Michigan and Ohio State can’t stand each other, but the two teams have made strikingly similar journeys on the basketball court this season. As the Wisconsin Badgers prepare to face Michigan on Thursday night in Ann Arbor, it is worth noting the path the Wolverines and Juwan Howard have traveled this season.
Ohio State and Michigan both defeated North Carolina in non-conference play, but at the time of those wins for the Buckeyes and Wolverines, no one could have imagined how hard or how far North Carolina would fall this season. Ohio State’s and Michigan’s collections of non-conference wins looked better at the time of those games than they do now. However, this is not to say that OSU and Michigan didn’t accumulate meaningful accomplishments. Ohio State’s win over Kentucky still looks very good, if not better, than it did before. It looked like an okay win in early February, but now, at the end of February, Kentucky is playing its best ball of the season.
For Michigan, a win over Gonzaga still looks great. The win over North Carolina has obviously faded in value, but the dubya over the Zags is still a huge bright spot for UM in non-conference competition. Given how well Michigan and Ohio State functioned as collective units in November and December, their shared January swoons were surprising.
Both teams fell multiple games under .500 in Big Ten Conference play, leading many (including myself) to wonder for a brief period of time if they would slide all the way out of the NCAA Tournament field and into the NIT.
Ohio State regrouped from losing six of seven games to climb back to .500 in the Big Ten. Michigan was once 4-7 in the Big Ten but has now won five straight games to move to 9-7 in the league, entering this Wisconsin clash on Thursday.
We all wondered how Juwan Howard, a Michigan man and an NBA veteran, would adjust to the college game. He had some high-quality returning players on this Michigan roster, inherited from John Beilein: Zavier Simpson, Jon Teske and Isaiah Livers lead this group. Nevertheless, Michigan was in free-fall; Livers was hurt; the team needed direction from its leader.
The Wolverines found that. Howard has therefore given Michigan fans a lot of belief that he is the right man for this program. We will see how he fares against Greg Gard and the Badgers on Thursday night.