Michigan falls at Northwestern on the road amid offensive slump

Michigan Basketball looked like it was ready to roll Northwestern briefly at the start of its showdown on the road on Tuesday night, but then the offense was nowhere to be found.

The Wolverines (19-7, 8-5 B1G) lost to the Wildcats (15-10, 6-6) at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois on Tuesday night by a score of 61-52 on what will be a night to forget for the team this season.

Moritz Wagner scored 20 points in the contest, while Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had 11 of his own. No other player scored more than six points and they had only eight points total from the bench.

The story of this game, outside of the poor performance, was the injury to freshman forward Isaiah Livers. He rolled his ankle early on in the first half and went straight to the locker room and did not return. No word has been given on the severity of his injury or his status moving forward despite attempting to come back in the second half.

As far as what happened on the court, shooting only five-for-20 in the second half tells you about all you need to know for what occurred in this one.

Michigan is in a tough stretch right now and needs to figure itself out, but we have seen John Beilein teams do this before. Look no further than last season when a loss to Ohio State was what they needed to refocus and prepare themselves for March.

This is not a terrible loss on their tournament resume, but they will need to continue to stack wins down the stretch to leave little doubt they belong in the field of 68 this year.

The next challenge comes in the form of a visit from Wisconsin, which tips off Sunday at 1 p.m. T from Crisler Arena.