What went wrong for Michigan, especially in crunch time, vs. UCLA

INDIANAPOLIS — Michigan’s worst shooting stretch of the season came at the most inopportune time. Michigan missed its final eight shots against UCLA on Monday. Any of them would have given the Wolverines the lead and, potentially, sealed a trip to the Final Four.

Instead, a 51-49 loss ended their season.

Michigan entered its Elite Eight matchup with the seventh best offense in the country, per kenpom.com. Let’s get this out of the way: Much of that was achieved with Isaiah Livers, who has been injured since the Big Ten Tournament. But the Wolverines adapted well, and had little trouble scoring in their first three NCAA Tournament games.

On Monday, they were out of sync from the opening tip. Michigan ended up shooting 39 percent from the field and making just three 3-pointers. UCLA posted identical statistics. Both head coaches had the same assessment.

“It was truly a Big Ten style of play,” Juwan Howard said.

“It was a Big Ten battle royale game,” Mick Cronin said. “Nobody could find an offensive rhythm and that was just a credit to the defenses. You know, just an unbelievably physical game. It was hard to get bodies off of bodies.”

The game required some one-on-one brilliance, and UCLA got it with sophomore Johnny Juzang, who’s been terrific throughout the Bruins’ surprise run. Michigan tried multiple defenders on the 6-foot-6 guard, and none were particularly effective. Juzang scored 18 points in the first half on 8-of-10 shooting and finished with 28. With a little over a minute left and UCLA up one, Juzang took Eli Brooks baseline and splashed a floater over Hunter Dickinson.

“Every shot or every point that he got, he worked hard for it,” Howard said.

Overall, though, UCLA had its second-worst offensive performance of the season. Getting stops was not Michigan’s issue on Monday.

The Bruins switched screens and forced Michigan’s playmakers to beat them off the dribble or take advantage of Dickinson’s size advantage inside. Michigan prefers the latter, and went to its 7-foot-1 freshman often. Dickinson, Michigan’s leading scorer on the season, had an impressive stretch early in the second half but never found a consistent rhythm. He finished 5-of-10 for 11 points and committed four turnovers.

Despite the Wolverines’ scoring woes, they were very much in a position to win in the final minutes, down just one, 48-47, with four minutes left.

These next paragraphs come with a warning: “The following content may be disturbing for Michigan fans.”

Brandon Johns Jr. missed on an off-hand hook in the paint. Franz Wagner drove hard to the right and tried a running hook, a shot he’s perfected this season, his long arms making a tough shot to challenge. He’s often gone glass, but didn’t this time, and it missed. Out of a timeout, Howard drew up some screening action that led to a Dickinson post feed. He was patient and got to his dominant hand, but missed a little short. Mike Smith missed on a driving layup. All four shots were contested by UCLA defenders, but all came within five or six feet of the hoop.

UCLA didn’t score during that three-minute stretch, meaning any of those shots listed would have given Michigan the lead.

Juzang broke the drought with another jumper, and Wagner made two clutch free throws to get the deficit back to one with 44 seconds left.

A Juzang free throw would be the only point scored the rest of the way, but the Wolverines had several chances. They attempted four shots in the final 12 seconds.

After a timeout — Howard had wisely saved a few — Franz Wagner came off a ball screen and, when UCLA’s defenders dropped back, fired a 3. It was well short, but Brooks snatched it out of the air. Perhaps he rushed his shot, twisting his body to flip the ball off the glass. It missed.

The next two Michigan shots were 3s, both after timeouts: Smith went coast to coast and misfired. After Michigan inbounded from under the UCLA basket with half a second left, Wagner misfired from the left wing at the buzzer. After consecutive terrific games, he was 1-for-10 against UCLA; Smith was 1-for-7.

Howard called the final attempt “the shot that we wanted. Unfortunately there’s not much you can do with .5 (seconds). … The play before that, we got an open look; it just fell short. But overall I love how our guys executed down the stretch.”

Howard rarely, if ever, criticizes individual players publicly. Asked about Wagner’s struggles, Howard said, “Franz is one of the reasons why we’re here in this position. I always have trust in all my players, and it’s never one guy’s fault because he doesn’t shoot the ball well. Together as a team, you win together and you lose together.”

Juzang said he and his teammates knew Wagner was “a strong right-hand driver. We had some of their plays and actions kind of scouted out. Guys went out and executed great.”

As for Howard’s personnel choices, he didn’t have many options. Freshmen Terrance Williams II and Zeb Jackson saw limited action in earlier NCAA Tournament games, but it was not surprising they didn’t play on Monday. In a game like that, the best strategy isn’t necessarily to look for an offensive punch but to stick with your best defensive lineups and hope the shots start falling. Both coaches did that.

At one point in the postgame press conference, Howard read from the box score and came to some difficult realizations. He noted Michigan’s five missed free throws (on 11 attempts) and 14 turnovers (to UCLA’s eight).

“In the game of basketball, there’s one or two possessions that can really either help you or hurt you,” Howard said. “We came up short.”

Cronin said the turnovers were the difference in such a low-possession game. “If say we force eight (and) they get six more shots off, they probably beat us.”

Brooks was asked if it was especially frustrating that Michigan didn’t play anywhere near its best. He credited UCLA. “They earned that win. We’re not going to take anything away from them. They made everything challenging.”

Even so, the Wolverines will regret having their highest turnover rate since Jan. 16. They’ll be thinking about all those eight straight misses down the stretch. Michigan never had more consecutive misses all season, though there were two other games with eight. One came at the end of the first half at Wisconsin, a game Michigan came back to win. The other was late in a loss at Minnesota, when the deficit was already double-digits.

This was an NCAA Tournament regional final.

Even with all the scouting and preparation, the strategy and execution, a basketball game can sometimes be reduced to a simple truth, one Brooks and his teammates discovered on Monday.

“When you don’t make shots,” he said, “it makes things a little more difficult.”

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