Saturday night, for 30 minutes, it felt like it finally clicked for Michigan. Riding a three game winning streak, playing with a newfound swagger and jumping out to an 11-point lead over No. 18 Indiana, it looked like the Wolverines — the team ranked No. 22 at the start of the season — had finally arrived.
But then they crashed back to reality.
A reality that, for Michigan, is pretty damn simple and pretty damn depressing — it’s a team that just isn’t built for March.
“(Indiana was a) great opportunity to build our resume,” junior center Hunter Dickinson said. “We need a lot of help in order to make the tournament, and this was a great opportunity that slipped through our fingers. But, I feel like that’s the moral of the season so far, just not capitalizing on those opportunities that we get.”
Yes, those opportunities are quickly disappearing, and yes, the math is becoming increasingly infeasible for the Wolverines to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. But underlying those problems is the fact that Michigan fails to show any semblance of an ability to win the type of games it would see in the postseason.
Take tonight, for example. The Hoosiers are without question built for March, and while that’s not breaking news, they proved it again Saturday by fighting back from an 11-point deficit on the road and finding a way to win. The Wolverines, on the other hand, couldn’t finish off a home game that they were in control of. Failing to score in the final 5:12, Michigan didn’t show composure. Instead, it imploded.
The same way it did against Purdue, Virginia, Central Michigan and, worst of all, Iowa.
According to Michigan coach Juwan Howard, though, it takes time to figure out how to turn these close losses into wins — especially for a team as young as his.
“You have 10 guys, new guys that are a part of the team,” Howard said. “And then you also have the boatload of the players that are going to get the boatload of the minutes are young freshmen.”
While Michigan is reliant on freshmen like wing Jett Howard and guard Dug McDaniel, it isn’t alone. Purdue — starting two freshmen in its backcourt — is ranked No. 1 in the AP poll. Alabama, No. 3 in the AP Poll, regularly starts three freshmen. Jalen Hood-Schifino, Indiana’s standout guard and, yes, a freshman, torched the Wolverines Saturday night for 21 points and five assists. While a reliance on freshmen may not be the norm, it’s also not the exception in college basketball. Good teams figure out how to win with their freshmen. Michigan, however, has not.
Even after 25 games, just figuring out a reliable closing five has proved too difficult for the Wolverines. They swapped junior forward Terrance Williams II — after an atrociously misplaced entry pass to Dickinson — for graduate guard Joey Baker in the final minute of the game, desperate to find the decisive basket that eluded them for a quarter of the second half.
Time and time again, close games slip through Michigan’s fingers. After a large sample size, experience is no longer relevant. The learning period is over.
“It takes time, and there’s only one Fab Five. And that’s freshmen, you will not see that again and just had a sort of different type of mindset. I’m not asking for the Fab Five to come in here and save us,” Howard said.
Well time is out. The clock struck midnight. There’s no Fab Five coming to save the Wolverines from missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015. And if Howard is reminiscing on the past, realizing the ghost of the Fab Five is just that, a ghost — he’s going to have to find success in different ways. Just like Indiana, and any other team without a ‘fab five’ for that matter.
But those teams still manage to find ways to win close games, road games, Quad-1 games and resume-building games. Games the Wolverines can’t win.
Because Michigan just isn’t built for March.