CHICAGO − The mood in the Michigan basketball locker room was closer to frustration than sadness, more disappointment than anger.
The Wolverines fell, 80-72, to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament championship on Sunday, March 15, with the regular-season champs narrowly missing out on completing the Big Ten sweep. The Wolverines simply couldn’t stop Purdue, which made 15 of 26 (57.7%) of its attempts in the second half and got 41 combined points from bigs Oscar Cluff and Trey Kaufman-Renn. Braden Smith, last season’s Big Ten player of the year, was the reason; he got to his spots all afternoon, putting up 14 points and dishing out 11 assists – of the Boilermakers’ 30 makes, Smith either scored or assisted on 17 of them, 56.7%.
It was more than enough to hand Michigan (31-3) its first loss to a Big Ten foe in more than two months.
And yet the Wolverines remain confident heading into the NCAA Tournament.
“We are the best defensive team in the country and we didn’t show that tonight,” Yaxel Lendeborg said before the NCAA field’s announcement. “We have Aday [Mara] and Morez [Johnson Jr.], the best down-low defenders I’ve ever played with, and today they just got the best of us, so they did a great job.”
Michigan will be the 1-seed in the Midwest region – feturing the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight in Chicago – facing the winner of Tuesday’s First Four game in Dayton, Ohio, between 16-seeds UMBC and Howard. Assuming U-M avoids a catastrophic upset in Buffalo, New York – remember, UMBC stunned the sport by beating 1-seed Virginia in 2018’s first round – it will face either 8-seed Georgia or 9-seed Saint Louis on Saturday.
The Wolverines knew once they saw the draw, they’d be ready to appreciate what they’d done, put the loss behind them and move on to their next goal. But before then, it was hard for some to deal with missing their chance at a historic title.
Elliot Cadeau, who had 10 points and 10 assists, was particularly bothered by the fact that Michigan was the “best team in the league the whole year,” but Purdue gets to hang a banner for a weekend of work.
“It’s definitely good to have a short memory to start off on a fresh page for the next tournament,” Cadeau said. “We still feel like we’re the best team in the country and we just got to do the stuff we did the whole regular season.”
Lendeborg said he sensed he needed to try and take over, and did at times with two tough layups and a pair of critical 3s in the second half. But in his words, “it was too little, too late.”
The Wolverines certainly appear to miss the scoring off the bench that guard L.J. Cason provided. In each of U-M’s five games since he tore his ACL, the Wolverines have either led by one possession or trailing during the final five minutes. If feels like the maize-and-blue machine is simply missing its top gear.
The Wolverines begin their NCAA Tournament push Thursday − a quick turnaround for a team suddenly licking its wounds.
Still, the confidence is there, as is a new sense of urgency seemingly missing before the Boilermakers proved that the Wolverines were still mortal.
“We can’t let nobody come in here and punk us again,” Lendeborg said. “We had that happen with Duke. [Purdue] did the same thing. They punked us down low and won the game, so we’ve got to learn from that mistake.
“But today is even I guess a worse learning point for us because we lost a championship that we really deserved and really wanted. So next game, we’re going to do our best to win down low and dictate the tempo.”
Tony Garcia is the Michigan beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball still believes in ‘best team in the country’
Reporting by Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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