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No. 1 Michigan basketball falls to Wisconsin, suffers first loss of season
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- No. 1 Michigan basketball falls to Wisconsin, suffers first loss of season
Michigan men's basketball rolled its way to No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll , throttling some of the best teams in the country on its way to a 14-0 start.
That immaculate record is no longer unblemished.
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Behind 26 points from John Blackwell and 22 points from Nick Boyd , Wisconsin went on the road and knocked off the previously unbeaten No. 1 Wolverines 91-88 on Saturday, Jan. 10 at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan .
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With the loss by coach Dusty May's team, there are five remaining undefeated men's teams at the Division I level — No. 2 Arizona, No. 3 Iowa State , No. 10 Vanderbilt, No. 11 Nebraska and, perhaps most surprisingly, Miami ( Ohio ).
Michigan led by as many as 14 points with 7:38 remaining in the first half, but that deficit was trimmed to one at halftime by a Badgers team that entered the day with a 10-5 record. Carried by 13 second-half points from Boyd, Wisconsin built a six-point lead early in the second half and held on for the win after Roddy Gayle Jr. missed a contested 3-pointer with two seconds remaining that would have tied the game.
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Michigan made only one of its final nine shots.
The Badgers knocked down 15 of their 33 attempts from 3 (45.5%), including a 10-of-17 mark in the second half. Wisconsin had been 0-2 in road games and 0-5 in Quad 1 matchups heading into the day.
In their second season under May, and with a roster led by high-impact transfers Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr. , the Wolverines hadn't just been beating opponents, but obliterating them. Of Michigan's first 14 wins, 10 of them came by at least 25 points, a group of blowouts that included victories against Gonzaga, Auburn, San Diego State , Villanova and USC.
Elliot Cadeau had a team-high 19 points in a losing effort for the Wolverines, who will embark on a West Coast road trip next week with games at Washington and Oregon .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No. 1 Michigan basketball falls to Wisconsin for first loss of season
