GRAND RAPIDS, MI — It wasn’t pretty, but Mike Boynton Jr. got what he wanted out of Sunday’s exhibition loss to Houston.
“We wanted to test ourselves against somebody that was at that level, and again, that’s as close to a Big Ten high-level opponent (as it gets), right?” Boynton said. “If they were in our league, they’d be picked at the very top, high up there, and so we know what the bar is as we head into the season.”
There were moments in which Michigan passed the test Sunday, and there were many others where the bar was not met. More than anything, the game proved exactly why you schedule tough exhibition games in October, before the results matter. The No. 3-ranked team in KenPom’s preseason ratings exposed the Wolverines’ preseason flaws in an 83-66 Houston win, giving Boynton and his staff a clearer map of what to iron out as the season unfolds.
“We also learned a lot about ourselves,” Boynton said. “We have a talented team right now, we play good basketball in spurts, which obviously wasn’t good enough against an elite team today. We got to be more consistently good throughout the game to put ourselves in position to win games like that. There’s a lot of them on our schedule, and we look forward to getting to it next week.”
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