“I just think this was a great tournament”.
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While a potential win against an overmatched opponent probably sounds pretty good for U-M, the Wolverines need more than that against Charlotte.
After coming off a one year hiatus from playing in a preseason island tournament, Syracuse did as Syracuse does and won the Battle 4 Atlantis tourney. Rather than picking up three victories and returning with the championship trophy, the Huskies followed their opening game win over MI with back-to-back losses to Syracuse and Gonzaga. They didn’t drive and weren’t taking very good shots to boot. They managed to stretch their lead to seven points with 39 seconds left in the half, but some mistakes in that remaining time allowed the Orange to close the gap.
“We made 3’s early so they had to come out and cover us”, Cooney said. “That’s what we gotta continue to do”. House and Tyler Davis combined to go 9-of-12 from the line and Alex Caruso and Jalen Jones each made a pair as the Aggies finished with a nine-point advantage at the stripe, where Texas A&M is 70.6 percent as a team.TIP-INS 1.
Michigan, which led 44-22 at halftime, got 19 points from Moritz Wagner. With a few minutes left in the game, the Wolverines would cut the lead to 8 and just after, Irvin let go a three with hope that they would only be down by 5 with just enough time for things to get interesting. But UConn’s inability to finish shots around the basket cost them, and Syracuse (5-0) had a big shooting day, shooting 49 percent in the first half, and almost 60 in the second half.
And after a Derrick Walton, Jr.
Daniel Hamilton’s fingerprints were all over the game and he helped UConn open up their first half lead with a pair of nice floaters in the lane.
Other than Hamilton, the only Husky player to really stand out was Omar Calhoun, who canned three 3-pointers and finished with a season-high nine points.
SU shook off a five-minute scoreless streak when Cooney dropped in a fast break lay-up. Had 18 assists on its 27 field goals. A night after notching his second triple-double of the season, Valentine took over another way on Friday, hitting five straight threes in the span of about five minutes to put the Spartans up double-figures in a game they were struggling to take control of.
Gbinije, who had his second 20-point scoring output of the season, said he tried to exploit the looks that Charlotte gave him.
Beilein said he isn’t stressing too much about the early deficiencies his team is showing through their first four games. “So that says a lot about their character and their toughness”.
“We’re going to get another opportunity to get a signature win out of conference”, Ollie said, “and when we’ve got to be ready for it, and when we get in conference, we’ve got to be ready to go”. We can’t come down and walk it because we don’t want to play against the zone for 40 minutes.
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“We got off to another slow start which concerns me”. “We got off to another slow start which concerns me”.
