Michigan got what they wanted on the offensive side. Brooks finally had a good game, again, and most of the 3s were open. Michigan isn't great at drawing fouls for some reason, but they're doing everything else well there, except late in the game they didn't give themselves a chance to come back again by wasting too much time.
Most of the fouls that were called against Michigan were legitimate, so I can't really complain much about the refs. Johns and Davis are too foul-prone and Simpson had some dumb ones early on. Wagner's dumb fouls happened at the worst possible times, too. Michigan finally doubled sometimes in the post to slow down Garza and Kriener, but that opened up more 3s than Iowa had in the first game, and they took advantage of that.... Defensive rebounding also wasn't good, though they finally forced a good number of turnovers.
My biggest complaint right now is still just the rotation and some particularly dumb lineups that just don't work. Nunez still got minutes for no apparent reason and proceeded to have two awful 3 point misses before hitting one that probably should've been called a 2, and he remains a liability on defense. Given that Livers is out I can at least understand playing Castleton somewhat, even though he's been a disappointment this year. Playing Davis and Teske together just doesn't make sense, though, especially towards the end of the game, and it didn't work. Iowa is bigger than most teams, to be sure, but considering how the defense was struggling, anyway, you have to take your chances for the possibility of getting a better / quicker shot on offense..... And DeJulius also still needs to play more. Until last night, I thought some of those minutes should come from Brooks, but now I think Michigan just needs to take its chances in going smaller, even if it forces Wagner to defend some big / strong forwards.
The upside is that the hardest part of Michigan's schedule is now over and now the easiest part of the conference schedule is next with Penn State, Illinois, @Nebraska, and Rutgers in NYC (which should still have more Michigan fans there, myself included, though it'll be a flashback to my first live Michigan sporting event when Michigan beat Rutgers in the NIT Championship and most of the fans there that night were Rutgers ones)..... Livers should be back at some point during this stretch, but these are games Michigan should win regardless. We'll see....
