Matt Painter is among my favorite coaches. He’ll have his squad ready to go. Michigan will need to be sharp and decisive and if they are it’s a great opportunity for the Wolverines to find confidence in league play.
@umhoops Any chance we see some Cole at the 2 tonight? Michigan has struggled shooting the ball the last few games, do you think we he could give UM a spark off the bench? I can’t imagine his defense is any worse than what Nunez brings to the floor.
Bajema hasn’t gotten any run in any significant game at any point. There’s no reason to believe we will see him in that type of situation until it happens.
I mean there’s a chance of anything but Cole hasn’t played at all in meaningful spots this year which leads me to believe he has a long way to go in practice.
I guess it boils down to not having any confidence in Castleton/Johns(no spacing) at the 4, and wanting to play smaller with Franz. They’ve gotten really stagnant at times over the past few games because the outside shots weren’t falling. I’m sure they are keeping an eye on everybody in practice to make those decisions, but wasn’t it just a few games ago that Juwan mentioned wondering if he should have given Cole more minutes? That makes me think he must be close. Maybe we see any combination of Eli/Dave/Franz knock some down tonight, but I get the feeling this team is desperate for someone who will take and make some threes. (I’m also still have nightmares about Colin Castleton driving to the basket from 20+ feet.
I do really like Michigan tonight, perhaps more than the -5 line. I think Purdue lacks so much on offense plus they’ll be on the road, so as long as Michigan can score a solid amount of points I think we win. BUT, without Livers and facing a pretty good D… efficient and consistent scoring may be hard to come across.
Overall has the look of a pretty good game, but I still like Michigan by 7-8 points. Tickets are only $6 (!!!) on Stubhub so me and my housemates get to go now.
Wow, that’s crazy cheap. I hope there’s a decent atmosphere considering this is a pretty important game. I don’t want to get too dramatic and label an early January tilt as “must-win” but IMO it would be pretty alarming if Michigan lost tonight.
If we don’t win it bodes very poorly for the rest of our non-Livers games, and means we are looking at a potential(probable?) losing record in conference if Livers misses much more time.
Only 243 tickets available on StubHub atleast. So maybe it’ll be pretty full?
I hope the staff is telling Johns that he must take every open 3 he gets - while silently preparing a Plan B if he goes 0-4 on them.
I feel like the defensive issues are the bigger problem, and Bajema is very unlikely to solve those.
Apparently tonight is 90s Night at Crisler. But doesn’t this seem more 80s than 90s to anyone else?
Maybe there is a Saved by the Bell vibe that marketing was going for, but for early 90s I think they should have went Cross Colours instead. I suppose anything’s better than a flannel theme, though.
Yeah my immediate thought when I saw that was Saved by the Bell.
They are definitely going for a Saved By the Bell vibe which was early 90s.
And clearly Livers is playing because he’s suited up in the poster, right?
This 90s kid would pay big bucks for a Michigan basketball slap bracelet
Bury the ken pom tonight with a big W and Franz with a 20 pt game.
I would definitely go with “perfect representation” on the Eastern description.