Takeaways from Michigan’s ugly win over Nebraska

It wasn’t pretty, but the #Michigan Wolverines are leaving Nebraska with a 49-46 win, in a game where offense wasn’t exactly easy to come by:

The basketball equivalent of an Iowa-Minnesota football game was played in Lincoln Monday evening, with the Michigan Wolverines narrowly coming away with victory over the Nebraska Cornhuskers in a basketball game that was allergic to offense, 49-46.

While the Wolverines are firmly in the tournament field, the Cornhuskers are on the bubble, being projected as one of the last four byes in Joe Lunardi’s bracketology . Lincoln is a tough place to play, with Nebraska picking up home wins over Indiana, Illinois and Ohio State this season. Sandwiched between Xavier and Pittsburgh, Nebraska entered this game ranked 54th in the NET with a 5-9 record in Quad 1 games.

This would have been Nebraska’s most impressive win of the season had it not been for the Cornhuskers shooting a horrific 26 percent from the field. Michigan made the nearly fatal flaw of playing down to it’s competition, but the Wolverines leaned on Danny Wolf for just enough clutch buckets to win this one.

It doesn’t feel like it after a win this ugly, but with this victory, Michigan has now matched Michigan State with a 13-3 Big Ten record at the top of the conference standings. The Spartans hold the tiebreaker after last weekend’s rivalry win, but Michigan has a chance to exact revenge in less than two weeks. The Big Ten title is still very much in play for the Wolverines in Dusty May’s first season.

Here are the takeaways from a putrid game that Michigan should have won by a lot more.

Michigan narrowly wins points in paint, and a few key baskets make the difference

With Michigan getting off to a bad start from three, the Wolverines got the majority of their points in the paint in the first half (18 of their 25 points). Vlad Goldin accounted for six of those points in the first four minutes of game play, and the Wolverines ended up outscoring the Cornhuskers in the paint, 22-18, partially thanks to good rim protection from U-M.

In this low scoring affair, Michigan leaned on Danny Wolf second-half points, as it has most of the season. Five straight points from Wolf and a three from freshman L.J. Cason gave Michigan a six-point lead with 4:24 left.

Somehow, that sequence was nearly enough to win Michigan this game. Some clutch free throws from Roddy Gayle Jr, and Tre Donaldson helped seal the win.

Slowing down Brice Williams is difficult

Leading the Cornhuskers in points per game (19.4), Brice Williams is tied for third in scoring in the Big Ten, with his scoring being a big reason Nebraska is on the right side of the bubble. With 13 points, he was the only Cornhusker that scored in the first 10+ minutes of game action. He was literally the only consistent source of offense for Nebraska, accounting for 18 of its 21 first-half points.

The Wolverines certainly could have used Rubin Jones’ on-ball defense, who was listed as questionable before the game and didn’t end up playing.

Williams finished the game scoring the vast majority of Nebraska’s points (26-of-46). Luckily for the Wolverines, Cornhuskers not named Williams started off 1-of-10 from the field and finished 7-for-42 (16.6 percent). Michigan didn’t have much of an answer for Williams, but the Wolverines didn’t let any of the other Huskers beat them.

Michigan chucked way too many bad threes

The Wolverines were pressing offensively; with a combination of bad shooting outside of the paint, choppy game flow, and decent half-court defense by the Cornhuskers, scoring points was a real struggle.

The Wolverines tried to shoot themselves out of that struggle, jacking up bad threes quickly to try to create shots that weren’t there. Shots didn’t come naturally and there was no semblance of flow on offense, an odd site with the U-M running like clockwork for most of this season.

Michigan missed 17 of its first 20 threes, and finally stopped settling for bad looks around the under-eight timeout of the second half.

Not every game is going to be like this, but this was a clear reminder it’s hard to shoot yourself out of a bad shooting night. Sometimes you just got to take the ball to the paint, or give the ball to your 7-foot big man and get out of the way.

A decent game from Roddy Gayle Jr.

Roddy Gayle Jr. re-entered the starting lineup after coming off the bench for four games and did a decent job on both ends. Offense was hard to come by early in this one, but Gayle had a decent night early, scoring eight points in the first half. He cut well towards the middle of the floor to set himself up for easy points off Wolf feeds. He finished with a team-high 12 points, and missing the front end of that one-and-one thankfully didn’t bite Michigan in the butt.

I thought Gayle played good on-ball defense as well, moving his feet well, staying aggressive and notching a block. While Nebraska didn’t exactly have great shot selection, I thought the Wolverines were pretty sound defensively after a bad second half defending the Spartans a few days ago.

A ROUGH first half for both teams offensively

Per the FS1 broadcast, Michigan has scored 40 or more points in first halves 16 times this season. The Wolverines didn’t come near that total in this first half, but neither did the Cornhuskers. U-M led 25-21 at the half.

Both teams combined to shoot 29.2 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes, including an abysmal 16.1 percent from three. Nebraska had multiple scoring droughts — one lasting nearly five game minutes (15:39-10:48) and one lasting nearly three (9:28-5:45). Nebraska went nearly seven game minutes (9:28-2:34) without a made field goal, but in spite of that, the game was somehow tied at 21 with 2:11 left in the half.

Both teams posted their season-low in points at the half. The Cornhuskers were especially horrendous for most of the half offensively, with players not named Brice Williams shooting 1-of-19 from the field. The Wolverines failed to take advantage of that, and would have been up by 15 with even an average shooting night.

Up Next

The schedule doesn’t slow down this time of year, with Michigan playing two more games this week. The Wolverines host Rutgers on Thursday, Feb. 28 (9 p.m. EST on Peacock) before hosting Illinois on Sunday, March 2 (3:45 p.m. EST on CBS).