Michigan assistant Saddi Washington: 'We're still fighting for our life'

Michigan Wolverines basketball is the only Big Ten team to have won six games in February, putting it in position to make a run at an NCAA Tournament bid with two regular-season games and the conference tournament remaining.

The Maize and Blue are on their third three-game winning streak of the season, sitting at 17-12 overall and 11-7 in the Big Ten with an outside chance of earning a share of the conference crown if things break their way this week. Road games at Illinois Thursday and Indiana Sunday loom.

“We’re still fighting for our life, in terms of seeding, in terms of postseason play, so there are a lot of elements and a lot of reasons to still be locked in and engaged,” longtime Michigan assistant coach Saddi Washington said on the Inside Michigan Basketball radio show.

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The last two regular-season tilts won’t be easy, especially given the venues they’ll be played in. There’s been some bad blood from the Illinois side over the last couple seasons, stemming to when the Illini whined about U-M winning the Big Ten title despite having postponed games due to illness in 2021. On Sunday in Bloomington, Indiana will honor star forward Trayce Jackson-Davis as part of its senior-day festivities. The Illini and Hoosiers are a combined 28-3 at home this season.

Plus, Washington acknowledged, no matter where they go, hostile environments seem to have at least a little bit of extra juice when the Wolverines come to town.

“I take it as a badge of honor,” the Michigan assistant said. “You wear that block ‘M’ proud, but you also know people are coming for your head. I embrace it, and I know that our guys embrace it, because the flip side could be true, where it’s just a regular game with a half crowd and the energy isn’t in the building. It’s something about those Wolverines — when the Wolverines come to town, everybody shows up.

“When you walk out onto the floor, you can feel the energy long before you hit the court. It’s one of those things that you just gotta embrace and you gotta have the kind of guys in the locker room who love playing in that environment.”

The Wolverines got some help from the basketball gods in Sunday’s 87-79 overtime win over Wisconsin. Junior center Hunter Dickinson hit a 30-foot heave at the buzzer to extend the game an extra five minutes, before the Wolverines won the extra session, 19-11.

Washington was a part of Michigan’s 2018 run, when Jordan Poole‘s buzzer beater to beat Houston in the round of 32 propelled it to the national title game. He knows the history of Trey Burke nailing a game-tying shot with 4.2 seconds left in the 2013 Sweet 16 against Kansas, and Kam Chatman‘s game-winning triple at the buzzer lifted Michigan to a Big Ten Tournament victory over Indiana in 2016, securing an NCAA Tournament bid.

“Much like the other shots, how they launch the remainder of that season, hopefully this is our launching pad as we get down to the home stretch,” Washington said.

Michigan has gotten to this point by flipping the script during crunch time. The Wolverines have lost 10 games by 6 or fewer points or in overtime — including their lone two setbacks last month, by 1 point to Indiana and 5 points at Wisconsin. But Michigan has executed down the stretch lately, in an 84-72 win over Michigan State, a 58-45 victory at Rutgers and Sunday’s game versus the Badgers.

“To our guys’ credit, that’s been a little bit of our struggle, finishing out games like this,” Washington said. “To see the maturation of this team now, being able to win tough games like this, has been a step in the right direction.

“A lot of times, failure is the best teacher. As much has you can talk about it and try to prep them for it, sometimes you’ve just got to be in the moment and fail.

“And then put that in your computer bank, because it’s going to show up again some time in that season, the next game, in your career — and now you’ve got, oh, yeah, I’ve got to stay in the low man spot. I can’t gamble right now. I have to just be solid. I have to box out and go after the rebound with two hands, because those are all the little things that make the difference between winning and losing.

“Instead of cutting the corner, I’ve really gotta set this man up before I come around this screen. It’s the culmination of all those moments that bring you to the moment where you have to perform.”

That’s the difference, too, between continuing to have a disappointing season — Michigan was 11-10 after 21 games despite ranking No. 22 in the preseason AP poll — and playing your best basketball at the right time.

“You can just look around the country, you can just look around our league — there are teams that are trending [up], there are teams that have leveled out and there are teams that are going in the other direction,” the Michigan assistant explained. “But that’s athletics. You don’t want to be peaking too early, but at the same time, you want to be able to have this level of consistency that you know what you’re going to get from guys night in and night out.

“One of the things that we talk about in our program is embracing the next man’s success. So one night it’s going to be [freshman point guard] Dug [McDaniel]’s night, one night it’s going to be [sophomore guard] Kobe [Bufkin]’s night, one night it’s going to be [freshman guard] Jett [Howard]’s night, one night it’s going to be Hunter’s night and so on and so forth.”