In a rematch of April’s National Championship Game, Michigan got the kind of early-season measuring stick that tells you a lot fast. The Wolverines went to Boston, Massachusetts and came away with an 85-77 loss to UConn, their first defeat of the season.
That result also made for a strange little split in the state’s basketball weekend, since the women’s team beat Hall-of-Fame coach Geno Auriemma and the No. 2 UConn Huskies at Crisler Center on Thursday night. On this night, though, the men’s team was the one left sorting through the damage.
The biggest issue was easy to spot: Michigan simply didn’t handle the game on the perimeter well enough. UConn opened with a made three from sophomore guard Braylon Mullins, and Mullins kept it rolling by hitting two of his next three shots, both from deep. Silas Demary Jr. added two more three-pointers early, and before long the Huskies had built a cushion by living outside the arc.
By the midway point of the first half, UConn had only made nine shots total, but five of them were threes. That was enough to put the Huskies ahead 23-16.
Michigan, meanwhile, couldn’t get its own perimeter offense going and trailed by 13 at halftime. UConn was 6-of-14 from three at the break, while the Wolverines had made just one.
The final numbers told the same story. UConn finished 9-22 from three, while Michigan went 7-28. The second half was better for the Wolverines, but the early hole was already too deep, and the perimeter gap was a major reason they spent the night chasing.
Michigan’s guard play was the other big storyline, and it went the way this team’s season probably will: as far as Elliot Cadeau and Trey McKenney can carry it. Cadeau and McKenney are the starting backcourt foundation this year, with Cadeau coming off a Final Four Most Outstanding Player run last season and McKenney stepping into a bigger role as a starter.
Against UConn, that duo never really got rolling together. Michigan was down 43-30 at halftime, with Cadeau shooting 3-of-9 from the field and McKenney going 0-of-7.
The two combined to hit just 1-of-6 from beyond the arc. Roddy Gayle Jr.’s 12 first-half points kept the Wolverines from being in even worse shape.
McKenney did his part after the break, catching fire for 22 second-half points. Cadeau, though, managed only two more points the rest of the way and finished with eight. UConn answered enough of Michigan’s runs to keep the game under control, and by the time McKenney got hot, the comeback window had already narrowed too much.
That’s why this loss fits into the bigger picture of Michigan’s non-conference schedule. Head coach Mike Boynton Jr. has a steep climb in front of him if he’s going to get the program back to where it was a year ago, and games like this are part of that process. They expose what needs fixing.
Former head coach Dusty May was a believer in that approach, and he said as much in Oct. 2024: “Just going back to what we changed, our philosophy three or four years ago where we just felt like the teams that scheduled aggressively early, they improved,” May said in Oct.
- “They were challenged, they were exposed, their warts were out in the open and they stayed the course, and they improved because of all that.
“…Did we intend to have one of the best, toughest schedules in the country? No, but we definitely wanted to play Arkansas and Wake Forest and those guys, and it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be challenging.”
Boynton appears to share that same view. The Wolverines have more tests coming, with Marquette, Villanova, Creighton and Louisville on the schedule, along with Creighton at the Players Era Tournament. The UConn loss won’t feel good in the moment, but it does give Michigan a clear picture of what has to improve if it wants to handle the next wave of tough games better.
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For the Spartans, the timing could hardly be more delicate. They have dropped six straight and are still sorting through the status of their starting quarterback because of injury, which leaves a lot riding on how they respond in a game that means more than the standings suggest. Both programs and both coaches know the rivalry can reset a seasons conversation in a hurry, and Michigan State still has one last chance to change the tone before this one is over. [Read more 🡒]