Following the Players Era Festival where they demolished San Diego State, Auburn and Gonzaga by a combined 110 points, the Michigan Wolverines returned and continued their winning ways by taking down the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 101-60.
Dusty May’s squad is 8-0 overall and 1-0 in Big Ten play following the win. It’s one of the most impressive starts to a basketball season we’ve seen in Ann Arbor in a long, long time. Depending on how things go with Arizona on Saturday night, the Wolverines could be
the No. 1 team in the country come Monday.
What makes it even more impressive is the feat they just achieved. The Wolverines did something against Rutgers it had not done since the 1989-90 season — score 100 or more points in three straight games.
The Wolverines put up 102 points on Auburn before scoring 101 points against Gonzaga the next night in Las Vegas. It wouldn’t have surprised to see some rust since the team hadn’t played in 10 days, but that was not the case at all against the Scarlet Knights on Saturday.
Michigan was firing on all cylinders against Rutgers, going 39-of-65 (60 percent) on field goals and 13-of-29 (45 percent) from beyond the arc. Morez Johnson Jr. led all scorers with 22 points, while Yaxel Lendeborg put up 14 points and eight rebounds. Elliot Cadeau also had an impressive 11-point, nine-assist performance. Off the bench, Trey McKenney had 13 points and L.J. Cason and Roddy Gayle Jr. put up 11 points apiece.
Going into this week’s action, Michigan was the top ranked team on KenPom, the NET, and the Torvik rankings. Beating a lowly team like Rutgers isn’t going to move the needle too much, nor should it. But after hitting this rare statistical feat and all of the success they’ve had early on this season, the sky is truly the limit for Michigan.
