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

For the the final two minutes of the first half and through nearly 11.5 minutes in the second, the Michigan men’s basketball team went without a field goal.

That shooting drought — that spanned for a third of the game — 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 on Friday.

“That was a long time,” Michigan coach John Beilein said of the shooting spell. “(The Miners) 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 contended for third-place honors against the Miners after losing a close one to Syracuse, 53-50, on Friday night in the weekend’s first round. Michigan looked like two separate teams on Friday night and on Saturday night.

On Friday, the Wolverines picked apart the Orange’s 2-3 zone — at least in the first half — and went into halftime leading 31-29. But as the second half began to dwindle down, so did Michigan’s lead. Syracuse turned the ball over 14 times, but the Wolverines couldn't capitalize.

It was hard for Michigan to execute anything offensively in the second half because of the halftime adjustments that the Orange made in their zone defense. The Wolverines netted just two 3-pointers in the second half, opposed to six in the first. Likewise, they shot just 29 percent from the field in the second stanza.

“They are long as hell,” sophomore Matt Vogrich said on Friday night. “That’s why (Syracuse coach Jim) Boeheim uses the zone. I don’t know how he does it, but they play the best 2-3 zone ever, maybe.”

After the disheartening loss to the Orange, Michigan had less than 24 hours to prepare for UTEP. And there was a different vibe in Michigan’s game against the Miners. The Wolverines struggled to shoot, to say the least.

Michigan 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 only one field goal every two and a half minutes.

Freshman forward Evan Smotrycz opened the game's scoring by draining a 3-pointer. But after that, nothing came easily for the Wolverines. The Miners' man-to-man defense stiffened up and suffocated Michigan's shooters. The Wolverines made 17 percent of their 3-pointers — their worst all season so far.

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

Many of Michigan’s top shooters began to shoot so poorly that the Miners stopped covering them — redshirt freshmen Blake McLimans and Jordan Morgan often 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 help Michigan that UTEP could essentially score at will. The second half became more of a slam-dunk contest than a basketball game, as UTEP guard Randy Culpepper — standing less than six feet tall and weighing 165 pounds soaking 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 — 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.