Michigan men’s basketball (16-5, 8-2 Big Ten) pulled out a 66-63 win over Rutgers on Saturday. The Wolverines had a rough day offensively, but they held the Scarlet Knights to their second-lowest point total of the season.
Defense, bench helps Michigan hold off Rutgers
“February is the time to figure out how to win every single night, and then you look up and you’ve won a championship because you found a way in games like this,” head coach Dusty May said in the locker room after the game.
Rutgers guard Ace Bailey leads the Big Ten in scoring with an average of 20.2 points per game. The Wolverines held him to just ten points on 3-of-15 shooting from the field and 0-of-7 from behind the arc.
“There was great awareness (of) where he was at all times,” May said. “Everyone on our roster had a chance to guard him 1-on-1, but we also had the closest elbow and the closest block loaded as well. And because of that we gave up some open threes to guys we knew were good shooters, but we were taking a calculated risk that we were going to try to neutralize Bailey.
“… We just felt like he would be able to take over the game and win it if he was in a good rhythm, and fortunately we kept him out of rhythm tonight.”
Danny Wolf scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half. He also grabbed 14 rebounds and blocked four shots. May said he was Michigan’s biggest advantage.
“He made big free throws (and) he made a huge three in front of our bench,” May said. “… He has such great instincts for rebounding. For him to walk out of here with 14 rebounds on a night we were struggling to finish possessions, without it we wouldn’t have won.”
Wolf was more focused on the way his team played as a whole.
“We didn’t do some of the things as well as we should have,” Wolf said. “We turned it over a little too much, we got beat on the offensive glass a little too much, but we were able to get some stops down the stretch and just pull away with a win, and wins are hard to come by.”
Bench contributions
The Michigan bench couldn’t have been much more productive Saturday, combing for 17 points, seven rebounds, five assists, three steals and two blocks. Sam Walters shot 2-for-2 from three-point range and had zero turnovers in 15 minutes.
“We feel like when all of our guys are playing the best (we) think we’re one of the best teams in the country, so that’s kind of the method that we’ve been preaching,” Walters said. “… We really stuck together and got a hard fought win on the road, so it was really big time for us.”
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