ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Thirteen minutes and 24 seconds.

That’s how much time had elapsed from the end of the first half through much of the second half before any player on the Michigan men's basketball team made a field goal.

That shooting drought resulted in a hole that the Wolverines couldn't overcome en route to a 65-56 loss at the hands of the University of Texas-El Paso in the consolation game of the Legends Classic.

“That was a long time,” Michigan coach John Beilein said of the shooting spell. “(UTEP) came out and they really defended very, very well. We had two turnovers that we gave them and they would just throw it to the basket and dunk it.”

The Wolverines made 19 free throws but only 16 field goals during the game — just seven of those in the second half. That's an average of just one field goal every two and a half minutes.

Michigan scored first, after freshman forward Evan Smotrycz drained a 3-pointer to open the game. Butafter that, nothing came easy for the Wolverines. The Miners' man-to-man defense stiffened up and suffocated the Wolverines’ shooters. Michigan made 17 percent of its 3-pointers — the worst that it has shot beyond the arc all season.

“I think we got tired, because they wore us out how good they were defensively,” Beilein said. “They just got up and really denied, denied, denied, denied. And although we got a few backdoors, we couldn’t drive on them a lot. They did just a great job at keeping us uncomfortable with what we we’re doing.”

Several of Michigan’s top shooters began to shoot so poorly that the Miners stopped covering them — redshirt freshmen Blake McLimans and Jordan Morgan went uncovered outside of the key. McLimans didn’t make a single 3-pointer and finished 1-for-5 from the field.

“It was their gameplan,” junior guard Zack Novak said. “They were trying to take away the back door and pressure everyone out. Our big guys can shoot it. Sometimes you’re too open. And we all know our big men are going to make those shots the rest of the year.”

It didn’t make things better that UTEP could essentially score at will. The second half became more of a slam-dunk contest than it did a basketball game. The Miners recorded four in the second half. UTEP guard Randy Culpepper — standing less than six feet tall and weighing 165 pounds wet — dunked twice, the second of which came in traffic

Even when the Miners missed shots, they got second chances and scored in the paint, as UTEP outrebounded Michigan, 40-31. Smotrycz, one of the Wolverines key rebounders, recorded zero boards for the first time all season, and it was sophomore point guard Darius Morris who collected a team-high seven rebounds.

“That length and that speed we had not seen,” Beilein said of UTEP's defense. “We haven’t seen that in any other game that we played. Syracuse does not play the man-to-man like that. It was the first time we saw that. We had to learn through that.”

After losing to UTEP today and Syracuse on Friday night, the Wolverines head to play Clemson on Tuesday -- the Tigers and Wolverines will meet in the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

“I have a film watcher and we will break this down and say, ‘What is the best way to spike this learning curve from what we saw this week,’ “ Beilein said. “We may have 40 or 50 (clips) that we’re watching tomorrow. We’ll rest a little bit tomorrow and then we’ve got one day to get ready for the Clemson game.”