SportsMonday: Michigan is in a rut, and Purdue needs to be its wake-up call

Three minutes and 28 seconds into the No. 21 Michigan men’s basketball team’s game against No. 11 Purdue Friday, Wolverines coach Dusty May called his first timeout. 

It was an uncommon deviation from precedent for May, who has said that he prefers to trust his players during a rough stretch rather than call an early timeout in an attempt to magically stop the bleeding. It wasn’t just any rough stretch, though. 

In roughly the first 3.5 minutes of the game, Michigan turned the ball over five times. The Wolverines got just four shots off, while the Boilermakers made five of their first seven. With his team down 13-2 so quickly, and with Mackey Arena only growing louder, May had little choice but to try breaking from his philosophy in search of a quick fix. 

Simply put, May’s attempt at a wake-up call didn’t work. Purdue went on a 12-0 run two minutes later and the Wolverines didn’t get back within 18 points for the rest of the game. They ended up losing 91-64. 

Friday’s game was a gut check for a Michigan team that started Big Ten play so hot. It was also the latest tough game in a recent rut for the Wolverines. 

So to reach the heights that May shot for from the second he was hired — the heights that Michigan has shown flashes of reaching at its best — the Wolverines need to make sure that unlike that early timeout, Friday’s game works as a wake-up call. Their response to one blowout loss needs to prevent their skid from turning into a spiral.  

None of Michigan’s recent performances spell doom on their own. Beating Purdue at Mackey is one of the toughest tasks in college basketball, as the Boilermakers boast a 154-17 home record over the past 11 seasons. Needing overtime to beat Northwestern at home isn’t ideal either, but the Wildcats are a gritty, physical team with a shot to play their way into the NCAA Tournament. Even the worst of the Wolverines’ three recent games, their Jan. 16 loss at then-last-place Minnesota, was followed by the Golden Gophers beating No. 15 Oregon on Saturday. Winning on the road in the Big Ten is hard!

That said, all three games put together look more like a problem. It begins to paint a picture of a team that, after a surprisingly strong start to the season, is regressing to its true level in conference play. May, amid this recent skid, has given credence to that perspective, acknowledging that Michigan has a ways to go to reach the level of the Big Ten’s top-tier teams. 

“(The environment) felt different,” May said postgame Friday, “There’s a different level of energy, there’s a different level of physicality. … That’s been the theme here lately, especially with the traditional Big Ten teams. We haven’t risen to the challenge from a physicality standpoint, and we’re not there as a program quite yet, but we’re going to be obsessed with getting to the point we need to.”

Deeper into Big Ten play now, physicality isn’t the only area where the Wolverines are seeing their flaws exposed. The turnovers are still a problem, albeit one that was beginning to improve before Friday’s relapse. Opponents have also begun adjusting to Michigan’s 4-5 ball screen, making life significantly harder for junior forward Danny Wolf, who has struggled as of late.

But until recently, the Wolverines continued winning in spite of those flaws. Even when Michigan lost four times, it was by a combined margin of eight points. Winning those games wouldn’t have taken massive changes; it would have only taken one or two different bounces. By their own admission, winning so much so early led the Wolverines to feel comfortable and practice accordingly.

“It’s just human nature,” freshman guard Justin Pippen said Friday. “We start getting lazy practicing and stuff like that. We don’t want to practice — we don’t want to lift as hard, so it’s bound to happen. It’s better to happen earlier than later.”

If that is the case, then getting blown out by the Boilermakers is the perfect reason for Michigan to galvanize itself. Most remaining games won’t be as difficult as going to Mackey, but no game will be easy, and sustaining a high level of play in the Big Ten requires sustaining a high level of effort day in and day out. 

The Wolverines’ rut has left them needing to play some catchup in the Big Ten standings and has shown that they aren’t yet at the level of the conference’s top contenders. But it hasn’t yet sent them crashing downhill or meaningfully altered the trajectory of the season — as long as they take this opportunity to wake back up.

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