Michigan's basketball team dropped its second consecutive exhibition in Lithuania on Monday, falling 82-77 to the host nation's reserve squad at Utenos Daugiafunkcis Sporto Centras. The Wolverines played without projected starters Trey McKenney and Moustapha Thiam, both of whom rested with "nagging injuries as a precaution," according to the team.

Thiam, the 7-foot-1 Cincinnati transfer, had played in Sunday's 96-84 loss to Lithuania's top national team but left that game with a leg injury. He was helped off the court by head coach Mike Boynton Jr. and a trainer after going down in pain, finishing with six points and two rebounds in 5:54 of action. Two other players, Ricky Liburd, who also rested nagging injuries as a precaution, and Jalen Reed (Achilles) and Lincoln Cosby (ACL), who were out for the game, further depleted the roster. That left Michigan with an eight-man rotation, and Quinn Costello and Oscar Goodman started in place of McKenney and Thiam.

Elliot Cadeau led Michigan with 19 points and eight assists, while JP Estrella, a transfer from Tennessee, scored 17 points and added seven rebounds after managing just two points on Sunday. Brandon McCoy contributed 15 points for his second straight double-digit scoring effort, though he and Estrella both shot 3-for-11 from three-point range. Costello scored nine points, and Goodman added 10.

The team struggled from beyond the arc, shooting 11 of 43 (25.6%) from three-point range according to one account, while another reported 26.8% from deep; overall, Michigan shot 36% from the field. The Wolverines squandered a double-digit first-half lead, giving up the first 12 points of the third quarter to fall behind 58-49. They rallied to tie the game with 2:08 remaining in the fourth quarter before Lithuania answered with a 6-0 run to seal the win.

Despite the loss, Boynton emphasized the experience. "We've talked all along about this just being a growth opportunity for our guys," he said in a Michigan news release. "Our guys are getting unbelievable experience in this environment against really true road competition."

Estrella echoed that sentiment. "This whole Lithuania trip has been really good, just learning about our team," he said in a postgame release. "We've got some things that we've got to clean up, but we were also talking about it in the locker room. You can see how good we can be, and we can see how much we can improve. We've got to take what we learned over to Croatia, play those games, get excited again and get this thing rolling."

Michigan will next face Serbia's Mega Superbet in Croatia on Thursday, Aug. 27 at 1 p.m.