i guess this is gardening blog or something
3/30/2021 – Michigan 49, UCLA 51 – 23-5, 14-3 B10, Season Over
This is absolutely projecting my feelings onto a sporting event determined by a lot of coinflips that went the wrong way, but in the end it felt like the weight got to them.
A year of empty arenas and COVID tests. A perpetual uncertainty about what games would even be played. A three-week break in the middle of the season where they couldn't even practice together. A captain lost on the eve of the tournament. Juwan Howard losing his mentor to COVID. A fanbase that just needs something to remind them why they're a fanbase at all.
— MichiganCFBRisk (@cfb_risk) March 30, 2021
All college basketball teams played under a weight this year, of course, but Michigan's was amongst the heaviest. They soldiered through it better than anyone not named Gonzaga. They demolished the Big Ten, until things started to come undone.
The thing about carrying a weight is that you can do it without looking burdened for a while, and then you slow down some. Then maybe you have a second wind, and then you're staring at it on the ground wondering how you ever picked it up in the first place. Michigan's weary bones tried to get a ball all the way to the basket late in this game and just could not.
After every fateful miss I exhaled a little bit more, resigned. Not angry, just succumbing to the inevitable. Hunter Dickinson and Mike Smith missed five consecutive free throws, Franz Wagner went 1/10, and Michigan shot 13/25 at the rim. What can you do? Sometimes you want your arm to do a thing and it says no.
[After THE JUMP: attack of the killer ants!]
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