ANAHEIM, Calif. — Amid an eerie silence, bowed heads and tear-filled eyes, one telling phrase rung through the Michigan locker room:
“Bad day to have a bad day.”
Theo Mackie
Daily Sports Writer
Men's Basketball
ANAHEIM, Calif. — For all the highs of this season, the end wasn’t especially hard to see coming.
The Daily looked at tape from three of Texas Tech’s most recent games, including its 78-58 win over Buffalo in the Round of 32, to help break down the matchup between two defensive titans.
“Iggy lives up for these moments,” Haynes saod. “I haven’t seen a kid like him that lives for these moments. He loves the crowd, he feeds into it, whether it’s hate or love. He’s a different kind of guy.”
To anybody who knows Brazdeikis, this is no surprise.
Nobody will write about what this season could have been if it ends with a Sweet Sixteen loss to Texas Tech, the only defense ranking ahead of the Wolverines in KenPom.
But Charles Matthews will wonder.
This will be the top two defensive teams in the country going at it, and Livers is as excited as anyone to be a part of it.
Saturday night in Des Moines, those roles suddenly reversed. This time, Livers’ name shot across national airwaves after posterizing Florida’s Andrew Nembhard to help send the Wolverines to the Sweet Sixteen — the zenith of a postseason in which he has averaged 12.0 points per game on 58 percent shooting.
When the Wolverines left the locker room, Matthews made sure they were, indeed, on it.
“First time in the huddle, he came and said, ‘No more threes. No more threes. Let’s limit their threes,” assistant coach DeAndre Haynes told The Daily. “He held it down for us out there.”
A good 30 minutes after the last dunks had landed, the players still remembered them in the locker room, responding with a chorus of “ooohs” and “oofs” and speechless head-shakes.
But once the Wolverines emerged from the halftime tunnel, the afternoon’s tide began to turn. By the time the two teams walked off the court again, Michigan had come away with a 64-49 win and moved on to its third consecutive Sweet Sixteen.