There are good, bad and ugly of Michigan basketball. Acting head coach Phil Martelli saw it all, and it was decidedly ugly after Juwan Howard's suspension from a postgame brawl in Wisconsin. But since then, Martelli and the Wolverines have found a new gear and knocked down state rival Michigan State on Tuesday night.
Hunter Dickinson was the star of the show and Wolverine was never really in a position to lose a game. When Michigan is playing at that type of level, it can be difficult to hold off a team in March.
"I think it's challenging but not frustrating," Martelli said. "I think it's the nature of the competition we're playing against. And I don't know if that's a fact, but as I was looking at the results last week, I was trying to remember: ' Was every team in this league leading 1-1 last week?' Like I don't know, I could have closed, but I kept saying: 'Okay, this team, I know they just won, but they lost.' Illinois came here and it had 1-1 weeks in. So is this a league?
"Tomorrow I'm going to address it. I was pretty comfortable with them in Monday's practice. Tomorrow, we're going to do a little bit more. (On Monday, in practice) we actually shot, and we did some committed crimes and drove through the state of Michigan and shot the wrong shots. Yesterday we were out here an hour and five minutes after the movie. Tomorrow, I'm going to do a little bit more, and some guys that don't last a lot of minutes Khele, tomorrow they're going to sweat. I'm not there to do a show for them, but I'm going to be a little nervous tomorrow so that we're ready to play on Thursday night.
Dixon had a career night with the points. He scored 33 runs, got nine rebounds and made an assist in 32 minutes. Caleb Houston added 16 points and four rebounds in 27 minutes. While no one else scored in the double digits, Dickinson was a man who was particularly vulnerable at the bottom of the stretch of the second half.
With only two games left, Michigan is firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble but brings forth two ranked opponents: Iowa and Ohio State.
Winning both games is likely to lock a spot for the Wolverines, given that the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes are high-quality adversaries within the Big Ten.
24 takes Iowa at home Thursday before hitting the road against No. 23 Ohio State Sunday to conclude the Michigan regular season.