{"id":4306,"date":"2026-01-11T01:49:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/11\/michigan-taken-down-91-88-as-wisconsin-holds-on-late\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T01:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:49:08","slug":"michigan-taken-down-91-88-as-wisconsin-holds-on-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/11\/michigan-taken-down-91-88-as-wisconsin-holds-on-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan taken down, 91-88, as Wisconsin holds on late"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Throughout the season, the No. 2 Michigan men\u2019s basketball team has punished its foes behind consistent shotmaking and an aggressive switching defense en route to a 14-0 record. But Saturday against Wisconsin, the Wolverines\u2019 undefeated streak finally came to an end.<\/p>\n<p>And all it took was the Badgers (11-5 overall, 3-2 Big Ten) attacking the one weakness the Michigan (14-1, 4-1) defense has shown thus far. By exploiting favorable matchups throughout the day, Wisconsin put a tally in Michigan\u2019s loss column for the first time this season, 91-88.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(Wisconsin) came in here and they took a test early,\u201d Wolverines coach Dusty May said. \u201cThey responded and went into halftime with some positive momentum and came out in the second half and knocked us on our heels a little bit. They exposed some things with our plan, with our team that we thought were going to be issues this year. We just didn\u2019t think we would see so many of them on the same night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michigan\u2019s offense was humming early as it worked deep in the paint to generate offense behind its frontcourt. They found consistent success with baseline drives and rolls to the rim, which over time, opened up perimeter looks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>But as the Wolverines\u2019 blistering pace brought them out to an early lead, the Badgers had an answer: guard John Blackwell. With Michigan up 14, its largest lead of the first half, Blackwell went on a personal 7-0 run to keep Wisconsin close. His shotmaking was contagious as fellow guard Nick Boyd\u2019s shots started to drop in the last few minutes and the Badgers\u2019 defense stifled the Wolverines in the paint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought that (Blackwell\u2019s run) changed the complexion of the game. And then from that point on, they controlled tempo, thought they kind of scrapped their continuity motion, and ran the clock down, got to a high ball screen or a matchup, and took advantage of it. We\u2019ve got to find some more solutions on the fly when things aren\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michigan was the closest it\u2019s been to trailing at the half inside Crisler Center all season. Wisconsin capitalized on that in the second.<\/p>\n<p>The Wolverines\u2019 switch-heavy defensive sets have made opponents struggle all season, but the Badgers once again found an answer: get an advantageous matchup with one of Michigan\u2019s\u00a0bigs defending Boyd. Drives inside forced help and was enough for forward Aleksas Bieliauskas to drain four 3-pointers in just four minutes. Soon enough, Boyd found and cashed in his own looks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s our defense, and it\u2019s a combination of our plan and our execution,\u201d May said. \u201cBut once again, they played well. I thought their ability to get wherever they wanted to off the bounce in some matchups that we usually don\u2019t have that happen against, it caused us to change our rotations. It caused us to change our coverages.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>But the Wolverines stuck around behind junior guard Elliot Cadeau. Sitting for a large chunk of the first half due to foul troubles, Michigan\u2019s offense later woke up with him running the point. Typically regarded for his playmaking, Cadeau did all the scoring himself. In his 17 second-half minutes, Cadeau scored 19 points on near-perfect shooting, essentially keeping the game close on his own.<\/p>\n<p>As the clock ticked on and both teams dropped in basket after basket, the Wolverines and Wisconsin each looked for a decisive blow. And the Badgers got it with just over two minutes to go.<\/p>\n<p>Guard Braeden Carrington corralled an offensive board and kicked it out to guard Andrew Rohde. In a fluid motion, Rohde drained it to stretch Wisconsin\u2019s lead to four, silencing the crowd and icing the game in the process. While Michigan had a few chances to get it back even, it couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>The team that has dominated teams at home all season looked human Saturday as the Badgers hunted advantageous matchups. And just like that, the Wolverines\u2019 undefeated streak came to an end.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout the season, the No. 2 Michigan men\u2019s basketball team has punished its foes behind consistent shotmaking and an aggressive switching defense en route to a 14-0 record. But Saturday against Wisconsin, the Wolverines\u2019 undefeated streak finally came to an end. And all it took was the Badgers (11-5 overall, 3-2 Big Ten) attacking the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[644,1021,222,1352],"class_list":{"0":"post-4306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-holds","9":"tag-late","10":"tag-michigan","11":"tag-wisconsin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}