The men of March will not go marching on to New Orleans.
The Michigan men’s basketball team wrapped up a mostly forgettable season with a night it will want back, its 63-55 loss to Villanova on Thursday in San Antonio perfectly capturing a year that left fans wondering what might have been.
That might seem like a strange thing to say after a No. 11 seed fell to a veteran powerhouse in the Sweet 16, especially given the all-out effort that underdog submitted.
But think of where Michigan began the season, ranked sixth in the nation and with no shortage of star power, including the 7-foot-1 Hunter Dickinson and a pair of shiny new five-star recruits (forwards Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabate).
And think of where it was Thursday.
On a night the Wolverines brought Villanova’s usually electrifying offense screeching to a stop, the game was right there for the taking.
Right there for this March-tested team to ride the draft of its unexpected second wind to within one game of the Final Four in New Orleans.
Right there ... if only the Wolverines had snatched it.
If they could have made just one more shot, one more free throw — hell, any shot or free throw period — a game in which it was within four points in the final minutes could have gone the other way. And yet all night, it ...
“Just wasn’t our night,” Dickinson said.
The bigger Wolverines missed more bunnies in one game than Elmer Fudd has in a lifetime and, for good measure, misfired on 7 of 14 free throws, too.
“We left a lot of points out there,” senior guard Eli Brooks said.
It was hard to make sense of it.
Then again, it was hard to make sense of much about this season.
How were they in this game? How were they here at all?
Give Michigan credit.
In the end, it didn’t matter that a season of great expectations had detoured almost from the start, the team crashing from as high as No. 4 to out of the polls for good in December.
It didn’t matter that coach Juwan Howard had been suspended for the last five games of the regular season after taking a swing at a Wisconsin coach. Or that the 14-loss Wolverines reported to the NCAA tournament having not won back-to-back games since early February. Or that most observers not wearing maize-colored glasses didn’t think they deserved to go dancing at all.
It didn’t matter that they trailed by 15 points in their tourney opener against Colorado State or were down late against third-seeded Tennessee in the second round.
Better late than never, they summoned that tough, confident March edge, and, here they were on the second weekend of the tournament. Again. (Truly, it’s like clockwork, their fifth straight trip to the Sweet 16 as much a herald of spring as the walleye run and the sweatshirt-with-shorts weather. As far as the Big Ten calendar goes, there is January, February, and Michigan.)
“This season was definitely not the best, not the way that we wanted to,” Dickinson said before the game. “Other fans definitely let us know that, particularly Michigan State, Illinois, who else? Ohio State. Who else? There was one more. Oh, oh, the team down in Madison, the red and white team, they definitely let us know how they felt about our season. We heard those ‘NIT’ chants. It’s funny how they’ll be watching us on Thursday back in their cribs.”
And there they were for much of Thursday.
It didn’t matter that Michigan had little going for it, outside of Dickinson playing bully ball inside, and missed just about everything all night, including the gimmes. (Give Villanova a lot of credit, but, even accounting for the anything-can-happen nature of the tournament, Michigan should have shot a lot better than 21 of 61 from the field.)
Somehow, Michigan trailed only 34-31 early in the second half.
Of course, for UM, that was also the bad news.
The Wolverines were defending like crazy, holding one of the nation’s most efficient and best-shooting teams — Dickinson amusingly called the Wildcats a “more disciplined Iowa” — almost completely down. (Villanova at that point was shooting 31.6 percent overall and was 6 of 22 from beyond the arc.) And still they were losing.
From there, Michigan did just enough to keep its fans invested, and more than enough to break its hearts, while Villanova made the plays that mattered, none bigger than star guard Collin Gillespie’s dagger 3 that pushed the Wildcats up 59-50.
Just as it had most of the season, the Wolverines were left to wonder: What just happened?
First Published March 25, 2022, 3:06 a.m.
