CHICAGO — College basketball uses all sorts of fancy analytics and statistics to separate teams, especially this time of year when the bubble metrics come into play. Here’s a simple rule to follow: if you can’t score more than 50 points in what is, essentially, a bubble elimination game, you can’t play in the NCAA Tournament. Automatic removal from conversation, disqualification, take your decrepit basketball and please go away.
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So goodbye, Michigan. Whatever thread of hope the Wolverines were clinging to, it has now been severed, courtesy of a 62-50 loss to Rutgers at the Big Ten tournament. Michigan’s second-half effort — or non-effort — against the Scarlet Knights has no place in the field of 68. The Wolverines finished with four made field goals in the final 20 minutes, two of them coming in the final minute, turned the ball over 14 times and went more than 12 minutes without a field goal.
Give Juwan Howard some credit. He did not come to his postgame interview to stump for his team’s place in the NCAA Tournament, instead saying that the team will go home to Ann Arbor and “discuss their future.’’ Which is to say, to NIT or not to NIT, that is the only question. Michigan’s disconnected season was a hard sell anyway, a late-year revival versus a mere three Quad 1 wins putting the Wolverines in this predicament to begin with. At least they made the final decision uncomplicated.
It is funny, though, to see what pressure does. People talk about the death grip of the NCAA Tournament, how a season can collapse in 40 minutes when there is no recourse. You could argue that, for some teams, this week is even harder. There is a want to win an NCAA Tournament game; there is a desperation to get into the NCAA Tournament.
This game looked desperate, which in this case is a euphemism for ugly. Here is the sequence to start the second half: Rutgers can’t inbound the ball, five-second violation. Michigan shot-clock violation. Derek Simpson clanks a corner 3. Jett Howard back rims a 3 from the wing. Cam Spencer misses a pull-up. Simpson gets called for a foul. Kobe Buffkin’s jumper rims out. The rims and shot clock both were beaten to near exhaustion, one injured by Michigan, the other drained by Rutgers. Over in the Michigan huddle, Buffkin sensed, and Howard seconded, that the energy slipped as the shots kept abusing the rims. Howard tried to get a revival and couldn’t, as the want to win disappeared into a need to win. “I call it a microwave society,’’ Howard said. “There’s so much information. They see it. They read it. They understand the magnitude of this game. They heard about it so many times.”
The 50 points allowed by the Rutgers defense is a school record for the best defensive performance by RU ever in a Big Ten Tournament game.#TheKnighthood🛡️⚔️
— Rutgers Men’s Basketball 🏀 (@RutgersMBB) March 9, 2023
Yet while the Wolverines succumbed one miss after another, Rutgers didn’t seem to care. Maybe it’s the byproduct of being serially discounted — “We’re always in this position,’’ coach Steve Pikiell said with a shrug — or maybe it’s because the Scarlet Knights seem to have more bubble lives than a litter of cats. Since losing Mawot Mag to a torn ACL in February, Rutgers beat Penn State in a must-win, lost to Minnesota in a can’t-lose and then cemented its fate in a loss to Northwestern.
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Only to be revived yet again in the second half, scoring a (for Rutgers) torrid 37 points on 51 percent shooting. “Good ole Rutgers grind-you-down win right there,” Caleb McConnell said with a big grin after the win. “When our backs are against the wall, that’s when we seem to play our best. Somehow we just end up winning these ugly games. Sometimes it may not be pretty, but we just end up coming out with the dub.’’
Now for the asterisk; Michigan is out. This we know for sure. Is Rutgers in? Probably, but not quite authoritatively. One team’s exit does not necessarily one team’s entry make. The Scarlet Knights have teetered around abusing the not-yet-instituted 50-point rule and have some lousy losses, despite a solid 5-6 Quad 1 record. Beating Purdue would eliminate any lingering issues. Rutgers did that already, but that was with Mag, and so this becomes a literal Zach Edey-tall order this time around.
Odds are most will pick the Boilermakers, which seems to feed right into the Scarlet Knights’ approach. Pikiell copped to smashing a phone — though he wouldn’t say if it was real or a burner — in a sort of symbolic stop-reading-your-press-clippings gesture for his players. It would appear the message was received. McConnell was asked about it after the win against Michigan, and impishly suggested that the media hide their phones lest Pikiell smash theirs, too.
Pikiell did not so much as grin, but later when asked how he survived the last week on the bubble, the coach laughed. “Smashed phones.’’
Pressure will do that to you.
(Top photo of Rutgers’ Oskar Palmquist: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
