The Dirty & The Dirty: Michigan 79, Marquette 61

After two games where Marquette was lackluster in the first half and amazing in the second half, Marquette was bad in the first half and the second half didn't matter on Thursday night. Michigan outscored Marquette 35-11 to close the first half up 50-26 and was never really threatened after the break before winning, 79-61, in the semifinals of the 2K Classic.

I guess, if you wanted, you could claim that Marquette trimming the lead from 29 early in the second half to just 12 points right before the under-4 timeout counts as threatening the Wolverines. However, when the final margin ends up at 18, do you really feel comfortable saying that?

You could pin the loss on a lot of things. Turnovers? Absolutely. Marquette committed 14 in the first half. Bad defense? Sure thing. Awful rebounding? That was in there, too. An unnecessary amount of fouling leading to way too many free throws by the Wolverines? Oh yeah.

The high point of the night was probably when Marquette announced that they were debuting gray uniforms. No, that was not a good thing, as these outfits are about as devoid of life as the players in them were for almost all of the 40 minutes of game time.

With the loss, Marquette will play Pitt in the consolation game of the 2K Classic on Friday afternoon. The Panthers lost, 76-67, to SMU in the first semifinal game at the Garden. That game is set to tipoff at 3:30 pm Central.