Staring a 12-5 upset in the face, Michigan just played basketball

The run of play was against them. The crowd was against them. The basketball gods even took King Triton’s side in the final minutes after a dreadful first half of shooting from 12-seed UC San Diego.

Stymied out of their offensive sets by the Tritons’ unorthodox speed-and-swarm defense, all the fifth-seeded Michigan Wolverines could do Thursday was play basketball in a 68-65 win in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Ball Arena.

Vladislav Goldin, who grabbed two enormous offensive rebounds in the final minute, “did what (he) had to do.”

One of them, a towering two-handed snatch on a miss off the right iron, eventually led him to the free throw line to push a one-point lead to three.

First-year Wolverines coach Dusty May met the moment by letting his players play more by their nature than by his design, but even then, some of the wide-open shots weren’t falling. He’s been in much larger moments, namely his Final Four run with Florida Atlantic two years ago as a 9-seed.

Even on the other side of the coin, he drew on that experience to get his guys through one of the peskiest defenses they’ll see in this tournament.

“(Goldin) generates a lot of attention, and I don’t think we did a great job of taking what the game was giving us,” May said. “Part of the reason is (the Tritons) get in the passing lanes. They’re very, very disciplined. When they do get behind the ball, it’s impressive how fast they are to get back and make plays with back tips or scrambling and rotating.

“There’s a coach named Jim Crutchfield at Nova Southeastern. We wanted to play them the year we went to the Final Four because we thought we might see a souped-up version of that. … It felt a little bit like that where you simply can’t run your stuff. Every timeout they’re running and jumping us, (and it) forced us to play basketball.”

With 19 seconds to go, Tritons coach Eric Olen had a timeout but chose not to use it in the theme of the occasion. The man of the moment, guard Tyler McGhie, stepped back as time was expiring and fired a good look over 7-footer Danny Wolf from the left wing. Back iron. Michigan rebound. Ballgame.

Despite a 14-point deficit at halftime, McGhie basically orchestrated a comeback by himself and even stole the lead with a fallaway midrange jumper. After the miss, his hands were on his head while he looked up at an impressive UCSD contingent and smiled. He tallied a game-high 25 points.

Even with a crowd of 19,000 strong rooting for the underdog, Michigan — no matter its diminishment below its usual standard — would not be denied a win in the big dance after the program skipped the ballroom the last two seasons.

“Obviously we have a lot of guys who had some experience in March Madness before,” said Goldin, who finished with 14 points and seven rebounds. “That’s something we talked (about) before we started playing, that if something is going to go wrong — like everybody cheering for the lower seed — we expected it. We knew it was coming, and we just played with that.”

As the lower seed to No. 4 Texas A&M on Saturday, May joked he’ll gladly take some of the underdog support. But in round one, as much as Michigan is enjoying dancing again, an ability to calm down and hoop was its late-game superpower.

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