Michigan's season was bigger than one loss

First appeared on April 11th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

When Jordan Morgan’s shot rolled off the rim at the buzzer giving Tom Crean and the Indiana Hoosiers their first outright Big Ten title in 20 years, all hope seemed lost for the Wolverines. In that moment Beilein’s crew went from talented upstarts, far too young to realize brazen doesn’t wear well in the Midwest, to a group of Thriller-like zombies shocked into a state of disbelief.

They were the closest thing Ann Arbor has seen to the Fab Five since those fashionistas first set foot on campus 20 years ago. Good news for Michigan fans is, while this current batch may have the baggy shorts and above the rim game, they lack the ugly baggage and propensity for calling time outs when they have none. But that moment, on the last day of the season in their own building, should have been the crushing blow in what was already becoming a frustrating end to a promise filled season. A Tyson-style haymaker delivered from Cody Zeller and his national darling Indiana Hoosiers.

On the surface it appeared a turning point for Indiana who, after making NCAA history the week before in becoming the first team to cut the nets down following a loss, finally claimed their trophy. Tom Crean and future All-American Victor Oladipo shared a moment in what they surely believed was a stepping stone to hanging another banner as the Wolverines stumbled off the court like stunned cattle.

Someone more famous than me once quipped “these are the times that try men’s souls” and while it might be difficult to prove, I’m fairly certain they were talking about the 2013 Michigan Wolverines. For as they retired to their locker room to sweep what was left of their hopes and dreams into a Maize and Blue Rubbermaid dustpan every media member in the nation, part-time pretend or not, believed Blue had flat lined then and there. But from the ashes left smoldering on the Crisler Center court came a resurgent group of Wolverines who were, in the infamous words of Frank Costanza, “like a Phoenix, rising from Arizona”.

Michigan’s impressive surge to the Final Four wouldn’t have been possible without two things; the surprising play of Superfrosh Mitch McGary and a near forty foot jumper from Trey Burke that eventually buried then flavor of the month Kansas. For those wanting hard hitting analysis, look no further than an enormous charge from Jordan Morgan, role players like Spike Albrecht and Caris LeVert quietly doing their jobs and Head Coach John Beilein’s innate ability for developing system-specific skill sets in his players.

But in prevailing 82-76 Monday night, Louisville proved to have more experience and were quite simply tougher. There’s something to be said for toughness in this modern world of empty threats and helicopter parents. It takes real guts to reach down inside and find the strength necessary to fight harder at that precise moment when so many before have quit. To fight that which has been conditioned in you.

So we’re left to hope history will remember Michigan not as a team that wasn’t good enough on one night, rather as an exciting team that showed guts in overcoming a disastrous finish to their season. And while another installment of March Madness has came and went bringing an end to the greatest three weeks in sports, we move forward knowing every day puts us one day closer to its return. CBS will put Greg Gumbel back on the shelf for another year, but soon enough the Road to the Final Four will point the way west to Dallas.


© 2013 Eric Walker Williams