Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Michigan Tuesday: The Tale of Two Transfers

Michigan and LSU played a very good basketball game last night.   It was an emotional roller coaster for Michigan fans.  At a few points, you wanted to throw up and other times jump for joy.  


Michigan's bench out scored LSU Bench 26-2 and LSU had two starters that scored 30 and 27 points each.   Michigan couldn't seem to stop either Thomas or Smart anytime they wanted to shoot or drive the ball and found themselves down 9 points.  

The Wolverines didn't panic and rode the hot shooting from Brooks and Brown and won the game in the end with better defense and timely scoring.   Franz who continued to be lost for the first 30 minutes of the game, showed up for the last 10 and started to play like the future pro that he is.   That was enough to put the game out of reach and Michigan dribbled out the game and advances to the sweet 16.

Against Texas Southern Mike Smith scored 18 points and was the difference Michigan needed.   Chaundee Brown didn't score on Friday and got into early foul trouble.   Last night was just the opposite, Brown went for 21 points on 6-9 shooting, with 3 rebounds, and 1 assist.    Mike on the other hand had one of the worst games he has had in a Maize and Blue jersey.  He scored 5 points, turned the ball over twice in crunch time, and was liability on defense all night.   Seems the LSU guards shook him and he wasn't able to recover all night.  

This was a great win for the Wolverines as LSU is a talented team with two pro's in Thomas and Smart.   The rest of LSU's team scored 21 points and that wasn't enough to get the win.   Thomas and Smart was also clearly gassed at the end of the game.   Michigan moves on to play another athletic FSU team next weekend.   I watched a little bit of the FSU - Colorado game and it seemed to be a miss match of bad basketball.   Michigan is the last of 9 Big Ten teams still alive in the tournament as Maryland and Iowa went down last night.  

Michigan plays FSU on Sunday at 5:00 on CBS.   I really don't understand how the NCAA is scheduling games this year.  

  • There was a rumor that IU wanted to hire Thad Matta but he didn't pass a physical.  That rumor turned out to be un-true.  IU needs to hire the Loyola coach as soon as their run is over. 
  • Minnesota hires former Golden Gopher Ben Johnson as its next head coach.  Ben was an assistant at Xavier.  


2 comments:

Ron said...

Yes the way they're scheduling the tournament is crazy

Ron said...

Yes the way they're scheduling the tournament is crazy