Michigan second half effort "unacceptable" to Howard - and, a theme
Juwan Howard’s Michigan basketball team seemed to be making progress — until Saturday. The Wolverines wilted in the second half again, falling 83-67 in a disappointing showing in East Lansing.
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U-M gave up an eye-opening 28 points in transition, and Michigan State scored 17 points off 13 Wolverines’ turnovers. Many of them came when U-M tried to force feed the post, telegraphing entry passes.
Michigan trailed by four at the half, but the Spartans outscored them by 12 in the second stanza, leading by as many as 19.
“I give Michigan State credit. [But] the second half, it wasn’t anything schematically they were doing — and I’m not taking anything away from coach and their coaching staff. What they did was pretty unique and special, and give credit for it,” Howard said. “They came out as the most aggressive team, the most physical team.
“The first half, we were punching and fighting, clawing, scratching. In the second half, we backed off, and that cannot happen.”
In fact, had the Wolverines made some easy shots, they could have had the lead in the first half. Center Hunter Dickinson scored 25 points, but he only made eight of 19 shots. He missed a number of opportunities in the post he’d normally make, though in his defense, the officials allowed MSU’s defenders to get extremely physical with him.
MSU pulled away early in the second half and Michigan wilted, and that’s been a consistent this year. While there have been exceptions — an 80-62 win at Indiana last week comes to mind — it obviously hasn’t been fixed.
Michigan is getting outscored in the second halves of games this season, in fact. That includes an insane 54 points allowed at UCF in late December.
“I think just defensively we weren’t locked in all the way,” Dickinson said of Michigan’s second half at MSU. “That’s a theme for us in the second half. We usually don’t play a full 20 minutes. We just have some mental lapses that open the game up for the other team and today was another example of that.”
That, and spurts in which they just don’t compete like they need to. That was the case again Saturday.
“You look at some loose balls, they beat us to 50/50 [chances],” Howard added. “Whether it’s an offensive rebound that led to a layup or dunk or three-point shot, or whether it was not sprinting back in transition. Allow a team to score 28 points on you in transition — that’s unacceptable.
“We had low energy, and that cannot happen on the road or any place. It’s that simple.”
What’s not simple, apparently, is the fix. When the Wolverines are on defense in the second half, they’re not on the same page. Howard called it miscommunication, and while that’s probably the case, it should be getting better at this point in the season.
“After halftime, the defense is now on the other side, on Michigan State’s side,” Howard said. “That’s where we have to be more communicative. We also have to do a better job of limiting our mistakes, and mistakes happen when you don’t communicate the coverages. And that’s what led to some of the baskets …
“Those are easy, correctable mistakes that happen, that’s based on fatigue. And that’s why I told our guys: I saw the fatigue in the first three minutes. You only get three timeouts and you gotta use them, you can’t just burn them all at once.”
Michigan dropped to 10-8 overall, 4-4 in conference play with the loss. The Wolverines are still in the thick of it for an NCAA Tournament berth, but they missed an opportunity Saturday to prove they were close to the team many expected they’d be this year.
There’s still time to improve. Saturday, though, was a step in the wrong direction for a Michigan team still trying to find its way in January.
