Michigan Basketball: Another Big Opportunity At Minnesota Tonight

Michigan practiced lightly and rested a number of starters Friday before leaving for Minneapolis to take on Minnesota. Head coach John Beilein called tonight’s game another opportunity for his team to show they’re good enough to play with all the best teams in the country.

The Golden Gophers might not be that good, but they’re good, especially defensively. The league’s tallest team blocks 16.7 percent of their Big Ten opponents’ two-point attempts, more than anyone else in the conference, and has the No. 3 eFG percentage defense in the league.It ranks 21st nationally in two-point defense and 9th nationally in three-point defense.

Beilein said the key is to continue to take the ball to the rim confidently.

“I mentioned it to them yesterday, but I referenced that before when I said that all of a sudden, for some reason, they think getting their shot blocked is the worst thing that can ever happen to you,” Beilein said. “They get very shy about it. It’s not going to be the end of your life if you get your shot blocked. You’ve got to go up strong, got to use shot fakes. You can’t be weak going to the rim was my message.

“Any time you’ve got erasers like Minnesota … for example, if we could get four more stops per game, our defensive field goal percentage goes from 47 to 42, just like that. When they have three or four more blocked shots than other teams do, there it is right there—all of a sudden that ups their numbers.”

Their quickness will also pose a challenge, he added.

“Particularly on the perimeter. They’ve got great quickness everywhere and that helps them stay in front of people at every position,” he said.

Michigan’s improved defense, meanwhile, has been key in a three-game win streak against a trio of name programs in Michigan State, Indiana and Wisconsin. Beilein said he didn’t care whether or not teams respected them on that side of the ball … only that his team win.

“All I care about is, are we winning games? Isn’t that what it gets down to? How many points are they getting and how many points are we getting?” he said. "However you get there.

"Good defense can be done a lot of different ways. It can be through good offense sometimes, as far as not turning the ball over and allowing run-outs. Other coaches weighing in on how good our defense was is not an issue for us at all, and we’re not looking for respect ... we’re just looking to be better defensively.”

And they’re getting there. Teams were shooting at a record clip from long range earlier in the season, but the Wolverines have adjusted. Michigan State had a number of shot clock violations early in an 86-57 beat-down in Ann Arbor. Indiana had to settle for long range threes, many of which weren’t close, and had very few uncontested looks.

“If people are only shooting 15 [three-pointers], two makes change everything,” Beilein said. “It’s back to a mean—guys were banking in shots, guys that never made threes just happened to do it. It’s almost like foul-shooting defense for a team … sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t.

“But I do think our guys understand a lot more about when to give help, when not to give help. We grew in somewhat new areas of our slides—we didn’t have that sense of urgency you need to do that. We were eliminating some threes, but we were really making some mistakes.

“We’re trying to run people off the line more. It’s come back to where it needs to be. We keep a five-game stat as well as our conference stat and you can see it’s going in the right direction. This will be important as well in this game. You can’t give guys open shots in this game. They have some shooters, too.”

NOTES

• Beilein said staying in front of Minnesota’s guards would be the big challenge Sunday night.

“We’ve played some really good guards this year. … [Akeem] Springs has been really been big for them. Adding [Amir] Coffey has been big. Nate Mason has got some Trey Burke in him,” Beilein said. “He can rise up off the screen and hit a midrange. If you step back, he’s going to hit you with a long one, and he can take it to the basket and finish or find people with touch. He’s really evolved now over these two years to become one of the premier point guards.

“With Coffey being one of those very few impact freshmen in the league, and Springs — just having a fifth-year guy has been a huge difference for them. In the middle, having a shot blocker has been a game changer for them as well with Lynch; he’s really elite in that category.”

Coffey is a former Michigan recruit. His dad, Richard, is a Minnesota legacy, however, and his son was always going to follow in his footsteps.

“He’s like a young Tayshaun Prince,” Beilein said. “He’s 6-7, 6-8, he’s left-handed. He’s all over the place. He can shoot it. He can really pass it … very active. He’s a really good player.”

• The Wolverines have played with a sense of urgency in the last few weeks, having put themselves firmly in the NCAA Tournament — for now. A few losses, however, would put them squarely back on the bubble.

“You’re in position to be in position,” Beilein said. “In order to get there, you’ve got to keep winning. … Any projection on who’s in, what seeding, has a lot to do with what goes in on these last five games with everybody across the country.

“This has gone from a Super Bowl mentality every game to, now, the last-game-you’ll-ever-play type of mentality. You don’t know how this game is defined when your season ends. ‘If this was the last game and I was playing for it all, what would my enthusiasm be like? What would my effort be like?’

“It’s turned away from ‘this is a big game’ to ‘this is the biggest game,’ and you try to do it every single team. And our kids have been really good at understanding that.”