Game 10: Michigan at Iowa Recap

A conference road win isn’t enough to erase three weeks of frustration. It doesn’t mean that the issues that have plagued the Wolverines for the last month are suddenly fixed. And at this point, it might not even be a quality win by year’s end.

But a double-digit road win in Iowa City means a happy flight home and a week of practice to start building from something positive instead of grinding through another week of self-doubt and frustration.

The first 20 minutes at Iowa were precisely what you’d expect from two teams going through the trials and tribulations of a losing streak. Neither team played particularly well, and fixtures like Olivier Nkamhoua, Payton Sandfort, and Dug McDaniel all went scoreless.

It was a slog in front of a sleepy home crowd between two teams fighting the weight of a losing streak.

At the halftime break, the game was sitting for someone to take. One run from either team would be enough to win, and Michigan pounced first. The Wolverines rattled off an 11-0 run powered by Dug McDaniel, Nimari Burnett, and Olivier Nkamhoua. Fran McCaffery was ejected a few moments later, and that was that.

Michigan coasted to a 90-80 victory, leading by 20 points inside the final media timeout, in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as Iowa’s persistent late-game fouling made it appear.