting a warning. You think you can keep doing it and get away with it, but eventually, somebody’s going to teach you that you’re dead wrong. For Zak and I, that somebody was the second police officer.

For Michigan, it was Indiana.

In all honesty, the Wolverines did not play well against the Jayhawks. They shot just 33 percent from the field — 4-of-28 from beyond the arc — and turned the ball over 15 times. The game was close because Kansas played almost as poorly, shooting 36 percent and turning the ball over 16 times.

Michigan shot better against Ohio State, but this time the Wolverines picked up foolish foul after foolish foul, and handed the Buckeyes 25 free-throw attempts. It didn’t matter that they only converted on 68 percent of them — it’s still awfully hard to win when your opponent tallies 17 points from the charity stripe. The game was close because of Ohio State's questionable play calling — for some reason, the Buckeye guards seemed more content shooting the ball than taking advantage of the Jared Sullinger-Evan Smotrycz mismatch in the paint.

Unlike the Jayhawks or the Buckeyes, the Hoosiers did everything right on Saturday. No more breaks for the Wolverines — no more warnings. Indiana shot well, cleaned up the glass and employed the perfect balance between guard play and post play.