The consolation bracket of a multi-team event comes down to survival.
It’s easy to motivate a team to play on less than a night’s rest while playing for a tournament championship. It’s something else entirely to get ready to play the latest game of the day on Thanksgiving after suffering a disappointing defeat.
“You deal with that disappointment. It lingers with you,” Phil Martelli said afterward. “Not being in all the excitement. Carolina and Villanova people are out in the hallway. Arkansas and Memphis, lined up all the way down the hallway. Playing the late game, basically (the players) sat in their rooms all day today, looking outside where it’s beautiful.”
Michigan didn’t look particularly interested in surviving for long stretches of Thursday’s game against Stanford. But somewhere along the way, that instinct kicked in. The Wolverines trailed by 14 points in the first half and seven in the second but were able to take control with a flurry of turnovers for run-out scores and ride their star duo of Dug McDaniel and Olivire Nkamhoua to a critical 83-78 victory.
Survival, and a chance to get out of the Bahamas with two victories on Friday evening.
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