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2/19/2020 – Michigan 60, Rutgers 52 – 17-9, 8-7 Big Ten

It was weird seeing Jalen Rose directly behind the Michigan bench last night. It was weirder when Eli Brooks hit a cold-blooded three after getting stuck with a late clock possession against a 6'7" guy. The camera cut to the bench, where Zavier Simpson and Rose were doing the same thing:

This is a synthesis of two different Michigan pasts, its present, and its future.

One of the two pasts is offscreen: it's Brooks canning the three. Brooks is the most Beilein kid on Michigan's current roster. He's utterly devoid of swag. He remembers things after you tell him. He plays relentless positional defense in the manner of a guy determined to overcome limitations. He shoots from distance; the rim is a rumor unless the opposition has gotten beaten by one of Michigan's sets.

He feels like a mid-major player who got bumped up by circumstance. Eli Brooks is Zack Novak and Stu Douglass and the progression of guys who are just making it work against all athletic odds. Maybe not the most common Beilein architype, but the most Beilein archetype.

The other past is obvious, with apologies to Chris Hunter: Jalen freakin' Rose. Fab Five guy. Decade-long NBA career. Now paid to be interesting in public. The Fab Five was larger than life and Rose was always the guy with the mic. Your author had some problems with Rose in the Beilein era because he didn't seem to care about the program at all until it made the Final Four, and then that was just an opportunity to talk about how rad the Fab Five was.

To be clear, Rose has every reason to be bitter about how Michigan treated him and his classmates for close to 20 years. hat bitterness could only increase as the idea that paying basketball players was immoral was repudiated by ever more important components of the college basketball ecosystem. First bloggers, then sportswriters, then coaches, and finally the NCAA itself. For Michigan's banners to stay down while Will Wade and Bill Self keep their jobs after being definitively proven as violators by the FBI (the FBI!)… well, if that was me I'd probably be pretty distant too.

But he's back, and he's hanging on Eli Brooks. Hanging.

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The present is Zavier Simpson, who's only on the bench in the shot above because he's got four fouls and Michigan's buying him a couple minutes. Aside from this brief period he barely comes off the floor, leads Michigan in scoring, and is robbed of a double-digit assist game by Michigan's erratic three-point shooting.

Simpson is the exact opposite of a Beilein archetype, brought in as a no-shoot all-D point guard. He's beaten himself into a progressively better player over the course of four years. He's not a Beilein creation or a Juwan Howard creation. He is always becoming himself with no outside intervention except from maybe dad. He scores his 1,000th point in this game on a hook shot he and only he uses.

It didn't matter whether Beilein stayed or not. There was never going to be another Zavier Simpson. Juwan Howard won't recruit anyone like him; John Beilein wouldn't have. That's because there are no other players like Zavier Simpson. He is sui generis.

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To get to the future you gotta put it all together. Brooks is 0/5 in this game at the suddenly impregnable RAC. This space repeatedly wondered whether he had a mental block against high level teams, and thought David DeJulius should start eating to his minutes. Juwan Howard didn't, and Juwan Howard was right, and Eli Brooks just hit the iciest shot of his career.

Jalen Rose is there, a couple games after Dikembe Mutumbo and Worldwide Wes were at Welsh-Ryan, of all places. Juwan Howard knows everyone and everyone likes him. Michigan's tendency towards factionalism could easily rise up in the aftermath of losing the best coach in program history, but it won't because everyone wants Juwan Howard to succeed from Lebron James on down.

Zavier Simpson is there. Juwan Howard has gotten out of Simpson's way and let him have his team.

It's really hard to get everyone pulling in one direction. Everyone reading this knows that in their bones. In Juwan Howard it seems like Michigan's found a guy who can pull up the guys who need it, leave the guys who don't alone, and gather everyone to him, past, present, and future.

[After THE JUMP: the new disaster artist]

Rutgers hadn't lost on their home court all season. Isaiah Livers, nursing a twisted ankle, didn't even go through warmups. The Scarlet Knights pulled down 14 offensive rebounds to Michigan's four, committed one fewer turnover, and got up 16 more shots from the field. The Wolverines made only 6-of-23 three-point attempts. Livers's replacement, Brandon Johns, scored a single point and had more fouls (four) than rebounds (three).

