Michigan Lost Three Starters To Fouls And The Ball Twenty-Seven Times

With 6:51 left in Vilnius on Sunday night, Trey McKenney made two free throws and Michigan trailed a Lithuanian professional team by two points. Nothing about the next five minutes was close. Lithuania scored the following fifteen points, Michigan gave the ball away six times inside the run, and when Quinn Costello dropped in a three with thirty-one seconds on the clock it only moved the final to 96-84.

Here is the part that will still matter in November. Of the five men who started that game, three were not available to finish it. McKenney, Elliot Cadeau and J.P. Estrella each committed a fifth foul, each went to the bench when he got it, and none of the three came back. Estrella's night ended with 7:24 on the fourth-quarter clock, Cadeau's with 5:27, McKenney's with 5:06.

This is a summer exhibition against grown men. It counts in nobody's record, the Lithuanian roster averages nearly twenty-eight years old against a Michigan roster about seven years younger, and a number posted here is not a number posted in the Big Ten. Say that out loud, and then keep reading, because the minutes are the point of the trip and the minutes were real.

The audition ran itself#

Michigan came to Lithuania with one question worth three games: who has the ball when Cadeau sits. The question got sharper on August 21, the day the team reached Vilnius, when the Tenth Circuit stayed the injunction that had given Roddy Gayle Jr. a fifth season. Mike Boynton did not have to answer it on Sunday. The whistle answered it for him.

Cadeau played 22:52, handed out seven assists, made two of eight shots and turned it over six times. When his fifth foul arrived, Joseph Hartman came on and stayed on. Hartman, a freshman in his first game for Michigan, finished with 20:58, five assists, three turnovers and three makes in six tries, which is a serviceable line for a guard Michigan signed out of high school last November.

Costello was the other man the night handed something to. He came off the bench, took nine of Michigan's thirty three-point attempts, made five, and led Michigan with seventeen points. He played 27:45, second on the team, and did it without recording a turnover or an assist, which is a fairly specific job description.

The starting five was McKenney, Cadeau, Brandon McCoy Jr., Estrella and Moustapha Thiam. Boynton used ten players, two more did not get in (Howard Eisley Jr. and Harrison Hochberg, both at 0:00), and no Wolverine reached thirty-one minutes. Add it up and the bench played 105:10 while the starters played 94:50, in a game Michigan led by twelve at the half. That is what a rotation looks like when three of the coach's choices are being made for him by the officials.

Twenty-seven#

Michigan turned the ball over twenty-seven times. That is twenty-seven possessions that ended with Lithuania picking the ball up and running the other way, none of which required Lithuania to defend a shot.

Nineteen of the twenty-six charged to individuals belonged to guards. Cadeau had six, McCoy had six, McKenney four, Hartman three. The giveaways were not a symptom of a young team forcing hard shots, because the shots were fine: 29 of 65 from the floor, twelve of thirty from three at forty percent, fourteen of sixteen from the line. Michigan out-rebounded a professional side 33 to 31. The Wolverines had twenty-one assists and thirteen steals of their own, and the first-half version of this team, which built a 56-44 lead with eight steals in twenty minutes, was genuinely good to watch.

Then the second half: fifteen points in the third quarter, thirteen in the fourth. Twenty-eight points in twenty minutes against a team that scored fifty-two.

The fouls and the giveaways are the same story told twice. Michigan pressured, Michigan reached, and the reaching produced both the steals that built the lead and the twenty-eight personal fouls that took the rotation apart. Lithuania shot twenty-eight free throws. Michigan shot sixteen.

Who they actually were#

The man who beat Michigan will be familiar to anybody who watched the Pac-12 in its last years. Azuolas Tubelis played three seasons at Arizona and now plays for Zalgiris Kaunas, and on Sunday he went 12 for 15 from the floor, eleven of fourteen inside the arc, for 31 points. Augustas Marciulionis, four years a Saint Mary's guard and the son of a Hall of Famer, added seventeen off the bench. Lithuania made 27 of its 40 two-point attempts. There is the game.

McCoy, who arrived in April as a five-star recruit and finished Sunday with fourteen points, five rebounds and four steals, put it to Michigan's own tour blog afterward: "Everybody is still trying to figure things out."

They go again Monday against the Lithuania B Team in Utena, then fly to Dubrovnik for Mega SUPERBET on Thursday. Two more games to find out who plays the fourth quarter.

Preferably with five of them still on the floor.

Sources: Michigan Athletics' official box score for Lithuania Senior National Team vs. Michigan, August 23, 2026, Arena Vilnius, published at MGoBlue.com, for every Michigan and Lithuania statistic, all minutes, all foul totals, the quarter scores and the play-by-play timings. Tom Wywrot, MGoBlue.com, "U-M Opens European Tour with Valuable Test vs. Veteran Lithuania Squad," August 23, 2026, for the fourteen-point lead, the 15-0 run, the six turnovers inside it and the roster-age comparison. Michigan Athletics' 2026 Summer Tour daily blog, August 23, 2026, for Brandon McCoy Jr.'s quotation and for the tour schedule and tip times. Michigan Athletics' release of April 28, 2026, for the class of 2026 signees and for McCoy's recruiting ranking. Wikipedia's pages for Azuolas Tubelis and Augustas Marciulionis, read August 24, 2026, for their college careers and current clubs.