The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1542609
44 THE WOLVERINE ❱ FEBRUARY 2026 BY CHRIS BALAS F or most of the last few months, all the talk locally and nationally was about Michigan basketball's incredible stretch of dominance. "The greatest college basketball team ever" was even bandied about when the Wolverines were regularly beating teams by 30- or 40-plus points, including six before Jan. 1 to set a season Big Ten record in less than 15 games. But seasons are a marathon, not a sprint, and almost every squad has its ebbs and flows. The Wolverines nar- rowly escaped Happy Valley and Penn State with a 74-72 win Jan. 6, nearly blowing a 15-point second-half lead, and lost a 14-point advantage in a home loss to Wisconsin Jan. 10, their first set- back of the year. As such, coach Dusty May's second team fell from No. 2 in the AP poll and No. 1 in the coaches' poll to No. 4 and No. 3, respectively, heading into a West Coast trip for games at Washington and Oregon. Michigan relinquished a 31-17 first-half lead and gave up 54 points in the second half, struggling to keep up with the Badgers' guards getting to the rim and with three-point defense in their loss. "They exposed some things with our plan, with our team, that we thought were going to be issues this year," May admitted. "We just didn't think we would see so many of them on the same night. They made plays. Our plan, our coaching, our playing wasn't up to our standards, but in reality, it's been four games since we've played really well. "To be honest, the only thing I'm dis- appointed in was when we started com- peting at a high, high level, it looked dif- ferent than the other 25 or 30 minutes of the game. We can't be a team with what we're playing for that has two differ- ent levels of intensity, of relentlessness. And that's what happened today." Take nothing away from the Badgers, May added — "They came in here, and they did it. They took it," he said — but it was clear the Wolverines didn't bring it for 40 minutes. They needed a Hercu- lean second half from point guard Elliot Cadeau just to match the Badgers early in the stanza when they started 9-for-9 from the floor, including 7-for-7 from long range. Cadeau scored all 19 of his points in the first seven minutes, in- cluding a triple that tied it at 65-65 with 13:17 remaining. But the Badgers averaged a ridicu- lous 1.74 points per possession in the second half against the nation's top defensive team, including 10-for-17 from three-point range, to pull one out. They scored on 22 of 31 possessions, got three-pointers from several unlikely sources (big man Aleksas Bieliauskas was 4-for-5 in the half), and pulled off a huge upset as a 21.5-point underdog. Wisconsin hadn't shot close to that well coming into the season and prob- ably won't again. Still, May wasn't let- ting his team off the hook. "It's our defense," he said. "It's a combination of our plan and our ex- ecution. Once again, they played well. I thought their ability to get where ❱ MICHIGAN BASKETBALL Dusty May Hopes Surprising Home Loss Leads To A Return To 'Our Standards' Sophomore guard L.J. Cason's 14 first-half points helped Michigan escape State College with a 74-72 win against Penn State on Jan. 6. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL