CHICAGO — A Final Four berth remains under lock and key.
Tennessee basketball came up short in its third straight Elite Eight matchup, falling 95-62 in blowout fashion to top-seeded Michigan at the United Center. The six-seed Vols hung with the Wolverines in the opening moments of action before Michigan (35-3) opened things up with a monster scoring run. Both squads dug themselves into some foul trouble early on, but Tennessee (25-12) found itself with a greater disadvantage against a depth-filled Wolverines bench.
Ja’Kobi Gillespie paced the Vols with 21 points and tallied four assists.
Yaxel Lendeborg led all scorers with 27 points, notching seven boards in the process. Four of his teammates joined him in double-digits.
Fouls aplenty
In a game Michigan head coach Dusty May predicted would be armageddon, the battle between the Midwest Region’s finest became a whistle fest early.
Wolverines’ seven-footer Aday Mara found himself the first one in foul trouble, picking up a pair of infractions before the game grew five minutes old. Tennessee entered the matchup needing to bait Michigan into mistakes, and the whistles proved to be the Vols’ way.
For now.
On the other end, Tennessee needed its bigs to stay clean. Shortly after Mara headed to the bench, Felix Okpara did the same after the officiating crew tabbed the 6-foot-11 presence with his second foul. The Vols’ defensive efforts without Okpara’s size wavered. When head coach Rick Barnes opted to insert his center back into the game, the Wolverines’ aggressiveness dealt one of the unsung killshots of the first half.
Michigan went after Okpara and forced him into his third foul. The nightmare scenario for Tennessee became reality. The Vols no longer had the size to compete.
Wolverines race away
With one of Tennessee’s top defenders watching from the bench, the Wolverines pounced.
Michigan rattled off a 21-0 run, kick-starting things at the free throw line before opening things up to the perimeter. Big 10 Player of the Year Lendeborg found his scoring touch after posting just two points in the opening 10 minutes, imposing his will by slaloming his way through Vols defenders before finishing at the rim or kicking the basketball out to his shooters.
Tennessee could not break through on the offensive end as shades of its blowout loss to Houston in last season’s Elite Eight set in. The Vols went a period of 4:42 without a point, marking one of their first lengthy scoring droughts of the NCAA Tournament. Tennessee scored at some of its best rates in its first three March Madness games, but a 24% shooting clip wouldn’t cut it this time around.
The Vols would need to fight back from a 48-26 halftime hole.
Chippiness sets in
As the Wolverines extended their lead into the 30s as the second half opened up, some bad blood began to bubble up.
Jaylen Carey was tabbed with a technical foul after a scuffle broke out between both teams near the Michigan bench, and Lendeborg responded with some mind games off his team’s uncontested inbounds pass on the other end. Gillespie got the last laugh of the sequence with a one-handed jam over the top of the Wolverines’ forward, but it wouldn’t make a difference. Michigan kept the pedal down, even as the Vols instituted a full-court press to try to make things difficult.
Tennessee’s Elite Eight demons live on.
