The Wolverine Basketball Show: Breaking down Michigan's win over Maryland

On this episode of The Wolverine Basketball Show, Clayton Sayfie reacts to Michigan’s 101-83 win over Maryland Saturday night in College Park to improve to 10-0 overall and 2-0 in Big Ten play.

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Sayfie began by breaking down how Michigan notched a hard fought victory over Maryland in what was a bit of a chippy game.

“I was looking for it at some point, and I thought it could’ve happened, but the Jon Rothstein tweet that he’s been going with for this Michigan team is, three minutes into the second half, Michigan is up 34, he’ll throw a tweet out there, ‘Michigan by TKO.’ And, of course, U-M did not knock out Maryland early on in this game like it did against Villanova. On Tuesday night, Michigan was up 20 points 12 minutes into that game, they were up 30 at halftime. This one follows a different script. So, that tweet from Jon Rothstein never came, because this one went 11 rounds, 12 rounds maybe. Old-school boxing fans, it went about 15 rounds. And Michigan wins by unanimous decision.

“But Maryland comes out and throws their best punch early on in this game. But the Wolverines showed that they can win in a little bit of a different way. Crawl back. They were down five at halftime, 50-45, and then early in the second half, you had a couple made threes from Maryland and you’re thinking, OK, is this going to continue. And it didn’t. Michigan pulled away, and the offense was unbelievable.

“It’s important that Michigan’s able to win this way, on the road. Kind of a weird environment, as it always is in Maryland. The fans are what they are. The flag that they roll out there is what it is. Buzz Williams teams are always chippy. I mean, I was sitting behind the Michigan bench in Denver last year for the game against Texas A&M — one of the coolest experiences of my career — and that was a chippy game. The Solomon Washington … one of the guys who was on that A&M team … gets thrown out tonight for two technicals. You had the flagrant foul underneath with Aday Mara just getting bulldozed as the Maryland guy was not even going for the basketball there.

“Kind of a weird game, and Michigan survives that. Games are going to be odd like that on the road in the Big Ten. I mean, think of the games that U-M played a year ago. The Nebraska game when no one hit a shot on either side and they were able to come out with a win. So, you never quite know what you’re going to get on the road. Michigan, 18.5-point favorites in this game, they win by 18. But it really wasn’t that wide of a margin throughout the game.”