Opening Statement

Well, what a great opportunity this week with Maryland, extremely talented, well-coached, fun team to watch in Maryland coming in on Wednesday. And then a chance to go to East Lansing with the championship on the line, if we can take care of business and hold it down at home.

On how much the team pays attention to how much it'll be defined in March

We haven't talked about how this team will be defined. We need to play better. We need more physicality. We haven't made better than 35% from three since January 27th. So the only thing we've talked about when it comes to defining moments is that championships bond them for life as brothers, that's it. Other than in 10 years from now, if you don't do this and don't do that, it's just if we win a championship, there's something special that hopefully drives us to work a little harder, to get out of bed a little, hop in our step. But for the most part, we're not talking about how March is, we know. We know what March is. It's what everyone points to. It's why CBS feels so different on a Sunday in early March. So no, we haven't. We've had, I think, bigger things to talk about.

On how driven Danny Wolf and Tre Donaldson

How driven, it's hard to play at this level if you don't have some drive. Just to compete in the Big Ten, you've got to be a pretty good player with some drive. I think they're driven players. I think they wouldn't be here if they weren't. It's not as if both of them are jumping 47 inches and whatnot. If you see a guy that's a good shooter, there's a good chance he wasn't born a good shooter. There's a guy that handles the ball and passes like Danny Wolfe. He probably wasn't born with those dribbling skills. So I have a lot of respect for the guys that do it at this level. So I would say they're very, very driven.

On whether there's anything from earlier in the season he'd like the team to get back to

Yeah, the level of confidence and belief. And we have the evidence that's happened. Some of our guys have done it in the past. But I mean, even just last night, and I think in the first four minutes, we have two shots point blank at the rim, and Boswell is an elite defender. The guy is, like I said, I have a lot of respect for Boswell. I mean, that guy impacts the game in a lot of ways other than the shooting percentage, and so he strips the ball a couple times at the rim. We get a rebound that bounces off of our chest. I think they scored a three on that possession. And then we missed two. And so that's the way we started the game without the force and attention to detail we needed to, to set the tone. And even when Illinois wasn't shooting well and playing well, they were able to hang around. And then in the second half, they turned it up a notch. And when a team has the physical capabilities that they have, you don't want them to turn it up a notch because of your mistakes. And I feel like that was a big part of it. And once again, we've had so many one possession games. And it seems like every game now, the opposition's banking in two threes. They're making us pay for every mistake. And so we have to eliminate a lot of these mistakes. If we're gonna be, we don't have the margin. We're not, we just don't have the margin to make a lot of errors and not make shots and turn the ball over.

On Rubin Jones being back into the starting lineup once he's healthy

Yeah, we need to see Rubin today. We need to see Rubin tomorrow. I mean, last I'd heard, two days before he got back, he had lost over 10 pounds. And we appreciate him trying to play yesterday and giving it his all. We haven't talked about what lineups, we're probably gonna tweak some things, but we haven't made that decision yet.

On Sam Walters' status

I'm just gonna defer to the training staff for Sam.

On whether Oscar Goodman is practicing with the team

He is, yes.

On what he likes about Goodman

Man, I think he's got a real winning DNA. I think he's someone that really, really cares about his teammates. He's played with physicality and practice. It's an adjustment, and that's why we wanted to bring him over so this adjustment would happen now. And I just think he's gonna be a guy that impacts winning. He's done it his entire career. He addresses some of our deficiencies, which is the physicality, which is the ability to get to basketballs. He's quick off the floor, off two feet, he likes contact. And so we think that he'll be someone that the Michigan fans are gonna enjoy watching.

On Goodman's position and his scoring ability

He's been a four-man, a power forward up to this point. He's a really good driver. He's an aggressive finisher around the basket. And in our finishing drills, he's one of our better finishers now. He has a reliable three-point shot when he has time in his feeder set. And so now we're trying to expand his game where he's a better shooter, which will set up his quick first step driving the ball. But most importantly, he's awesome to coach. And he's got the personality traits that you'll want from a really talented basketball player.

On whether he believes the team has plateaued and the causes of it

Yeah, I mean, I think that Michigan State is a good team. I mean, I think teams like that cause you to not look your best. I think Illinois is a really good team. Rutgers has two guys that are gonna be picked in the top four of the draft. So I do think our opponents have something to do with how we're looking right now. I like to give those guys credit. And so, but are we playing our best basketball? Absolutely not, but gotta make some shots. We gotta finish better. We gotta defend better. We gotta rebound better. We gotta coach better. We gotta do everything better. And I just love the fact that we've responded when we've been in these situations in the past.

On whether he believes this team can be a good March team

Do I think this team can be a good March team? Yeah, that's a good one. I do. I do.

