Tate: Weber can't find right combination in UI loss

Loren Tate and Jim Turpin will conduct a chat at 11 a.m. Monday. Submit your questions here.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Bruce Weber tried everything. He subbed relentlessly. He employed a large lineup, a middle-sized unit and a quintet with no "big."

He received good service from senior sub Calvin Brock (13 points), and flashes of the future from Alex Legion (10 points). He sat 7-foot-1 Mike Tisdale for 18 minutes and 6-9 Mike Davis for 16. He tried one combination after another.

But the Illini coach, who last week anticipated a problem in covering Michigan's mobile perimeter, never located a lineup Sunday that he was comfortable with.

"I hate to take Tisdale out because he's one of our best scorers," Weber said, "but the matchups in this game weren't good for him. And this was the first time Trent (Meacham) wasn't sharp on both ends.

"I said if we got into a shootout, we wouldn't win. We needed to find a way to stop them. They spread us with threes in the first half, and we had too many breakdowns in the second half."

This was Michigan's game. John Beilein's up-and-coming gang returned to the form that brought it national recognition against UCLA in November and Duke in December. Backed into a corner after a home loss to Wisconsin, the Wolverines came out firing bombs in a torrid 39-38 first half. From there, the game changed and Weber's gang will look back on a nasty stretch of sloppiness – four crowd-pleasing dunks gave the Wolverines a 56-53 lead – and then, after Demetri McCamey's tip-in tied it 62-62, a visiting team that was shooting 51 percent for 34 minutes trailed off to 1 for 9 in the last six minutes. Only Legion's 15-footer found the net.

Weaknesses exposed

"Everything started to go wrong," Meacham said. "We didn't stick to our principles, and we had defensive lapses. After they hit those threes (8 of 18 in the first half), we tried to hug our men and that opened them for some drives."

Thus the Illini return home 13-2 overall and 1-1 in Big Ten road games, a record they would have accepted in advance. But there were warning bells clanging Sunday at Crisler Arena because ... well, here is the question: As sound as the defense was at Purdue, can Weber continue to cover individual weaknesses that Michigan took advantage of?

DeShawn Sims drained two treys over Tisdale early, and the Illini seemed incapable of preventing the arc attack. Manny Harris, the Big Ten's leading scorer, quickly demonstrated his 3-for-13 slump against Wisconsin wouldn't be repeated (he led all scorers with 16) as he slipped past Chester Frazier for two early layups.

Michigan played like a team possessed, putting five members in double figures and getting 7-for-11 shooting from the bench. Beilein acknowledged afterward: "I lied when I said we were under no pressure. Homecourt, homecourt, homecourt ... you have to hold homecourt. We had guys talking louder and more aggressively in the locker room than in the past. We didn't want to start 0-2 at home."

Costly misses

In the concluding minutes, Michigan didn't have to shoot well to break out of the 62-all tie. Laval Lucas-Perry garnered a layup off a rebound, Zack Gibson darted around Tisdale for a dunk, Sims spun inside for an easy one, and Kevin Grady beat McCamey for a layup. The Wolverines closed it out with four free throws, more than Illinois shot all day.

Don't blame the officials for the Illini getting only three free throws in regulation time in each of the last two games. This is the nature of their jump-shooting game. And the attack was productive for 34 minutes, whereupon Meacham, Brock, Legion and others missed the same shots they cashed earlier in the game and under similar pressure at Purdue.

Ultimately, good shooters make shots. That's not a great concern. But Jan. 14 will find Michigan in Champaign for a return match, and Weber will be hard-pressed to find defensive answers for a free-wheeling, trey-firing team that is smaller but would leave Illinois far behind in a track meet.

Loren Tate writes for The News-Gazette. He can be reached at ltate@news-gazette.com.

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