Welcome back to the Wolverine.com podcast. I'm John Borton with the video edition and with one of, I know, my and your absolute favorites.

You hear him every time that Michigan takes the court to play basketball.

You will hear him again this weekend.

Brian Bush, the play-by-play man for Joanne Howard's Wolverines.

Brian, great to have you back on the podcast.

Always good to be here, John.

So we get a little bit of encouragement not only from a win over Maryland, but really through a loss at Illinois,

which might have been one of the most encouraging games, Michigan,

has played from an effort standpoint, from a grit standpoint. They're down a point with seven

minutes to go in that venue when nobody thought they'd be. Yeah, I mean, that Illinois game

showed that the buy-in is still there and has been there throughout the entire season. Obviously, you know, this team has shown some warts and they've had some difficult

times, but, you know, it had been very easy for them to just pack it in, no Hunter Dickinson,

you know, a few other guys out. But, yeah, I mean, you had some guys coming just off of the,

you know, health and safety protocols, the COVID list, whatever you want to call it.

And this team was able to really make it interesting.

They challenged things for Illinois that, you know, Illinois just wasn't really getting challenged in a whole lot.

Michigan was out offensive rebounding them eight to four at halftime without Hunter.

I mean, that was that was a lot to like.

And obviously this team did not just look at that as a moral victory,

but I do think it was a potential setup for, you know, this stretch run.

They played really, really well.

And this ball club, you know, on Tuesday against Maryland, I think really started to find,

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