Quite simply, that was more like it. Saturday was more like Michigan basketball. The Wolverines

took care of business a wire-to-wire win against a southern Utah team that very well could find

itself in the NCAA tournament out of the big sky. Michigan took a team that was one of the top

in transition offense in college basketball and limited them to just

two fast break points. They took a team that averages more than 80 points a game and held them to

just 50. And offensively, 13 players took the floor for Michigan. 12 scored and the other,

Jace Howard, put up two rebounds and an assist in one of

his lengthiest efforts, a solid six-minute stint to end the game. Michigan will need to do this

and probably be even better than this in order to get back into and be a Big Ten contender.

The league is too good. You have to play at such a high level,

and we saw that from the Wolverines last season. But this was all they could do. They had a week

to prepare to get that bad taste out of their mouth from last Saturday against Minnesota,

and the Wolverines did just that. It is a start. It is the first of what needs to be

a multi-step process to get back into the swing of things, to play the type of basketball that we

saw on Saturday. And Michigan has that capability. They are able to do it. The important steps

from here aren't necessarily to try to

replicate this against the Purdues, the Illinois, the Ohio states, the Michigan states, the

world. You're not going to beat Big Ten teams by 37 much, if at all. But Michigan's qualities

from this game, their attention to detail, their communication, their effort,

their engagement. Michigan had multiple double-digit runs in this game. They distributed

the basketball. They took care of the basketball. Those are the steps that Michigan needs to take.

Yes, it happened against southern Utah in a buy

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