Before the Michigan men’s basketball team was introduced for Sunday afternoon’s game against Iowa, the Crisler Arena jumbotron played a clip from Thursday night’s victory at then-No. 25 Michigan State.
Fans gave the home team a standing ovation as they re-lived the magic of junior guard Stu Douglass’s clutch 3-pointer that sealed the win for the Wolverines — their first at the Breslin Center since 1997.
And on the heels of a second-half scoring surge, Michigan kept the momentum going, as the Wolverines breezed by the Big Ten bottom-dwelling Hawkeyes, 87-73.
Sophomore point guard Darius Morris continued to improve his play in conference games, finishing with 12 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds — the first triple-double of his career and the third in program history. It was the first since former Wolverine Manny Harris registered a triple-double against Northern Michigan on Nov. 14, 2009.
But Morris’s career-high in rebounds was the result of a group effort — not just his own ability to crash the boards
“We’ve gone to a thing where some of our big guys — we want them to box out and just stick with their box and let our guards clean up a lot of rebounds,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “It’s really been very effective for us. And he should be in there — he’s 6-foot-4, he’s long, he’s got really good hands.”
Morris’s ability to spread the ball around benefited the team too. He reached double-digit assists for the first time since playing Penn State four weeks ago, and consequently, all five starters finished with double-digit points for the first time all season.
Once junior guard and co-captain Zack Novak hit both of his free throws with 30 seconds left in the game, Michigan (3-6 Big Ten, 13-9 overall) had put up 52 second-half points and tied its season high in scoring.
“They actually create some of your offense with the way that they guard you, and what they’re hoping to do is create their own offense by turning you over,” Beilein said of Iowa. “There’s nobody in the country who’s going to average 45 points a half, let alone 52. So it was difficult to get, but it was a product of the game.”
Freshmen Tim Hardaway Jr. and Evan Smotrycz paced the Wolverines’ scoring effort from beyond the arc. They combined for 9-of-15 from 3-point range and 33 total points.
Redshirt freshman Jordan Morgan also had a big day, as Morris targeted him in the post frequently in the second half. He finished with 17 points — his highest total in Big Ten play — and the team had an impressive 30 points in the paint.
And Morgan’s effort had a number of indirect effects for his team too. The more he found scoring opportunities underneath, the more Iowa (1-8, 13-8) keyed in on him and forgot about shooters like Smotrycz and Hardaway Jr. on the perimeter.
“We had a little bit of a size advantage, and we just tried to feed it,” Morgan said. “We have such deadly shooters that it puts these teams in a pickle. They have to decide, ‘Are they going to give us a three? Or are they going to give us a two?’ ”
Morgan did struggle a bit on the defensive end, allowing Iowa freshman forward Melsahn Basabe to score 25 points against Michigan’s frontcourt, though Beilein believes that the positives outweighed the negatives. The improvements on the offensive end were extraordinary.
Perhaps most impressive was how the Wolverines attacked the Hawkeye 2-3 zone scheme. After Minnesota held Michigan to 64 points just last week, using the 2-3 for a majority of the game, the Wolverines seemingly couldn’t solve the defensive scheme.
“Minnesota (used the zone), and we didn’t have great timing,” Beilein said. “And that’s all it takes, and you get a little bit spooked by it … We had open shots (against Iowa), we made them — that was the big thing. You can execute the heck out of a zone, but if the ball goes in and out, you can get spooked again.”
For now, Michigan is far from spooked by anything, as the team takes a two-game winning streak into Columbus to take on N0. 1 Ohio State on Thursday.