Michigan shot 3-for-22 from three-point range in a 59-57 win over Minnesota, the second straight game in which the Wolverines struggled offensively.
Head coach John Beilein said he wasn’t going to overreact — “we just came off the Northwestern game where we played really well,” he said — but acknowledged there were some things his team needed to learn quickly to keep pace in the Big Ten race.
“It’s been difficult to keep our guys learning from last game and move on to the next,” he said. “We tried to do as much yesterday as we could to learn from Minnesota relative to what we’re going to see in in the Indiana game [Friday] and the overall season.
“I was not as happy as I probably should have been [with the win]. As a coach you expect too much. You expect things to immediately kick in what they learned in the Wisconsin game. We saw some of the similar things we had pointed out that don't lead to winning and almost led to a loss.”
Some guys weren’t cutting hard enough; others weren’t running the floor hard enough in transition. In some cases it was the same players.
But these are situations his team has faced just about every year — his and almost everyone else’s — and it doesn’t take much to go from a bad offensive showing to a good one.
“You do go through periods where it’s not the right matchup, somebody has a slight injury, you’re on the road in an environment where you’re not comfortable,” he said. “All of a sudden you look like a shell of who you can be, and it just happens. You’ve got to get yourself out of it.
“I can remember times over my career that all you needed was for one guy make one shot and the whole season can change. When you get into these things, it’s the coaches’ job to get them out of these things when they lose confidence. But somebody has got to make a big play, dive on the floor and get everybody going. Right now, that’s not happening.”
There was a similar three-game stretch that it didn't last year, either. The team then kicked it into gear and ripped off 14 straight wins to end the season before losing in the National Championship game.
Sometimes, Beilein said, it’s a simple tweak. He talked after the Minnesota game about transition offense, and how his team hadn’t embraced it. They started Thursday’s practice trying to improve it.
“We have plays where a guy starts running where he thinks he can get a dunk. It’s the first three steps, something we emphasized yesterday and are starting practice with today,” Beielin said. “… It’s hard for coaches to understand this, because if you really run hard, a lot of times you won’t get the ball, but somebody else will and will be open and you’ll create for others. A lot of times you will get the ball, and that’s where highlights are made.
“A lot of guys are putting their hand up at halfcourt calling for the ball and looking for a three. We’re probably running too much for threes and not to the basket. We’ve got to push it more, get to the middle more, outlet more.”
That way, he noted, teams won’t be able to set their defenses to take sophomore guard Jordan Poole (for example) out of the offense, or to limit threes like Wisconsin and Northwestern did.
“When our defense is so good, we’ve got to take advantage of that if we’re stopping people and getting great defensive rebounding numbers,” Beilein said. “Then you don’t have to worry about any offense, how they’re guarding the ball screen, switching, if you just beat them in transition. It’s a big focus, and I hope we can see it as we go forward here, because it’s the easiest way for people to score.
“The first three or four steps to get over halfcourt, the speed zone we call it, we’re not utilizing it the way we have to do it.”
Guys also have to do a better job keeping their heads up when they’re the focus of a defense, too … easier said than done.
“Embrace the solution. Some of it might be running … it’s that simple,” he said. “Maybe something we’ve been trying with this guy doing this all year is wrong … it ain’t working, so let’s save it for practice.
“But in the big picture, coaches make adjustments, kids have to make adjustments, maybe set a better screen … we’re in the middle of it right now, evolving and trying [to find] what we have on our team.”
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