It's nice to finish our home stand with a win in another game that I feel like we learned something about ourselves. This was a game we needed. Coach Gillespie, he gets his guys to play extremely physical, they play with great passion and energy, and from where we've been and what we've struggled with, it allowed us to really put an emphasis on taking care of the basketball, meeting passes and whatnot. Our ball security came a long way in the last few days. It was an odd game where we didn't convert very well around the rim, we didn't make our open rhythm shots, we missed several front ends, and for us to still have this margin with all that happening is a testament to our guys. They played hard, they competed, we got excellent guard play.

Well the one thing about us, we play very fast tempo offensively, and this has been a theme for the last probably 10 to 15 years of my coaching career. Defensively we have really slow tempo, and a lot of times switching does that, where teams are trying to figure out different ways to attack the switch. Maybe your schemes take them out of what they're trying to do and so they have to go to plan B or plan C, and so we felt like they were simply just trying to slow the game down, move the ball, and we just were trying to find different ways to speed up tempo.

I thought he played one of his better floor games. As far as not converting around the rim, it's tough. These are shots he normally converts, they're not dropping. I think it's like everything else in sports. You hit line drive and it's right at the shortstop in baseball. You do the right thing and it just doesn't drop. I think he wishes he had a couple of those possessions back, but we're not going to spend a lot of time and energy worrying about those shots going in. We want to generate those types of shots again and again and again, and this is a new environment for a lot of different guys. Would we love to have those back? Yes. Are we going to? No. We're very confident when the time is right that he's going to make a high percentage of those shots.

I need to look at the tape, but Sam Walters, sometimes the ball just doesn't go in. We're pressing, so we're doing something exerting more energy and we shorten our rotation a little bit. There weren't very many. I think we had 11 turnovers. If you would have told me that we only had 11 turnovers and they had 24, I would have thought the margin would be much greater. Like I said, basketball is a funny game. They had one or two late where they shot layups and they squirted out. They just didn't go in. As a coach, you can sit here and scream, 'Make the layup,' but those guys are trying to make it. We'll continue to be creative, adding shot fakes and adding the guys we're lifting right now. We're going to continue to stress play with more pop around the rim and more physicality. I guess more of a mindset of embracing physicality.

Vlad is 7-foot-1. He's a great communicator. He's mobile. He's a great rim protector when he's at his best. He still has work to do from a defensive rebounding standpoint. He's going to anchor a lot of what we do. These games are tough, especially in an environment like this. We didn't do a great job in the first half. We had him too high up the floor early in the game. We flattened him out a little bit more in the second half and we got better looks. I don't know if the percentages say we were better, but in our minds as coaches, we played much better. If we could get this shot chart every game of the year, we would certainly take it.

I would have to ask him if that's his mindset. I do think he's taking what the game gives him. I think sometimes these other teams are playing guys 35-40 minutes. Maybe they're just not back-setting their defense as quickly and he's taking advantage of the creases. To be honest, as much as we've turned it over, we've talked to the staff and said, we'll live with some Tre Donaldson over-aggressive turnovers because he puts so much pressure on the defense. When Danny played the 5 tonight, if it wasn't for foul trouble, I thought he had really good minutes at the 5. He was a quarterback for us and I think him and Tre are starting to read each other's mind and develop some chemistry attacking in transition. There were definitely some bright moments and some things we learned.

Yeah, they're going to get a recovery lift. We're off tomorrow. We're leaving Saturday to go get some vitamin D. It's either that or wake them up early because the hotel weight room and things like that will be conducive. We're locked in on the long run of really continuing to work throughout this stretch so we're strong for Big Ten play.

If there's any resounding halftime speeches, then we probably need to start using them pre-game as well. Our guys, they talk about what they need to do. The staff meets, we usually look at one or two themes that we look at closer to see what it is. To be honest, early in games, Tarleton averages four threes a game and they've made four early in this game. One of them was a step back three. I think our luck factor has not been great. In our mind, we want this to be a lot smoother as this goes, but it's just unrealistic and we do think long-term, these bumps and bruises and bad fortune will pay dividends because it always turns. Anyone who's been to Vegas knows you can't be on a streak like this for a long time.

If we're healthy, I can't imagine us playing 11 every night. But to be honest, you look at what Phat Phat did in the first half. He had a nice, quick jolt of good production, a couple of nice passes, steals. You can't really say...I don't think Phat and [Justin Pippen] and those guys are anticipating playing 15 or 20 minutes like you would if you're a normal rotation player. Are there going to be guys outside the rotation that need to bring something to a specific game? Absolutely. Will it be every game? Who knows? If we're not in foul trouble and guys are clicking, then our rotation will probably be shorter. If we're struggling with this or that or foul trouble, then we'll play more than the nine-man rotation, which is probably as extended as we'd like for it to be.

I don't want any secondary violations, but I'm extremely excited to watch football next year in the Big House. I'm excited to watch the clips on Twitter and social media. This is a big day for the University of Michigan. There are a lot of people that contributed to making this happen. I think we're all grateful for that. We're all going to benefit from acquiring talent like that, the highest level of talent in any sport. We're all going to benefit from it.

Yes, winning it's going to be very important. Obviously, the NCAA tournament, I don't think there's any weighted games between November versus December. They're all very important for long-term, for seeding, for getting in tournament and whatnot. Also, these quick turns are great to gauge what the preparation you have up to this point, how quickly your guys can change a game plan and adjust on the fly. We'll have some quick turns, and then obviously you get into tournament format. It's not like it used to be where you've seen all these teams at least twice. There might be teams we haven't seen in several months we're playing. For all those reasons, I think we're all excited to see what else we can learn about our team, because the opposition, they tell you much more than we can in practice about ourselves.

Yes, I think it'll be great for guys from that area to see their families. I love the road trips. The one thing about this level, the road trips are much more condensed for obvious reasons. You don't have a chance to spend as much time with your guys outside of their element and comfort zone. I love it for team building. You see different guys rooming with each other. You're around the hotel. There's a lot of benefits of doing a trip like this. We're excited on a number of levels, but more importantly, we do think we're a much better team than we were three or four weeks ago. That keeps us excited to continue improving and trying to hit the right buttons with our guys.

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