Michigan keeps hope alive with Iowa win

Dan Stillman Still the Man

IOWA CITY - That thump you heard coming out of Carver-Hawkeye Arena yesterday - it was the sound of the defibrillator paddles (you know, like the ones they always use on E.R.) jumpstarting the Michigan basketball team and reviving not only its Big Ten championship hopes, but its entire season.

Yesterday's game at Iowa was absolutely a must-win for the Wolverines if they had any hopes of staying in the Big Ten race. But it also was a must-win for the momentum of their season overall.

Sure, March is still a month away, but after losing consecutive games to Illinois and Purdue, it would've been difficult for the Wolverines to recover had they lost to Iowa, consequently losing all three games in a stretch in which the Wolverines were looking to, at the very least, win two out of three.

"We needed (the win) for a lot of reasons," Jerod Ward said. "Our backs were pretty much against the wall."

But one victory does not make up for everything. By no means did the Wolverines get all they were looking for in the most important stretch of their season thus far. But what the Wolverines lost - somewhere between poor shooting performances against Minnesota and Illinois and a choke down the stretch in Thursday's loss to Purdue - they may have found in the confines of Carver-Hawkeye Arena yesterday.

One reason the Wolverines are struggling to find themselves as of late is that they're looking in the wrong places. All season, the Wolverines have talked about meeting and surpassing their opponents' emotions every game. There's no doubt intensity is important in college basketball, but it can only take a team so far. And the Wolverines may have reached the point of diminishing returns. For this team to continue what was beginning to look like a potential storybook season, the Wolverines - all the Wolverines - must start believing in both their emotions and their physical abilities.

Robert Traylor seems to have both down pat. Even before the season started, the co-captain deemed Michigan a Final Four team. But you wonder if the rest of the Wolverines feel the same way. They certainly displayed confidence earlier, but what do these Wolverines think now that the wear and tear of the always-grueling Big Ten season is setting in?

Before yesterday, it had been a while since Travis Conlan had put this team on his shoulders like he can, since Jerod Ward had consistently played like a man on a mission or since Louis Bullock had put a game away with a couple of 3-pointers from the corner.

Maybe circumstances had something to do with the lull. Early in the season, no one, except the Wolverines themselves, expected anything out of Michigan in the wake of coaching change and controversy. So, when the Wolverines started the season 6-2, including an invigorating 24-point blowout of UNLV and a magical victory over No. 1 Duke, the Wolverines' confidence mushroomed.

But expectations also grew, and suddenly Michigan was not the same team it had been just weeks before. The Wolverines seemed to tense up, hesitate more and lack the energy they created earlier in the season. Can you remember the last time the Wolverines were consistently aggressive, or displayed the kind of suffocating defense that put them over the top against Duke?

It has been a while. But yesterday, the Wolverines got back, just a little bit, to what had been working so well before.

Conlan showed glimpses of taking control of Michigan's attack again, Ward set the tone for the Wolverines with 18 points, Bullock exploded for 21 and the Michigan defense shut down the Hawkeyes when they had to. Now, they just have to build on it. The rest of the Wolverines need to follow Traylor's lead. Any 300-pound player who rumbles down the floor and dribbles behind his back twice - as he did against Purdue - clearly believes in himself, his abilities and his team. Maybe the Wolverines need to learn from those that came before them and imitate a bit of the free-wheeling confidence displayed by the Fab Five.

Seasons are made up of turning points. The Wolverines' first two were positive - the victory over Duke and then the Puerto Rico Holiday Classic. This most recent stretch of games, which looked like it might prove disastrous, has been saved, not to mention that the Wolverines finally scored a big victory on the road.

Michigan now has three games - against Northwestern, Minnesota and Ohio State - to build until the next turning point - consecutive games at first-place Michigan State on Feb. 17 and home against Indiana on Feb. 22.

That is, of course, unless the Wolverines make the three games against the struggling Wildcats, Golden Gophers and Buckeyes an unexpectedly unpleasant turning point themselves.

- Dan Stillman can be reached via e-mail at dns@umich.edu.

02-02-98