Sixty-four miles apart, Michigan and Michigan State spent Thursday night flexing their respective muscles three days before their first showdown of the new season.
The Wolverines turned a back-and-forth game in the first 10 minutes into a lopsided affair in the second half en route to a 70-62 win over Wisconsin Thursday night at the Crisler Center.
Michigan (11-4, 2-0 Big Ten) won its fourth straight game behind a combined 19-point, 27-rebound performance from its starting frontcourt and its second straight strong defensive game.
Forward Cyesha Goree finished with 10 points and 15 rebounds, one of four Wolverines in double figures, and Val Driscoll had nine points and 12 rebounds.
“Obviously when there’s two bigs in there it’s hard to guard two bigs and then when we do get inside and they double we can kick out to outside shooters,” Driscoll said.
Minutes after Michigan finished off its win, Michigan State was finishing off a 13-point win over a Nebraska team that came in at 11-2 and ranked No. 16 in the country.
Michigan can now spend the next two days focusing on trying to record a win over the Spartans in the second straight season.
“I think it’s awesome that we are coming in 2-0 against Michigan State and really proving people wrong and getting better every single day and working hard every single day,” Driscoll said.
After Wisconsin tied the game at 16 with 10:33 left in the first, Michigan didn’t allow any points in the nearly six minutes that followed.
The Badgers broke Michigan’s seven-point run with a bucket at the 4:42 mark of the first half, before Michigan responded with back-to-back 3-pointers that put them up by 10 for the first time.
The game marked the second straight that Michigan pulled away in the final 10 minutes of the first half. On Sunday, Michigan held Ohio State without a point in the final 7:23 of the first half en route to a 15-point road win.
“We really defended Ohio State extremely well and we defended very well tonight in the first half,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said.
The Wolverines led by as many as 28 in the second half, and saw their lead shrink to single digits only when there were two minutes left in the in the game. Wisconsin closed the gap to six with 1:28 left before Michigan closed out the game out with four points in the final minute.
Nicole Elmblad led Michigan with 15 points on the night. But the Wolverines did the most damage underneath, where they won the rebounding battle 45-31 and took 47 shots in the paint.
The production was a result of working in practice to get the ball underneath to two players that complement each other well and present a tough matchup when in the game together.
“It’s really nice that we actually get that connection,” Goree said. “We’ve been working on that a lot in practice to make sure that we actually get our bigs involved in high-low when we’ve got both of us in at the same time and that’s something we executed very well tonight.”
While Sunday’s game is Michigan's biggest of the season thus far, it also kicks off a stretch of three games in seven days for the Wolverines.
“It’s going to be hectic for us, but our philosophy is one game at a time,” Barnes Arico said. "I know our kids will be excited about Michigan State, but for us and our program it’s one more game,”
Last year, Michigan snapped a 12-game losing streak against the Spartans in a dramatic 70-69 home win Feb. 16.
But only one starter, Elmblad, returns from that team. So on Sunday, the Wolverines will be looking to make their own memorable moment against the Spartans.
“It’s a totally different team for us and for them, so we’re just looking to play our game, play hard and hopefully we’ll come out with the same outcome,” Goree said.
Kyle Austin covers sports for The Ann Arbor News. E-mail him at firstname.lastname@example.org