BUFFALO, NY – Forget all the scouting and data and comparisons, because, in the end, there really wasn’t much of a comparison in Michigan basketball’s victory over Saint Louis in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Wolverines flexed their muscles and their might, asserting their will while showing off their clear size advantage and talent gap.
The top seed pulled away in the second half from the 9-seed Billikens for a 95-72 win Saturday, March 21, at KeyBank Center that sent them back to the Sweet 16 for a second straight year.
Michigan will face Sunday night’s winner between 4-seed Alabama and 5-seed Texas Tech on March 27 in the Sweet 16 in Chicago.
Yaxel Lendeborg led Michigan with 25 points. Four other Wolverines, meanwhile, scored in double figures, including Aday Mara, who had 16 points and was the key defender on Saint Louis star center Robbie Avila – aka “Cream Abdul-Jabbar” – who was held to nine points.
You wouldn’t get much argument about Michigan’s supremacy from Josh Schertz, the Billikens’ coach and a good friend of U-M coach Dusty May’s, after he called the Wolverines the best team in the country before their game. And they lived up to it.
“There’s not a lot of where you look at them and think, oh, that’s a true weakness,” Schertz said after the Billikens’ first-round win over Georgia.
If there’s one team in the tournament that might have had an uncanny advantage over Michigan, it was Saint Louis. That’s because Schertz and May are longtime close friends and kindred basketball spirits who share a lot of their data, video and information. In several ways, they’re considered conceptual cousins.
But the family resemblance ended on the court Saturday, when Michigan pulled away from a nine-point halftime lead and put down the hammer with a next-level offensive effort that featured a faster pace, a stout defense and some thunderous dunks.
The biggest of the game came from Lendeborg, who blew past Ishan Sharma down the lane and threw down a monster one-handed jam.
The Wolverines entered halftime with a 48-39 lead, which they had to earn in every way by responding to Saint Louis’ big run and resilience, thanks to its penetration. Michigan held only a slight edge, 18-16, on points in the paint in the first half.
Even though Avila ran into early foul trouble, picking up his second just 4:44 into the game, he stayed on the court as the focal point – a “hub,” as May and Schertz call it – that ran Saint Louis’ offense, often setting up give-and-go’s down the lane.
Mara was the prime defender on Avila and held him to just three points in the first half, but Avila remained the key facilitator and floor general for the Billikens.
Avila was a big reason Saint Louis stayed in the game and made a big 15-3 run midway through the first half that put the Billikens ahead, 27-23, for their largest lead of the first 20 minutes.
A different team might have started to collapse after that run, but Michigan responded by focusing their offense might and playing tighter defense en route to a 25-12 run to end the half.
One highlight came from Mara battling Avila under the Michigan basket, backing him in and then faking a pass that Avila bit on, which let Mara pivot around a stunned Avila for an easy layup and a 40-31 lead with 5:48 left.
Defensively, the Wolverines also upped the ante. There was no better example than their fortress-like effort with 3:41 left that led to a Saint Louis shot-clock violation.
That effort led the beginning of the Wolverines’ dominance in the second half that they’ll want to continue in the Sweet 16 – and one that should serve as a warning to their upcoming future opponents.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball flexes muscle vs Saint Louis on way to Sweet 16
Reporting by Carlos Monarrez, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
