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Lapse, lag, I cannot remember the word that kept popping-up to describe the loss.

It was like last year's Villanova win in that it was not even close.  It was clearly the end of the line.

Even though I had never seen Texas Tech play I was very nervous about this game.  I thought Michigan could win (see below) and I felt that the team had earned that optimism.  Thirty wins and a top 10 ranking is a good team.  Usually when they won it was not really that close.

Besides, I had never seen anyone stop Zavier Simpson and Jon Teske yet.  That too, see below, was before Texas Tech.

But I also felt expectations of a Final Four were over the top.  There are just too many good teams and that is too hard to do.  As everyone always says, you have to be good and lucky to get that far.

This team had flaws, players including Charles Matthews, Iggy, and Jordan Poole disappear at times or can be stopped.  The bench was good to non-existent.

Flop, that is the word.  It was a quintessential flop.

But somehow it was not like Jim Harbaugh and the football team.  This team was always thin and even going back to last year (sans Iggy), they had a great run.

Actually, it was historic.  Thirty win seasons are rare.  Aside from Michigan State (a Final Four team) and a victory over a really good Duke team, Michigan got through the Big Ten as one of its leaders.

The team has a strong winning personality.  Still, the season was almost choreographed from the beginning, what with a couple of tough games (North Carolina and Villanova) and almost all the rest of the first half at home and against much lesser opponents.  Ignas Brazdeikis had a chance to show his stuff but the team had no other newcomers.  The nonexistent bench did not look good when they did play so there was no other alternative.  The six or seven who did play showed flaws or at least a lack of versatility.  The odds of a deep NCAA run this year were not good.

But who would have known they would not make a single 3?  Sorry, C. J. Baird does not count.  Or that Simpson (no points, 2 assists) and Teske would be stopped.  That is what brought them, virtually no one had shut it down this season, and that is the way they had to play.

Every key player save for Matthews could be back next year.  Next year they will be a Final Four team.