Big Ten Tournament Live Blog: Michigan vs. Ohio State 2nd Half

My hopes are officially up for an upset. I'm assuming I'll get kicked in the balls

1:05 PM - We're about to tip off the second half. Wolverines down five and I'm emotionally invested in an upset now. Odds are by the end of this blog though I'll be pulling out my hair.

1:07 PM - Smith just makes a great hustle play that gives Courtney Simms a dunk. Fantastic stuff!

1:08 PM - Simms just gets blocked twice by Oden right under the basket. Dear freaking God. Somebody needs to check Oden's birth certificate by the way. No way he's 19.

1:10 PM - Oden hits a pretty jump hook over Simms to put Ohio State up eight. Even though he seems like a nice guy, I'm going to hate him for the rest of his career.

1:11 PM - Harris just airballs a three from the corner and Ohio State immediately goes back down the court and gets a short jumper to go up ten. Petway then misses a dunk put back to send us to the ad break. This game is slipping away folks. Could be an eye gouging blow out in a matter of minutes.

1:17 PM - Cook nails a three from the corner after a great pass. Michigan is down 12 now as Steve Lavin talks about the Buckeyes's trademark "runs." Abram comes down and hits a three on the next possession though to stem the tide and keep them in this.

1:20 PM - Smith nails a wide open three (making him 1-10 from the field for the game) and we may have a game here as Michigan has cut the lead to six. Please don't get my hopes up just to screw this up again!

1:21 PM - Courtney Simms gets the ball inside and misses a point blank lay up inside. WHY CAN'T HE MAKE THESE DAMN SHOTS!!! He really drives me insane.

1:23 PM - We head to another ad break with Michigan down five. In a completely unrelated note to the game. The first ad is the Bud Light ones where the gorillas talk about robbing the Bud Light delivery man. Now I've already suspended my disbelief that the gorillas can actually talk (and speak English no less) but I'm also suppose to believe that they'd know what Bud Light is and want to steal it? I wish I could have sat in on the meeting where they came up with that...

• Suit #1 - "Let's do a commercial with talking gorillas who plan to rob a Bud Light guy."
• Suit #2 - "Wow, that's a GREAT idea...it would be SOOOO FUNNY! We're awesome!"

1:27 PM - So we come back from the commercial and after an OSU tip in we get a WAY too rushed 3 which puts the Buckeyes on the break for an easy lay up, and just like that it's a 9 point game again. Amaker needs a timeout to calmly discuss how they are blowing this game. I'm sorry but Michigan is not a good enough shooting team to be taking three's that early in a possession. Probably comes down to coaching, but that probably doesn't even need to be said at this point.

1:31 PM - Harris misses a three off the front of the rim and is now 1 of 11 from the field. Way to show up in the big games Dion. Michigan gets bailed out on the break as Conley gets called for a charge on what would have been an easy lay up. Smith then comes down and hits another big three. 50-44 Bucks with 9:15 left....

1:35 PM - Abram misses the front end of a one and one that could have cut the lead to two. Moments like this are the reason we're probably going to the NIT. Simms then gets called for his fourth foul while defending Oden. Bear in mind that there's still over 8 minutes left in this game and Michigan's best interior defender is now on the bench with four fouls. I'm getting a bad feeling about this.

1:36 PM - After a couple of close misses by OSU, Michigan comes down the court and Abram hits an open three off a nice pass from Harris. Michigan down three with 7:47 to go.

1:41 PM - Smith with a nice baseline drive, and then he decides just to jump in the air inside of a pack of Buckeyes. Amazingly he loses the ball out of bounds. Just fucking great. OSU hits another short jumper to put the lead back to eight.

1:44 PM - Harris drives down the lane and draws the foul. Down ten with 5:47 to go Harris hits both free throws to keep hope alive.

1:45 PM - OSU comes down and Conley hits a wide open three from the corner. Those are the big shots that good teams make when they need to. OSU back up 11.

1:46 PM - After Petway hits a couple of free throws to cut the lead to nine, the Buckeyes come right back with an alley-oop slam from Hunter. For some reason, even after Conley was double teamed Simms felt the need to come off Hunter and triple team him which lead to the slam. UGH!!!

1:48 PM - Down 13 with 4:13 to go, Simms hits an inside double clutch jumper and gets the free throw to cut the lead to ten. Then they get a steal on the other end an they run on the break to cut it to eight but what happens? Harris loses the ball out of bounds as he goes for the lay up. And that, folks, is why we're going to the NIT! FEEL THE EXCITEMENT!

1:52 PM - Oden hits another jump hook which puts the Bucks up 12 with less then four minutes to play. I'm ready to call this game over. You think we can get a one seed in the NIT? or maybe a two?

1:54 PM - After some nice hustle by Smith to get an offensive board, they get it inside to Petway for the slam which cuts the lead to eight with 2:22 to play. I'm still not getting my hopes back up.

1:57 PM - ESPN shows a cutaway of Amaker who is sitting on the bench and "shouting." Thad Matta, on the otherhand, is standing and yelling like a crazed lunatic. Hmmm, which team has the ten point lead?

1:58 PM - Michigan misses a couple of shots, including another from Harris who is playing like absolute shit today. Simms fouls out after Oden gets the rebound. It's over baby. Oden hits one and OSU is up 11 with 1:21 left.

1:59 PM - Last ditch effort from the Wolverines has Smith driving baseline and just throwing the ball at the rim like he was trying to hit that instead of trying to score. Why do I watch this?

2:02 PM - And that's it. Michigan's NCAA tournament hopes are officially dead as they fall to Ohio State 72-62. It's another trip to the NIT and excuse me if I'm not too thrilled. This was supposed to be the year the Wolverines broke through to make the NCAA's. They had a team filled with seniors in a Big Ten that was down. Instead they never stepped up and won a big game and, as usual, lost some games to horrible teams (MINNESOTA!!!) and played their way out of the tournament. Normally I'd say the bright spot is that Amaker would be fired so maybe things would change, but since that's not going to happen (due to his "stud" recruits and his wife having the University President in her back pocket) I really have nothing to be happy about at all. He is just not a good coach. I have yet to see a Michigan player who has improved his game under Amaker's guidance. Look at Dion Harris. He is the same streaky shooter, and shaky ballhandler that he was when he stepped on campus four years ago. His 1-13 performance from the field today in his last meaningful game at Michigan pretty much shows it all. Just another disappointing basketball season to go with the last eight. Well I guess on the brightside, Tigers baseball season is starting up soon....