Michigan basketball's Elite Eight run sparked by one key change
· Yahoo Sports
When the 11-minute mark hit in the first half of the Elite Eight, Michigan basketball and Tennessee were all knotted up at 16-all. The Vols were heavily outrebounding the Wolverines, particularly on the offensive boards. If Michigan was going to advance to the Final Four, something had to give.
And then, it did.
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The maize and blue went on a 24-2 run, with 21 unanswered points. No longer could UT crash the offensive glass with impunity. And the Wolverines offense started picking things up in their own right. The game changed on a dime, and the Vols could do next to nothing on either side of the court.
After the game, Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg shared his thoughts on what changed and how the team came together to ensure the game was theirs.
"Yeah, well we knew the name of the game was going to be physicality, and they were the number one offensive (rebounding) team in the country for a reason," Lendeborg said. "They showed us in those first four minutes. In the media timeout we all regrouped, we thought about what we needed to do. That was the game plan all along. So once we started handing them back and they stopped getting the same offensive rebounds, the game definitely started to shift. Will did a great job walling up and getting those loose balls, or even just tipping it out for us and making it easier for all the other guys. So shout out to Will for his toughness."
It wasn't just one player coming in and making an impact; it was a group effort. And despite Lendeborg being considered by most as 'the star' player for the maize and blue, he refutes that sentiment.
Lendeborg may have had a game-leading 27 points, but it was the unselfishness of the team that allowed the Wolverines to overpower Tennessee, and it started with the fundamentals.
"Man, we start off every practice pretty much with Hibachi passing. That's pretty much the drill," Lendeborg said. "We go out there, and we make the right pass. Like I was saying before, we're an unselfish group of guys. Nobody cares about their stats on this team. We don't have a man. We don't have a best player on this team. We have a guy who's going to show up that night. We have a couple guys. It doesn't matter. We're going to go out there and do whatever we need to win. If it's making an extra pass, everybody on this team will make that extra pass for each other, no matter what's going on."
Michigan will have six days now to get ready for the Final Four, where it will face another 1-seed in Arizona. With the win over the Vols, the Wolverines leapfrogged the Wildcats, reclaiming the No. 1 ranking via KenPom.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: The one change that helped Michigan basketball's win over Tennessee