College Basketball

Michigan Basketball Can't Find Its Stride At Home Against Ohio State

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 11:48 p.m. ET

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Fansided, Tyler Fenwick/FanSided via GBMWolverine

Things are getting ugly for Michigan basketball. The latest chapter in a sad book was a home loss to Ohio State after a week to prepare for it.

Have you stopped watching Michigan basketball? I can’t really blame you at this point. And after this pathetic loss to Ohio State at home, the Wolverines aren’t demanding that you come back.

Keep in mind, this loss to the Buckeyes came on the heels of a full five days of preparation after losing on the road to Michigan State on Sunday. How an experienced team like the Wolverines took that full week and couldn’t manage to put together a winning performance against an average Ohio State is beyond me.

But that’s what happened, and Michigan is now definitely working against the odds to make it into the NCAA tournament.

As Michigan was letting this one slip away, there was a common sentiment within Michigan Twitter: Derrick Walton Jr. deserves better than this. That’s completely right. Walton was single-handedly keeping Michigan in that game; the Wolverines would have lost by 15 without him.

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Once again, though, he needed someone to come with him on his trip to drag the Wolverines to a win, but no one showed up.

D.J. Wilson looked like he was about to—he had two 3-pointers late—but it was too late and not enough. Zak Irvin didn’t quite match his scoreless performance against Michigan State, but he came awfully close with 5 points on 2-of-10 shooting.

Same thing with Moritz Wagner, who fouled out with 5 points.

Even without the assistance for Walton, Michigan probably would have won this game had it just cleaned up on the defensive glass. The Buckeyes walked out of the Crisler Center with an astounding 16 offensive rebounds. It didn’t matter what lineup Michigan went with, Ohio State didn’t have a problem getting second (and sometimes third) chances.

The Buckeyes had 19 second-chance points.

Michigan is far away from having the luxury of getting to lose these games at this point in the season. Bubble teams can’t drop home games to teams like Ohio State.

Michigan has two very winnable games against Michigan State and Indiana coming up before hosting Wisconsin. From then on out, the schedule isn’t favorable for the Wolverines, making this loss to Ohio State that much more devastating.

As we saw last season, Michigan could certainly go into the Big Ten tournament and put on a big enough show to get an invite to the NCAA tournament, but that’s going to take quite the performance.

Simply put, Michigan needs an upset or two down the stretch. Oh yeah, and it needs to win games like this.

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