Michigan players disappointed with team's second-half effort vs. Indiana
Michigan basketball had a chance to add a Quad 1 victory to its resume on Thursday against Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament. In fact, it was a little less than 13 minutes of game action from doing so.
Indiana stormed back, Michigan lost its footing and never got back up. The Wolverines blew a 17-point lead and were on the wrong end of a 31-9 run to end the game. As a result, its stay in Indianapolis is over less than 24 hours after arriving.
Senior point guard DeVante’ Jones and sophomore center Hunter Dickinson spoke to the media after the game, flanking head coach Juwan Howard.
Asked to react to what just happened, the Michigan point guard ultimately watched the same game we all did.
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“[We’re] not happy with the results,” Jones said. “Feel like we had this game. We were up a lot and we let it slip away. We are definitely mad about that. But I feel like we are still together as a team. We always going to have each other’s back no matter what. We’re going to get back home, get back to work, see how we can get better as a team and see what happens [on Selection Sunday].
Michigan now sits at 17-14 on the season and is firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble. Most pundits predicted they would still be in regardless of Thursday’s result. That doesn’t make it sit any easier with Dickinson.
“Disappointed in how we came out in the second half. We had high aspirations coming into the weekend. And so for us to fall short so early, I was definitely disappointed for us. But this gives us an opportunity to come together for this next week or so until we have to play again.”
How Indiana threw off Michigan in Howard’s return
Dickinson was held to only two points in the second half after exploding for 13 in the first 20 minutes. He praised the Hoosiers for how they manned up against him down the stretch.
“They were a little more physical with me in the second half, for sure,” he said. “I just should have done a better job of, I guess, getting low and really establishing position down there.”
Jones agreed with the idea that the Hoosiers were the more physical basketball team than Michigan.
“They came out playing more physically, they had more effort than us in the second half,” Jones said. “I take a lot of that blame for the turnovers that I had, a lot of costly turnovers that I usually don’t make. So I just put that on myself.”
Thursday’s return of Howard to the Michigan bench was soured by an epic collapse by his team. Despite how it all went, his players are happy he is back coaching them.
“We were just happy to have our leader back,” Dickinson said.
“Yeah, we felt the energy when he was back,” Jones chimed in. “You could see in the first half we came out with a lot of energy, we got our coach back. So I’m mad that we didn’t get the W for him.”
For now, Howard and Michigan wait until Sunday to find out their postseason fate. The NCAA Tournament selection show is set for 6 p.m. ET and will be broadcast via CBS.
