Before Sunday night's matchup with Ohio at Chrysler Center, head coach Juan Howard told us on the pregame radio conversation that he was happy with how his team responded in practice between Arizona State and the matchup with the Bobcats, which ended up being a wild, wild overtime ride.

He said that the Friday and Saturday practices were spirited.

To take you behind the fourth wall a little bit.

Michigan was supposed to fly back from Brooklyn right after the game on Thursday night into Friday morning,

but the flight was pushed until Friday afternoon.

So the Wolverines got on a plane, flew back to Ann Arbor, got back to campus,

and then pretty soon thereafter, got into a practice,

had another one on Saturday, and then, of course, a shoot-around on Sunday.

He was happy with it.

But there are two things to remember.

Number one, from an optimistic standpoint, not all progress in games will be linear.

Now, from the negative standpoint, it's got to be consistent. Start with the

first part. Michigan just had their most lopsided loss in terms of margin in almost a decade

against Arizona State. So, yeah, you can't just expect, okay, well, it's a wake-up call,

as Hunter Dickinson called it. He said it was embarrassing, but just experiencing that does not mean you're guaranteed

to come out and deck the next team that you face. However, what you need to be able to produce,

to provide to show, is a consistent performance for 40, or in Sunday night's case, 45 minutes.

The Wolverines, they've made progress.

You can tell, and you can see it with some individuals,

even for stretches on Sunday night.

The consistency, however, that's the real question.

Michigan did not have that in the matchup with the Bobcats.

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