(No caption)
The hoops weekend began with such promise.
Michigan State was again one of the NCAA Tournament’s favorites to win it all. Tom Izzo waited 16 years to add a second national title to his long list of accomplishments, and the group that he had this season appeared to check all the championship boxes.
John Beilein and Michigan had scrapped and clawed their way to even get to Friday night’s first round tilt with Notre Dame. The Wolverines needed last-second heroics to take down both Northwestern and Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament, then used similar end-of-game dramatics to slip by underwhelming Tulsa in a play-in game.
It was looking like a “don’t leave the couch” weekend for all Michigan sports fans: as many as four huge college basketball contests, MSU potentially gearing up for a historic run through the bracket, and Michigan looking to continue its cardiac, come-backing ways into the Sweet Sixteen.
That was the plan, at least. But high-level athletics remains our most unpredictable TV drama.
You think you know all the characters, what they can do, and how it will all end up. But then there’s a big twist and you find out that Middle Tennessee State was the villain all along. And that Notre Dame was still written into the show to make your life miserable.
Not Such a Cute Underdog
The Blue Raiders’ takedown of star Denzel Valentine and the rest of the Spartans was stunning for so many reasons, mainly that there was no wild finish or wacky comeback by the underdog. Middle Tennessee got an early lead, built it up quickly, then spent the rest of the afternoon keeping the powerhouse Spartans at bay. It was a complete reversal of roles, and one that we really haven’t seen in early rounds over Izzo’s tenure. There have been early losses in a tournament every so often, but never on the scale of a 15-seed axing a two.
There were games throughout the Michigan State campaign when you might have thought, “Valentine is being asked to do too much out there.” Yes, he was one of the country’s top players, maybe the very best of all. But having to create offense for others, score his own points, handle the ball on every big possession -- it just seemed like the load wasn’t being shared quite enough.
Sure enough, against MTSU, Valentine looked a little bit like a guy that had been carrying a giant sack of potatoes on his back all year long, and the legs were just starting to give. He did rack up 12 assists -- nobody else on the team had more than two. But 12 dimes only mean so much when you are also turning it over a half-dozen times, which Valentine did. He logged 37 minutes of court time, most on the team, and appeared entirely deflated in the post-game presser. For a guy that put together such a brilliant senior season, this was about the cruelest way it could finish; in the middle of a Friday afternoon before the tournament had even gotten a chance to stretch its legs.
When the Shots Don’t Fall
As for Michigan, their defeat was different in that nothing was expected of the club when the brackets were released. But then they went to Dayton and fought off Tulsa, matched up with Notre Dame and played a sterling first half. A double-digit lead against a relatively inconsistent Fighting Irish team is usually good enough to get you home safely. But on this weekend of basketball horrors, the upsetting final act was about what you could expect.
Notre Dame turned up the heat defensively, abandoning a very leaky zone in favor of a more intense man-to-man, and the Wolverines entered into one of their patented offensive slumps. Mark Donnal got Michigan to 48 points with 15 minutes left in the game. They’d huff and puff their way to point number 50 a whopping six minutes later. By then, the Irish had wiped away all of the deficit and it was curtains from there. All told, Michigan would ring up just 22 total points in the entire second half, a respectable total on the gridiron, but not the hardwood.
If John Beilein is to continue playing his style of ball, with mostly shooters and only token inside players, there simply must be more accurate snipers occupying those spots. That was the Wolverines’ downfall throughout the year. They play small, they shoot a lot of treys, but they’re not necessarily blessed with great outside threats. Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton are capable of making shots from out there, of course. But they’re not particularly proficient at it, which is more or less a must when you go into each game with an obvious deficiency on the interior.
In this game, Irvin sank 1 of 9 from downtown. He was under 30% from long distance on the year. At the same time, he’s been lethal of late from the mid-range area, and maybe next year Beilein needs to turn him into Rip Hamilton 2.0, with a barrel full of 16-footers and far fewer from deep.
To the Rescue: Anthony Tolliver?
By Saturday night, there was a chance that the local basketball scene still hadn’t taken its worst hit yet. The Pistons were playing home to one of the NBA’s worst clubs, the Nets, who took the court without the services of their top player, Brook Lopez. In a game the Pistons had to have, they slept-walk their way through almost three quarters and trailed by six to this mostly D-league roster. Then Anthony Tolliver decided enough was enough, and proceeded to hit approximately 17 threes in the final quarter and change. The high-socked Tolliver, along with fellow super-sub Lumberjack Aron Baynes, turned a potentially season-crushing loss into a desperately-needed double-digit victory.
It was a small consolation prize when compared to the Spartan/Wolverine dual Friday letdowns, but at least it means there might still be some meaningful basketball around these parts come spring. It just means that said drama could be in the form of a 4-1 Cavs thrashing over the Pistons instead of Valentine, Forbes, and the rest cutting down the championship nets in Houston.
It was indeed a sad basketball weekend for all in the state of Michigan.
