Game 15: Wisconsin at Michigan Recap

Michigan’s poor form continued on Saturday, and this time it couldn’t escape. Wisconsin knocked down 15 threes in Ann Arbor, including seven in a row to start the second half, to hand the Wolverines their first loss of the season.

At the most basic level, teams that are underachieving primarily because they take a lot of threes but don’t make them are the scariest to face. That description fits Wisconsin perfectly — entering the game, the Badgers were ranked 16th in 3-point volume and 222nd in 3-point accuracy.

That stat is why the Badgers arrived in Ann Arbor with a disappointing resume, but also why they left the Crisler Center with a win.

On Saturday, the 3-point shots fell, and Michigan couldn’t keep pace, despite its best efforts.

Wisconsin made 15-of-33 triples, including 10-of-17 in the second half, and those threes — and more importantly, Michigan’s reaction to them — swung the game in their favor.

Michigan looked to be in a great spot early, leading 31-17 after 23 possessions. The Badgers were just 2-of-9 from three, and Michigan was scoring 1.34 points per trip at the under-eight timeout.

Then the Wolverines had a few empty possessions, Wisconsin shots started going in, and they kept going in. Wisconsin won the final 49 possessions of the game by a 74-57 margin, scoring 1.51 points per possession and making 13-of-24 (54%) threes over the last half-and-change.

Michigan has left better shooters than Aleksas Bieliauskas open this year, so I wasn’t surprised to see the Wolverines go into this game content to give up that shot in the typical drop coverage. He was 8-of-27 on the year and 1-for-his-last-11 entering today’s game. Early on, the strategy seemed to work perfectly, then he hit one late in the first half and then buried four in a row to start the second.

Michigan — as you’d expect — was finally forced to respond. The Wolverines took Aday Mara out of the game and switched everything with Morez Johnson Jr. They even threw out a 2-3 zone at one point.

Once those 3-pointers went in, the game changed. Wisconsin was dictating the terms, and Michigan was scrambling.