No. 1 seed Michigan notched a 101-80 win over No. 16 seed Howard in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, but it wasn’t always easy. The Bison had the recipe for an upset in the first half, but the Wolverines weathered the storm, and coach Dusty May said it was a good learning experience.
Howard’s red-hot shooting in the first half, which included 10 3-pointers, helped the underdog hang around. Michigan held a slim 50-46 lead at halftime, and May admitted that the possibility of an upset started to creep into his mind.
“I was actually thinking, ‘This is how they usually happen,'” May said.
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The Wolverines were able to pull away, outscoring the Bison 51-34 in the second half, and it helped that Howard cooled off from long range. The Bison knocked down just 4 of 13 3-point attempts in the final 20 minutes.
Nerve-wracking as that first half may have been for Michigan, it may be a good thing in the long run. The Wolverines absorbed an upset punch and lived to tell the tale, but they’ll get another tricky test in the Round of 32 against a St. Louis team that just dropped 102 points on Georgia.
Anatomy of a March Madness upset
When an underdog shoots the lights out, it can cause the higher seed to lose its head, and that becomes a dangerous combination. Just look at what happened to No. 5 seed Wisconsin in its 83-82 loss to No. 12 seed High Point.
The Badgers led by eight points with under five minutes remaining when the Panthers caught fire. High Point star and freshly minted folk hero Chase Johnston went on an incredible 21-12 run as Wisconsin committed a pair of costly turnovers and failed to get key stops on defense.
While that was a good example of what not to do in a potential upset situation, Michigan got the playbook for surviving an upset earlier in the day when No. 1 seed Duke rallied from behind to beat No. 16 seed Siena.
The Blue Devils trailed the Saints by 13 points, but they kept their poise and stormed back for a 71-65 win. May said he was impressed by how Duke stuck to its game plan and played as a team.
“I thought Duke handled that upset [bid] with great maturity,” May said. “When things weren’t looking great for them, and this is what we learned from it today, they didn’t go one-on-one and try to play hero ball. They made some hustle-energy plays, and those are the ones that turned the tide. Offensive rebounds. Second and third shots. Maybe a stop that turns into a transition basket.”
The Wolverines did something similar by simply leaning on one of their biggest advantages — size in the paint. Morez Johnson Jr., 6-foot-9, finished with a team-leading 21 points. Aday Mara, 7-foot-3, wasn’t far behind with 19 points. Michigan punished Howard down low.
“We did a good job against their pressure,” May said. “We were able to get it inside, especially in the second half, and take advantage of what the game was giving us.”
Michigan on upset alert again?
Michigan might be able to take the lessons it learned from the Howard win and apply them in the second round against Saint. Louis. That’s because the Billikens just lit KeyBank Center on fire with a 102-77 win over Georgia on Thursday night.
While Howard did a lot of its damage from beyond the arc, Saint Louis did things a little bit differently. The Billikens made just nine 3-pointers all game while crushing the Bulldogs inside. Saint Louis scored 54 of its first 67 points — and 66 points total — in the paint. Led by Robbie Avila, the Billikens do have some good size. Avila, Brady Dunlap and Paul Otieno are all 6-foot-7 or taller.
That’s not to say Saint Louis is incapable of heating up from long range. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The Billikens are the second-best 3-point shooting team in the country — making 40.1 percent of their attempts and draining an average of 10.9 3-pointers per game.
That means Saint Louis will be capable of beating Michigan in more ways than Howard was. It will still be very difficult for the Billikens to match the Wolverines’ towering trio of Johnson, Mara and Lendeborg, but it may be another relatively close game at halftime.
To reach the Sweet 16, Michigan may have to lean on the same poise it displayed against Howard to dispatch an upset-minded opponent.