The college basketball season is upon us and the Michigan Wolverines showed their strength against Howard and IUPUI over opening weekend, leaving with two wins.
Michigan opened the season Friday night – also the opening game of the 2K Classic Ann Arbor Regional – against Howard, walking out of the Crisler Center with a 78-56 win.
The Wolverines started the game slow, missing the first six shots and trailing 4-0 at the first media timeout.
Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman got things going for Michigan, sinking consecutive three-pointers to tie the game 6-6 at the 14:05 mark. Derrick Walton, Jr. helped Michigan take its first lead of the night nearly two minutes later on a triple of his own for the 11-9 lead.
“I’m proud of our guys,” Head Coach John Beilein said in the postgame press conference. “What Howard did defensively was something I don’t recall seeing. They were really flying around with great quickness. We might not see that type of quickness all year long. We had all kinds of plans – some of them worked, some of them didn’t – but it came down to playing ball, and we played ball when we needed to.”
Walton finished with 20 points Friday, joining Mark Donnal and Zak Irvin in double digit scoring – 12 and 11 points, respectively. DJ Wilson was shy of a double-double, finishing with 9 points and 8 rebounds.
Sunday, Michigan hosted Summit League foe IUPUI in the finale of the 2K Classic Ann Arbor regional, walking out with a 77-65 win.
Four players finished with double-digits in scoring, including Zak Irvin with his team-leading 15 points. Joining him were Moritz Wagner and Derrick Walton Jr., who each recorded 13 points, and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman with 12 points.
The Wolverines led by as much as 19 points at one point during the game.
Sitting at 2-0, the Wolverines travel to New York City Thursday night to meet Marquette in the championship round of the 2k Classic at Madison Square Garden with a 9:30 PM EST tip. They will then face the winner of the Pittsburgh-SMU game on Friday at 7 p.m.
