After you watch a team play over 30 games, you think you know how it is going to end. Michigan was always supposed to go out in a blaze of defense-less basketball, trading baskets and losing by a barrage of 3-pointers in a shootout.
Instead, it was the one thing that Juwan Howard’s team had counted on all season that let it down. The Wolverines were one of the best interior scoring teams in the country, they made shots more efficiently inside the arc than every other Big Ten team in a conference loaded with size and interior play.
The Wolverines were matched up with a Villanova team that lacked equivalent size at the frontcourt positions and they pounded the ball in the paint, attempting 70 percent of their shots at the rim. Instead of dominating the game inside-out, they shot just 34.9% inside the arc and made just 13-of-37 on dunks and layups.
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