free throws give me the willies

not the final image anyone wanted [Jack Dempsey/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

I'm drained and disappointed. I imagine anyone reading this is, too.

In a slow, ugly game, Michigan missed chance after chance to push past UCLA and into the Final Four. After trailing for most of the second half, the Wolverines twice took the lead, the final time on a Hunter Dickinson free throw with 4:30 to play. They'd stay within a possession for the rest of the game.

They wouldn't make another shot from the field, missing their last eight and getting only a pair of Franz Wagner free throws. Wagner had the cleanest look at a potential game-winner only to airball a wide-open three-pointer following a Michigan timeout with 19.8 seconds left. Eli Brooks tried to put back the miss on the fly with a reverse layup and left it short.

UCLA's Johnny Juzang split a pair of bonus free throws with six seconds left to give Michigan another crack. Smith pulled up and had the space for a good look from beyond the arc but missed the mark. Yet the Wolverines still clung to life when UCLA knocked the ensuing rebound out of bounds with what the officials determined was 0.5 seconds remaining, enough time to catch and fire. Wagner's desperation three at the buzzer never came close.

Michigan is a better team than UCLA, even without Isaiah Livers. Juzang had to be spectacular, pouring in a game-high 28 points—more than a quarter of the game's total—on 11-for-19 field goals with a high degree of difficulty. Michigan got no such performance out of their main players. Hunter Dickinson led the team with only 11 points, and while he made 5/10 shots from the field, he went 1/4 from the free throw line and committed four turnovers. Wagner shot 1/10 in arguably his worst game of the year; the only other candidate is the ugly loss to Illinois. Smith finished 1/7 and didn't record a second-half assist.

UCLA's secondary scoring paled in comparison to that of Michigan, which got quality contributions out of Brandon Johns, Chaundee Brown, and Austin Davis. Juzang's game-long heater and the immense struggles of his opponents' headliners negated that advantage. It's a game of making shots; UCLA's top bucket-getter played at his best while M's sat on the bench in a walking boot. It can be a cruel game.



Johnny Juzang, walking bucket [Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images]

In the light of day, it'll be time to celebrate the accomplishments of a team that was picked to finish seventh in the Big Ten before the season, won the conference, earned a one seed, and came within one shot (or several one shots) of a Final Four in Juwan Howard's first NCAA Tournament as a head coach. This season was an unequivocal success.

Tonight, it's tough to get over the missed shots against a beatable opponent. I was prepared to see Michigan not have enough firepower to keep up with Gonzaga; seeing that come to pass against a UCLA team that had two players score more than four points is more difficult to accept in the immediate aftermath, even if that's the nature of a game that's already produced a wild tournament.

The excitement of a top-ranked incoming recruiting class will be of considerable comfort, too. Howard is just beginning his head coaching career. The program is in as good a place as its ever been. If any program knows there are only so many clean shots at Final Fours and national championships, though, it's Michigan, and it's sad to see this team come so close to adding more banners only for a terrible shooting night to do them in.

[Hit THE JUMP for the box score.]

Yes, it's another multi-part pre-tournament mailbag, as y'all continue to ask a lot of good questions. While I've mostly got part two finished, I'm still open to adding another question or two. If you'd like to do that, email me or tag your question with #mgomailbag on Twitter.

What Is Success?



success: achieved. [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

No matter what transpires the rest of this month, this season has been a rousing success. This was supposed to be a transition year between the experienced 2016-17 squad and the set-to-be-crazy-talented 2018-19 team. John Beilein's most successful teams need a star point guard or Stauskas-like point-wing to run the offense; the players we expected to fill those spots were a MAC grad transfer and a (have you heard this before?) Kentucky transfer with an iffy shot. I figured it'd take a decent bit of Beilein coaching magic—baked into my preseason expectations at this point—to get this team somewhere in the five-seed to eight-seed range in the tourney.

While the season was on that track for a while, it's all come together late for the second straight year—Michigan has a three-seed and will hang at least one more banner in Crisler. We've seen talent development from Zavier Simpson, Jordan Poole, Isaiah Livers, and Jon Teske that's taken the expectations for next year to even greater heights. Luke Yaklich not only held up Billy Donlon's miraculous defensive turnaround; he built on it to the point Michigan boasts a top-five defense despite fielding a frontcourt with some very limited players on that end.

It'd be quite nice to avoid a massive upset against Montana; anything beyond that, even though M will be favored, is playing with house money. I will admit some greed, however, and mention that any loss will still hurt for two main reasons:

  1. John Beilein is 65 and it's difficult to predict how coaches will age. While I'm not seeing any signs of a decline—if anything, quite the opposite—there are only so many years left, and even when trying to set aside bias I can't think of a college coach more deserving of a national title.
  2. HOO DANG WOULD IT BE NICE FOR THAT TO HAPPEN IN THE YEAR LOUISVILE VACATED THE BEILEIN/BURKE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP AND FIRED RICK PITINO.

Fandom insanity aside, though, this season has already surpassed any reasonable preseason expectations, and the next one should be even better—so long as this team doesn't pull a 2014 Ohio State Football and beat the hotly anticipated future squad to the punch.

[Hit THE JUMP for much, much more.]