MINNEAPOLIS — Junior guard Zack Novak was still hurting from the Michigan men’s basketball team’s last-second loss to No. 12 Wisconsin when he arrived in Minnesota on Friday.
“For our psyche, we just needed this one,” Novak said after Michigan beat the Golden Gophers, 70-63, on Saturday afternoon. “We just needed to get back and get a win, and have something go our way. That was one of the worst losses any of us have ever been through.”
And he knew that when he and the Wolverines took the floor at Williams Arena that a lot would be riding on those 40 minutes.
It was Michigan’s final road game of the season and if the Wolverines could pick up a win at The Barn, their four conference road-wins would be the most in program history since the 2002-03 season.
But the players didn’t even know about that.
They looked at the Wolverines’ matchup with the Golphers as a game where they would be able to show how they could bounce back from such a difficult loss. But Michigan had displayed their toughness before. After losing five-straight games in January, the Wolverines rebounded and went on a 5-1 tear in Big Ten play.
On Feb. 16 Michigan suffered a heartbreaking, two-point loss at Illinois. And after Wisconsin freshman Josh Gasser hit a bank 3-pointer to down the Wolverines, many were wondering if this young squad could pull themselves up by their bootstraps yet again.
“I think that just shows the resiliency of this group and the determination of this group,” junior guard Stu Douglass said. “(We’re the) youngest team in the Big Ten and all that, but we don’t listen to that, we don’t make an excuse or gloat about that. We don’t like to listen to that. We like to believe that we’re a good basketball team that can compete with anybody.
“We just go out every night and compete like we’re all seniors.”
The Wolverines’ youth has shown through at crucial points this season, namely in the close losses.
When Michigan faced off against then-No. 15 Minnesota at Crisler Arena in late January, the youthful Wolverines allowed themselves to be rattled by the Gophers’ intense 2-3 zone defense. And despite Michigan’s strong defense, which forced 17 Minnesota turnovers, the Wolverines were unable to close out the game, losing by five. It was their fourth loss at home.
“I think we had that stretch … where we didn’t protect the home court like we’d set out to at the beginning of the year,” Douglass said. “So every time we go on the road, we kind of want to give that team the same feeling that we felt at home. I think we really do refocus on the road and coming off some of those home losses is tough, but we don’t sit there and feel bad for ourselves. It makes us even more hungry.”
The Wolverines looked especially hungry in the first half, where they hardly seemed to miss in the opening minutes. But it’s part of learning how to not just win on the road, but how to win Big Ten games.
And with Michigan’s final regular-season coming to a close in a week against Michigan State, the Wolverines are hoping to bring that learning process back to Ann Arbor. For the young team that has gained four road wins this season, it’s hoping its winning is contagious as they it looks for its fifth conference win at home.
“When you start like that and you make six (3-pointers) in a row, it’s just that everybody starts to feel it — it’s contagious,” sophomore guard Matt Vogrich said. “Then when you start to miss a few in a row, that’s contagious too. We’ve just gotta figure out how we can score points when we’re missing. And how to get hot again and find the right equation.”