Michigan enters the tougher portion of its schedule starting Saturday with a game at Wisconsin, the Wolverines undefeated in 17 games. Head coach John Beilein doesn’t expect his team to remain unblemished throughout the year, but he won’t go so far as to hope for a loss before entering the postseason.
The question is a fan favorite, of course, and was posed to him on 97.1 The Ticket this morning.
“That is a bad question, isn’t it?” he said. “You don’t want to lose. At the same time, if some losses come up along the way — and I’m pretty confident there will be some stumbles along the way — it can really be a good thing. We spin that with our team that we have grown through this success, but you can grow much quicker through adversity sometimes.
“We treat it like it is; to grow in every opportunity that you can. Our schedule is going to change. We’ve been very fortunate in league play to have four home games, two away, and both of those were rebuilding teams with a lot of freshmen playing.
“That all stops noon Saturday at Wisconsin.”
At the same time, this team has won away from Crisler Center and has the qualities needed in a good road team. Defense travels, and the Wolverines are as good as any team in the conference — maybe the country — on that end of the floor.
That hasn't always been the case, of course. But Beilein realized a few years ago he had personnel that might need to win by getting stops, so he took steps to make it happen.
“It had a lot to do with learning more as a coaching staff about what our strengths are, what areas we needed to improve in,” Beilein said. “… It came about a couple years ago when I said, ‘you know what … we’ve been a top level offensive team, but only 100 or so defensively.'
“Now, there are 300-something teams, so it wasn’t like we were laying down and letting people score on us, but I sensed we were not going to be as good offensively because we were rebuilding. The only one way we were going to win was the defense had to improve.”
So they hired Billy Donlon, and he made a difference before leaving to join his friend Chris Collins at Northwestern. Luke Yaklich picked up where he left off, and he and Saddi Washington and DeAndre Haynes have been “spectacular,” Beilein said.
But there’s one huge reason they’ve been so good defensively.
“We also have Charles Matthews and Zavier Simpson who love to guard people," he continued. "That is who we are, and it has lot to do with the coaching staff, but also improvement by those two players. It’s made a big difference.”
It’s been the difference for the Wolverines in many games this year on the way to a 17-0 start. Beilein said he doesn’t embrace the winning streak like the fan base or the media … he just worries about what’s next. And while he knows there’s been improvement, being with the team every day is like having blinders on.
“This is like having your own children every day. Grandma sees them six months later and says, ‘yeah, they’ve really grown,’” Beilein said. “You don’t notice it as much.
“We do like in games that they are showing some of the improvement. Sometimes you see it in practice, don’t see it in games … Jon Teske and Zavier Simpson shooting threes, we were noticing it in practice but hadn’t seen it in games. When the lights go on, it’s always different.
“We hope our teams always improve every year. Right now like today’s practice will be 30 minutes of passing, dribbling, but won’t be about plays. Defensively we have work we do on defensive concepts they run, not their plays … we believe that leads to this improvement.”
At this point, Beilein and his team should have made believers out of just everyone else, too.
NOTES
• Michigan’s blowout road win over a solid Villanova team was the first inkling this team had a chance to be really good, Beilein said.
“We were down at halftime to Holy Cross a week before that. Norfolk State had given us a tough game,” he recalled. “All of a sudden we’re playing an elite team that had lost a lot of guys … we had, too, but they lost more than us.
“They said, ‘we’re not that team that was down to Holy Cross. We can play better, do more things.’ That gave us a lot of confidence, I think. We went right after that on two days rest to similar success against George Washington and Providence back to back. We came out of that probably feeling pretty good we’re in there; now what do we do with it? We have some pieces.”
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