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12/5/00- Week #04 - The Tough Non-Conference Games This could be a long season. It was a tough week for the UM basketball team. They played 3 ranked teams, and they lost by double-digit margins to all 3. The scores were 71-60 vs. Wake Forest on Tuesday (11/28/2000), 82-51 vs. Maryland on Saturday (12/02/2000), and 97-83 vs. St. John's on Sunday (12/03/2000). This takes UM's record to 2-4. In the Wake Forest and St. John's games, at least the Wolverines put up a good fight, and actually lead by 11 points in each of them. They folded down the stretch, but they showed that they have the talent to play with the big boys. The Maryland game, on the other hand, was embarrassing. UM got behind early, and never seriously challenged Maryland. The 31-point loss is very worrisome. Michigan has to face much better teams than Maryland this year, and if they don't play better than that, it could get really ugly. The only player who played fairly well in all 3 games was freshman Bernard Robinson Jr. He had 12, 20, and 18 points, respectively, and a fair number of rebounds. The downside was that he didn't shoot very well, going 6-for-19, 8-for-14, and 4-for-13. That's 18-for-46, which is only 39%. Of the other 3 freshmen (Avery Queen, Maurice Searight, and Josh Moore) two of them (Queen and Moore) played fairly well at times, but Searight is in quite a slump. He scored 1 point against Wake Forest, and none against Maryland and St. John's. Queen had a career-high 14 points against St. John's, and Moore had 8 in the same game. The normally dependable LaVell Blanchard had a pretty bad week. He scored 13, 8, and 18 points, on 3-for-13, 3-for-13, and 5-for-10 shooting. That works out to 11-for-36, which is only 30%. Without getting into many more of the gory details, let's just say that the rest of the team also had a poor week. The good news is that UM only has one game this week. The bad news is that it's at #1 Duke. If the Wolverines could pull off this upset, it would be one of the biggest wins in school history, and one of the most improbable. I'll be back next week to describe the Duke game. See you then. Drew Montag |
