Fasten your seatbelts
Things are a bit surreal over here at the Bres. Michigan winning here for the first time since 1997. Reporters following along on Twitter as Korie Lucious sends his encouragement during MSU's comeback attempt ("Let's go fellas" and "Still got time, no sweat!") . Players who talked openly about a national championship three months ago now talking about the chance they'll even get to compete for it.
Meanwhile, Tom Izzo refused to answer a question about whether Korie Lucious might be allowed to return to the team next season. He apologized and said he isn't going there, not while this season is still in progress. He also said he doesn't believe this team is done, or lost, or however you want to say it.
"Nobody quit and we're not gonna quit on this," he said. "I've been at it too long. I don’t know how well we’ll play, but we're not gonna quit."
The players said the same thing, about fighting through the darkest time for this program -- and certainly the most disastrous week -- that I've seen since covering this beat. But Green tells it like it is, too, and he didn't hide his despair.
“I don’t even know what to do right now,” he said. “I want to get back out there on the court, but I’m just lost right now.”
On the other side, Michigan was as jubilant as you might expect. And the Wolverines deserved every bit of it. They stayed together, they made the shots, they boxed out as well as an opponent has boxed out in this building (a draw on the boards for U-M is like Indiana out-rushing Wisconsin in football). Darius Morris was a man. Zack Novak led the way with fire and six 3-pointers. Stu Douglass hit the shot of the night. A good-sized throng of U-M students made their presence known from the upper deck, heard over the stunned silence after that Douglass shot.
"We sing the fight song after every win," Beilein said, "and that was a very sweet fight song we just sang."
Novak called it "indescribable," mentioning the 1,181-day period since U-M last beat MSU in football or men's basketball.
“It’s really important," Morris said. "Not just for the people that’s in this locker room, but all the Michigan fans out there and everybody that put on a Michigan jersey before us.”
At Breslin, a crisis. In Ann Arbor, some evidence that this senior-less team is pretty good and bound to be darn good before it's done growing. On Twitter, the only remaining traces of a guy whose last-straw transgression and resulting dismissal might be the thing that dooms his former team to the NIT -- and makes it the most disappointing in program history.