On whether he likes the shooting looks his team has been getting

For the most part, yeah, we like the looks. We cut down our three-point attempts because of the way Illinois was guarding us. I think they baited us into shooting a couple of those eight or nine-foot floaters. We didn't hit the roll man well enough. If we're gonna be a very good offensive team, we're gonna have to be able to hit the roll man when their windows are there. Cuz we have a roll man that's a really good finisher on the move. But yeah, I mean, the threes, I thought 90% of them were clean, open, paint touch. I thought the last game at home, I thought several of them rimmed in and out. And so I don't know if that's confidence or the ball's just not dropping. What we try to do as a staff is disconnect the shots going into how we respond, sprint back on defense, communicate, play with physicality, attack the rebounds. And that's probably the area that we need to improve on the most. Cuz guys go through shooting woes, there's confidence, there's fatigue, there's whatever the case. And so obviously, there's some teams in our league that are much, much deeper than others, and there are others that need to figure it out. But also, we need to trust our bench a little bit more. I was very happy with the way those young guys came in and played the last five minutes of yesterday's game. They played good basketball. They showed an ability to trust each other and try to do the right thing.

On avoiding the lack of attention to detail

I think just getting outside of yourself. I think when you pour yourself into the team and you're focused on what the team needs you to do what's best for them. I think that allows you to pay more attention to the details and not be consumed with how I'm playing as an individual. And I think that's the challenge right now, and one of the challenges in our sport is how do we play for something much, much bigger than ourselves? And I think that will help with us paying more attention to details of the game. But Will visibly frustrated as he should have been. We haven't performed the way we needed to in a championship.

On Derik Queen

Yeah, he's extremely, extremely talented with the ball in his hands. As a passer, his ability to play out of double teams. He's a really good driver, finisher. He's got an odd game. He can finish with either hand off either foot. He plays at his own pace. He's one of the best offensive players in America. He's gonna present a lot of challenges. He's got a similar game as Danny, though, where they're unique. So that's gonna be an interesting matchup. Juju and Vlad will be a couple of rams battling down on the block. And we need to do a nice job on Gillespie and Miguel and Rice. Those guys are potent offensive players.

On stepping up into the threes

Yeah, they do a nice job of running you off the line, and they stay at home on shooters. I'm just trying to, we shot one in transition that was too deep, and I thought we had a better advantage to start a driving kick. Vlad's was a stand still in a trail spot, step into it. I thought LJ had clean looks. I'm trying to think, Roddy's was a paint touch. It looked great from my vantage point. I mean, it hit the back of the rim back and straight. I'm trying to think of, you know, Nimari always shoots left wing deep in transition. I think sometimes that's just a matter of he's running a lane and where he catches the ball. He's not gonna have time to dribble again and then get the shot up. They'll be matched up, so he's gotta take the catch and shoot shot. It's probably, from a number standpoint, smarter to shoot a 23-footer off the catch than it is a 21-footer off the bounce. For most teams, for most basketball, for our team, it's actually about the same. But yeah, I don't think Namaari's the one that usually shoots deep threes. Danny's was throw and chase to Vlad. We weren't able to get the 6-2 guys into the ball screen, so we went to look at the throw and chase. Probably in that situation, he's got a clean look from just behind the line. You can nitpick every, if the shot doesn't go in, he shouldn't have shot it right. I mean, we can sit up here and go on, but he had a clean look. Danny's a mid-30s percent shooter. Would I have liked him a bit a step closer? Absolutely, but it's tough to turn those down, cuz you're probably gonna get a lesser shot in most games.

On offensive rebounding issues

I don't really know, it's a cliche, but- It was a combination. At early, our habits, coaching from day one, we don't have the habits we need to win when we're not making shots. And we're not finishing in the paint, and we're not making our free throws. Because we have such, we got such a unique group, we've been able to mask some of that. And so we gave them some early. Like I said, the first rebound was in our hands. And stuff happens at basketball, right? I mean, stuff happens in every sport. And then the next two, we missed them. But in the second half, when we're all irritated, I mean, we were turning to go. And it's mano a mano, and sometimes the ball goes long. Sometimes it's an air ball that lands in the lap of the guy you just pushed out of bounds. So once it became an issue, then it feels that way. But once our guys, once we gave up several, it wasn't as if we weren't turning and blocking out. And sometimes you're turning and blocking out a guy that has 80 pounds on you, and he's not going to let you just block him out. And he's running and he's moving and he's big and he's strong. I think it was a little bit of everything. But I thought it started with our inability to do what we needed to do to set the tone.

On leaning on past experiences of winning during the last week of the season

Well, we've tried to lean on that in the past week. That the guys in our locker room that have won at a high level, they know what it looks like. And it takes sacrifice, it takes effort, it takes stamina. I could go on and on about what it takes, cuz it's really, really hard. I mean, there's 18 teams in our league with a range of budgets, and talent, and experience, and everything else. And so it's really, really hard, or else everybody, right? You'd have 18 winners right now, it's the Big Ten Conference. It's the second best conference in numbers right now. So it's very, very difficult. So we're trying to lean on experience. We're trying to just pull everything we can out of what it's gonna take to win. But yeah, we're certainly leaning on that. We have some guys in our locker room that have been on different roles. There's a few guys that won at a high level that really didn't play much, or played minimal minutes, and had minimal production. But they at least know what it looks like, and they saw the guys doing it, what it looked like. So I think everyone in our locker room, staff, me, assistant coaches, support staff, players, all need to just find a way to be a little bit better. And I think the cumulative effect will be that we'll figure out a way to get over the hump.

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