UM opens with pounding of Slippery Rock

11/10/2012

ANN ARBOR — Tim Hardaway, Jr., scored 25 points, sur­pass­ing 1,000 for his ca­reer in No. 5 Mich­i­gan's 100-62 win over Slip­pery Rock on Fri­day night.

Trey Burke added 21 points for the Wol­v­er­ines (1-0), and fresh­man Glenn Robin­son III had 10 points and eight re­bounds. Mich­i­gan led 44-30 at half­time and had lit­tle dif­fi­culty in its sea­son opener against a Divi­sion II op­po­nent.

In an odd ar­range­ment, the game counted to­ward Mich­i­gan's record but was con­sid­ered an ex­hi­bi­tion for Slip­pery Rock. Devin Tay­lor led the vis­i­tors with 14 points. Hardaway made all five of his 3-point at­tempts, and the Wol­v­er­ines went 12 of 19 from be­yond the arc in their high­est-scor­ing game since 2007.

Mich­i­gan and Slip­pery Rock have an un­usual kin­ship stem­ming from the Wol­v­er­ines' tra­di­tion of an­nounc­ing Slip­pery Rock scores at foot­ball games for over a half-cen­tury. Slip­pery Rock even played a foot­ball game at Mich­i­gan Sta­dium in 1979 against Ship­pens­burg.

On Fri­day, the crowd treated the Rock like any other op­pos­ing team, and Mich­i­gan me­thod­i­cally pulled ahead by a com­fort­able mar­gin in the first half. Hardaway, who shot 28 per­cent from 3-point range last sea­son, made two at­tempts from long dis­tance early on — and the sec­ond gave Mich­i­gan a 20-15 lead.

Mich­i­gan en­tered with its high­est pre­sea­son rank­ing since 1993 — in large part be­cause of Burke's de­ci­sion to stay for his soph­o­more year in­stead of go­ing to the NBA. The star point guard was im­pres­sive in the opener, shoot­ing 9 of 17 and fin­ish­ing with eight as­sists. Hardaway was 8 of 10 and had 10 re­bounds.

It was the most points for UM since a 103-87 win over Oak­land Univer­sity on Dec. 12, 2007.