Nonetheless, Michigan found a way to become the first team to win at the RAC since March 6th, 2019.

It took some searching. Not long after Rutgers climbed their way out of an early first-half deficit, Johns picked up his second foul, and Juwan Howard planted him on the bench in favor of Adrien Nunez. The offense went cold and the defense looked shaky as Michigan mostly went to a 2-3 zone. With a stepback three at the halftime buzzer, Geo Baker put the Scarlet Knights ahead, 31-28.

David DeJulius hit some big shots [Wilcomes]

When Johns fouled Akwasi Yeboah on RU's first possession of the second half, Colin Castleton went to the scorer's table in Nunez's stead. The decision to go big paid immediate dividends. Castleton drove through Shaq Carter for an and-one layup just after the Scarlet Knights had taken a nine-point lead, their biggest of the game. He sealed off his man to free David DeJulius for a baseline floater and hit two free throws after he rebounded a DeJulius miss, cutting the deficit to one on each play. He teamed up with Jon Teske and Franz Wagner to form a forest of arms on the back line of the zone, stymieing repeated efforts to get to the basket. Yeboah tried to take him off the dribble and lost the ball out of bounds.

DeJulius then hit a runner followed by a corner three off a beautiful setup from Zavier Simpson to give Michigan a lead they wouldn't relinquish. Castleton finished with five points, four rebounds, and a block while going +9 in ten minutes that turned the tide of the game.

Eli Brooks went 3-for-4 inside the arc [Wilcomes]

Simpson had another great performance, leading the team with 16 points on 13 shooting possessions and adding six rebounds, five assists, and two steals. He knocked down two early threes—he was the only Wolverine to make more than one triple—to get Rutgers to stop ducking under screens against him, then feasted the rest of the game by getting into the middle of the defense at will. He scored his 1,000th career point tonight, becoming the fourth player in school history to surpass 1,000 points and 500 assists; fittingly, it came on a hook shot over a center to beat the shot clock.

Whenever it looked like Rutgers might pull even, the Wolverines would come up with a stop and a bucket. Michigan looked to be cruising to the finish line up six with the ball heading into the under-four media timeout when Wagner carried the ball trying to break a full-court press. Yeboah airballed a contested corner three, however, and Johns hustled to help ensure Paul Mulcahey couldn't reel in a long rebound. After a ragged possession, Eli Brooks stepped into a pull-up three that caught Mulcahey leaning back and put the final dagger in Rutgers's home winning streak.

The win, Michigan's fourth straight, moves the Wolverines to 8-7 in the Big Ten. Barring a brutal collapse, they've solidified a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Not bad for a team that's rarely been at full strength while navigating the toughest conference in the country with a first-time head coach taking over someone else's roster.

[Hit THE JUMP for the box score.]

The World Is Hers

Last year's Big Ten freshman and sixth player of the year, 6'2" forward Naz Hillmon, is only getting better. After dropping a 30-point, ten-rebound hammer on #20 Iowa, Hillmon took home conference player of the week honors. She's currently averaging 17.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game while shooting 57% from the field; she's only stepped up her game in conference play, upping those averaged to 19.9 points and 9.6 boards, with more than half her rebounds coming on the offensive end.

As the above highlights display, Hillmon is a force. Just ask her coach:

“To me, nobody has figured out how to defend her,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “I don’t know if she’s defendable. … She affects the game in many ways, she gets offensive rebounds when we need offensive rebounds, she gets defensive stops when we need a big defensive stop.”

The Iowa win was huge for Michigan's tournament chances. According to Warren Nolan's indispensable college basketball reference site, it was the Wolverines's second quadrant one win in RPI (still a thing in the women's game), and if #46 Rutgers falls off a bit it could stand as their only Q1 win before long.

At 14-7 (5-5 Big Ten), the Wolverines are holding steady as a ten-seed in ESPN's bracketology. The remaining schedule provides a decent mix of winnable games against the bottom of the conference and chances to bolster the resumé against tourney teams. This evening provides a golden opportunity to strengthen position as Michigan hosts Purdue, which is 6-5 in the conference and also projects as a ten-seed. That game tips off at 6 pm Eastern on BTN.

[Hit THE JUMP for some befuddling big man decisions and a look at Franz Wagner]