2023-24 ohio state #2

The Michigan Wolverines went into Columbus today in hopes that they could sweep their arch-rival. Maybe getting two wins over Ohio State out of the 8-10 wins the Wolverines will accumulate in this nightmarish season could put sufficient lipstick on a pig so that we can extract momentarily satisfaction. It was not to be. Michigan was in it at halftime, a sloppy first half of basketball putting the home Buckeyes up only five over the Wolverines. It wasn't going to be easy, but they had a palpable shot.

Instead, Ohio State started the second half on an 10-0 run to get a sizable lead. Michigan slowly chipped its way back and got it to within seven with 10.5 minutes left and then it all crumbled. The offense went cold amid an avalanche of turnovers (a theme all game), while Ohio State's offense churned to a hyper-efficient second half, embarking on a 22-4 run that buried the Wolverines in embarrassment. A 23 point defeat and the seventh loss in a row. Michigan will finish last in the Big Ten in men's basketball for the first time since 1966-67. 

As mentioned, the first half wasn't bad for Michigan in the sense that they were in the game. It was bad for us, the fans, because it was some brutal basketball. The two teams combined to turn it over 16 times in the first half and while they did shoot it well, the flow of the game was exceedingly sloppy. The two teams scored just six points combined in the first four minutes and it took over seven minutes for Michigan to make a second basket, a Dug McDaniel three that trimmed the Ohio State lead to 10-5. Michigan opened the game 1/7 from the floor with four turnovers and found themselves in an early hole. 

[David Wilcomes]

However, the Maize & Blue battled back and at least made the first half competitive. They trailed wire-to-wire, but a push in the later stages of the first half eventually trimmed it to one. That came when McDaniel drove the lane and kicked to Terrance Williams II in the corner, who knocked down a triple. The score sat at 25-24 this point and Michigan had the chance to take the lead after Bruce Thornton missed a jumper and Michigan rebounded it down. However, McDaniel's ensuing drive was swatted by Felix Okpara, leading to a Thornton lay-in at the other end. Ohio State surged temporarily to close the half, but McDaniel snatched an offensive rebound off a George Washington III missed three and converted a layup as the horn sounded. Michigan hadn't played well, but they were alive on the road at the half, down 32-27. 

If you've watched this season, you were probably quite pessimistic at this juncture because Michigan has been disastrous in second halves all season. This game was no different. Ohio State knocked the doors off early in the second half, embarking on the noted quick 10-0 run, taking just three minutes to build a 15 point lead. Of the ten points, two were free throws and the remaining eight were dunks and layups (two of each). Points were coming easy for the Bucks early on, while Michigan's offense spun its tires in the mud. Ohio State had a comfortable lead and were now firmly in control in a way they never had in the first half. 

To Michigan's credit, they didn't totally lay down and die. At least not yet. Michigan answered with a 7-0 spurt of their own, another Williams three and then a few solid plays from Youssef Khayat, who had been inserted into the game after Nimari Burnett picked up his third foul. A moving screen was called on Ohio State that Khayat drew, giving Michigan the ball only down eight some 4+ minutes into the half. They'd taken a bit of a beating but the game wasn't over. From there the two teams were stuck on a bit of a seesaw, back-and-forth as Ohio State threatened to make it a blowout and then Michigan would hit back, oscillating around the ten point margin range. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More recap]

THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

The recent history of athletic directorship at Michigan and Ohio State is a study in reactivity versus proactivity. Representing the latter, and without going into the conspiracy section of this history, soon-retiring OSU AD Gene Smith was the most powerful voice in American university athletics administration for the last few decades, and used those positions to direct every NCAA and Big Ten institution from the basketball tournament to the current response to NIL.

Recently Smith voluntarily reported a suite of violations to the NCAA, along with measures taken. All were more consequential than anything Michigan's been accused of in more notorious cases--including tampering and lying to the NCAA about it to acquire the top player in the portal--but Smith knows the system he helped create, and how much it weighs whether a violation was reported by one's self to one's friends, versus by one's rival's to one's vindictive enemies.

Smith also recently, proactively, fired his heretofore pretty good basketball coach Chris Holtmann following a stretch where Holtmann's team lost 9/10 games, including one to hated, abysmal Michigan. That game was arguably an anomaly--Ohio State had better looks and possession metrics, while Michigan shot 20 points better than their average on a high volume of threes. One could say the same of some of the post-Holtmann wins.

But ADs and coaches are rarely graded on what their results should have been. In the realm of what is, Holtmann's team was well out of the Tournament, while interim basketball coach Jake Diebler already has an upset over #2 Purdue, followed a week later by an upset *AT* #21 MSU. Diebler's reinvigorated squad is coming off another authoritative win versus Nebraska despite playing Keisei Tominaga without the Buckeyes' own star point guard. They're currently the 12th team out to Heartbreak City, but it's a volatile bubble this year, with little to separate OSU from several Big East teams hanging on the 10-11 line.

Likewise, there's no way the extremely deliberative, reactionary Warde Manuel could have predicted his basketball team would have two wins since December 19th. Except to the perpetually negative, precipitory events like chasing G-League-bound "5-stars" who were mediocre one-and-dones in college (including the coach's defense-repellent son), banking on transfers who didn't have their degrees, and other warning signs about roster construction and program culture issues are only manifest in hindsight.

That's the trick with being an AD: small sample sizes don't make for any kind of surety. It could be Diebler's 3-1 start is fool's gold, that Michigan's fifth-year, first-time coach's mistakes are all behind him, and that Manuel's patient lethargy will be rewarded when Juwan Howard is the greatest coach in basketball by 2027-'28. Did we judge George Washington from his first command? Nay! It could be that the patient man will prove the more prescient, and that in the years to come Gene Smith's aggressiveness—for example in selecting TV man Tony Petitti to maximize the B10's TV revenue and playoff exposure at the cost of everything else—will come back to haunt his legacy. For the moment, Ohio State hasn't beaten Michigan in football or basketball in its last three tries. So who's to say?

[Hit THE JUMP: How did we beat these guys? Oh right.]