All Michigan coach John Beilein could do was breathe a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t pretty, and for long stretches they didn't look like they deserved to win, but the Michigan basketball team held off a pesky Northwestern team in overtime on Wednesday night, taking the 66-64 victory.

Playing in the first overtime game of his college career, freshman point guard Trey Burke sank four free throws in the final 1:05 to give Michigan a three-point lead with just seconds to play. But the 13th-ranked Wolverines had to survive one final scare, when sophomore guard Tim Hardaway Jr. fouled Wildcat Alex Marcotullio on a last-ditch, low-percentage 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds remaining.

But Marcotullio missed his first free throw, allowing Michigan (4-1 Big Ten, 14-3 overall) to hold on for the win.

It was the second poor decision in the clutch for Hardaway Jr., who fouled Reggie Hearn with one second left in the second half and the game tied. That gave the Wildcats a chance for the last shot, but guard/forward Drew Crawford was blocked and called for a travel when he came down to the floor after his failed jumper.

“(The fouls) were just defensive breakdowns, just scrambling,” Hardaway Jr. said. “They were scrambling to get a shot off. The refs made good calls, and we were lucky enough that (Marcotullio) missed his first free throw.”

Michigan had to fight just to get a chance to win the game. For the longest time, it looked like Northwestern (1-3, 11-5) was going to run away with it. In the first half, the Wolverines looked overmatched, especially on defense — Michigan struggled to keep up with the Wildcats’ Princeton attack, constantly losing cutters and allowing easy looks underneath the basket.

Northwestern forward John Shurna, in particular, couldn’t be stopped, speeding away from Wolverine defenders off the ball and hitting almost all of his shots. Shurna finished with 21 points to lead all scorers.

Michigan was caught off guard when Luka Mirkovic, the starting center for the Wildcats, was kept on the bench at the beginning of the game — Northwestern coach Bill Carmody had decided to go with a smaller lineup. Beilein also pointed to senior guard Zack Novak’s extended absence — he picked up two early fouls — as a factor in his team’s first-half defensive struggles.

“We didn’t have a plan for Shurna as a 5 man,” Beilein said. “(Mirkovic) has a total of three 3-pointers on the entire year. (Shurna’s) got like 40 or 50. He’s got incredible numbers, one of the best in the country. When that came at us, they got out to an early start on us, and then Zack goes down. I was really proud of the way we fought back.”

A 10-0 Wolverine run with 13:38 left in the second half — punctuated by a fast-break, two-handed dunk by Novak — gave Michigan its first lead, 46-44, since early in the first frame.

But the Wildcats didn’t go away, quickly regaining their composure and retaking the lead. From there, it was a defensive battle, as neither team could manage to get many open looks nor hit the ones they did get.

Hardaway Jr. was the only one keeping Michigan in it as Northwestern threatened to break away in the first frame, making four of his five 3-point attempts and finishing the half with 14 points.

He saved his biggest 3-pointer for late in the game. Hardaway Jr. hit the shot with a hand in his face with just over two and a half minutes remaining, tying the game at 54-54 and setting up the frenetic finish.

“It’s all kind of a blur, but I think (the comeback) just started with defense,” said senior guard Stu Douglass. “The whole second half was defense and gutting out rebounds, but also taking away easy baskets, taking away their backdoor cuts. We made some good switches on screens and just picked it up mentally, even though we were so spent physically.”

While the Wildcats got open looks in the paint with ease in the first frame, the Wolverines got nothing out of their frontcourt. When redshirt sophomore forward Jordan Morgan wasn’t losing his man on cuts on defense, he was getting swarmed in the paint and failing to put the ball in the basket on offense. And sophomore forward Evan Smotrycz struggled even more — Beilein was forced to sit him at the 11-minute mark of the first half after Smotrycz picked up his second foul.

Morgan nearly crippled Michigan in overtime when he picked up a technical foul with just over two minutes left for throwing an elbow after a Wolverine basket.