Michigan Basketball: 3 takeaways from narrow overtime victory over Oakland

Michigan Basketball barely avoided disaster on Sunday against Oakland – and have a lot to learn from the experience.

After dominating in their season opener over the preseason favorites in the MAC, 25th-ranked Michigan Basketball nearly experienced a devastating setback on Sunday, claiming a close overtime home victory over Oakland, 81-71.

Firstly – and terribly, for the Wolverines – this game was not meant to be competitive at all if Oakland’s performance during the opening stretch of the season was any indication.  The Wolverines were coming off a 96-82 win over a great Bowling Green team – while the Golden Grizzlies were obliterated in a three-game series at the Xavier Invitational.

Those streak of losses were comprised of blowouts to Xavier (101-49) and Toledo (80-53) and a slightly more competitive defeat to Bradley (74-60).  Looking at the bigger picture, Oakland is coming off a 14-19 season in 2019-20 and was selected to finish sixth in the Horizon League this year.

Oakland has, historically, been a thorn in teams’ sides during Greg Kampe’s 36 years at the helm – but, frankly, if their statistics and showings during the early stages of this season are any indications, they are not particularly good.

The Golden Grizzlies currently rank 296th in KenPom, they feature just one double-digit scorer in star transfer Jalen Moore (15.5), and Moore’s 18 assists on the season are more assists than the rest of the team has – combined.

It is obviously early in the season, but there are obviously some red flags for the Wolverines coming out of this game.  Michigan – ranked 25th entering this season – returned 54.1% of their scoring from last year, featured a really solid guard-post duo in Isaiah Livers and Franz Wagner, and had a fantastic night from Wake Forest transfer Chaundee Brown Jr. against Bowling Green.

Again, this game was not meant to be close – and head coach Juwan Howard and his crew knew that.  The Golden Grizzlies gave the Wolverines everything they had – they led by two at halftime (33-31), fought back from a 6-point deficit during the second half (Michigan’s biggest lead during regulation), and got under Michigan’s skin – if this interaction between Howard and Livers during a timeout proves anything.

Now, there are a number of positives to take away from this game for Michigan.  Livers was sensational, recording 22 points on an insane shooting clip (8-12 FG, 5-7 3PT, 1-1 FT), three assists, and a game-high four blocks.

Hunter Dickinson, meanwhile, continued his stellar freshman campaign, scoring 19 points (6-8 FG, 7-9 FT) and dishing out four assists – as a 7-1 post.  His play inside was incredibly necessary for the Wolverines – after just being barely ahead in points in the paint at the end of the first half (16-14), Michigan extended that lead to 42-22 by the conclusion of the game – largely because of Dickinson.

They dominated on the boards (45-33, behind Wagner’s game-high 13 rebounds), dished out several more assists (24-9), and shot much better than the Golden Grizzlies from the floor (46.8% to 32.8%).

But this is where all the positives end for Michigan.  Obviously, again, it is early in the season and there are bound to be overreactions.  However, there are some notable takeaways from this game that need to be identified and remedied as soon as possible.

The key to fixing these issues, as cliched as it sounds, is teamwork.  They need everyone to buy in and be on the same page in order to succeed.  Individual performances may be enough to get them through weaker teams on their schedule – but they will be insanely, and unnecessarily, close.  That is exactly what happened against Oakland.  It will cost them games in the Big Ten.

Having a stellar team performance against Bowling Green be followed by a lackluster showing versus Oakland makes a few of these issues easy to pick out.  This is a Michigan team that looked the part of a top-25 squad against Bowling Green – but not versus Oakland.  Here are those issues – and takeaways – from their game against the Golden Grizzlies.