A tale of two halves is the best way to describe the Michigan basketball team’s 73-69 win against Indiana at Crisler Arena on Saturday.
The Wolverines (6-7 Big Ten, 16-10 overall) went into halftime having taken just five 3-pointers — a season low for the Wolverines in one stanza — and making only one of them. But in the second half, Michigan hoisted 10 shots from 3-point land and drained seven of them.
“It wasn’t like our game plan not to take many shots in the first half, it just happened that way,” junior guard Stu Douglass said. “But then in the second, the baskets just opened up so we took a lot more. Everybody was making their shots.”
After committing 10 turnovers, the Hoosiers (3-10, 12-14) were fortunate to end the first half trailing just 32-24. Indiana scored half of its points on fast breaks but couldn’t get anything done in its set offense.
“We just played our game,” sophomore guard Matt Vogrich said. “Evan (Smotrycz) got in the way of some passes. Tim (Hardaway Jr.) had some steals. We just stepped it up on defense.”
Michigan made adjustments at halftime because even though it led the Hoosiers by eight points, it could have led by a wider margin. And so the Wolverines came out firing in the second half.
Freshman Tim Hardaway Jr. sank his first 3-point attempt in the second half and finished the game with 26 points. In fact, Michigan gained a ton of momentum and maintained a comfortable double-digit lead after draining its first four 3-pointers out of the locker room.
With about five minutes left in the game, Indiana quietly went on a 12-0 run to cut the lead from 22 points to 10 and then eventually found itself within two possessions of the Wolverines after Michigan had missed eight free throws to close the game.
The crowd fell silent and Michigan’s bench looked frustrated. The Hoosiers instituted a full-court press for the last two minutes, and it forced the Wolverines into two turnovers and two timeouts.
“It’s not like we were bad on the inbound,” Douglass said. “They were doing a great job. Calling a timeout isn’t bad, it’s better than making a dumb pass and turning the ball over. But sometimes it was hard to find the open man.”
On top of the irritation that the press was creating, Michigan was fouled in the final minutes and had difficulty finishing at the line. In the closing minutes, four of the Wolverines five starters accumulated eight missed free throws — Michigan went 19-for-37 from the charity stripe on Saturday.
“You don’t even really address it,” Michigan coach John Beilein said of the poor free-throw shooting. “You don’t make a big deal out of it. I’ll silently rep them more, I’ll silently do more things. But we won’t make a big deal out of it because we’ve been very good (at free-throw shooting) all year long.”
Indiana used a big 3-pointer and its ability to penetrate the lane to come within one possession of the Wolverines with 28 seconds remaining. But that’s when sophomore guard Darius Morris — who tallied 15 points — went to the line and gave the Wolverines a two-possession edge.
It’s unusual that a made free throw produces so much excitement. But when Morris hit his freebies to send Indiana back to Bloomington, Crisler erupted.
“It was crazy, we’ve got such good shooters,” sophomore guard Josh Bartelstein said. “It’s one of those things like how 3-point shooting is contagious — free-throw shooting is contagious too. At the end of the game we couldn’t seem to buy any of them. But we’ll work on it. It’s nothing we’re too worried about because we’re a good shooting team.”