After suffering its second loss of the season Friday night at Iowa, Michigan returns to the road to face Rutgers Tuesday night.
Both sophomore forward Jordan Poole and freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis reflected on the Wolverines second loss of the season.
“It was definitely a tough game,” Brazdeikis said. “A lot of us got into foul trouble early on, which kind of messed up the rhythm and the flow that we’re used to. They’re a good team. The game was on the road and it was a tough environment. There was a lot of things that didn’t go our way.
Poole was in foul trouble early on in the game and he said the referees calling a tight game was not easy to deal with.
“It definitely was frustrating 100 percent,” Poole said. “Obviously, it’s not an excuse that we’re going to blame the refs, but us being as physical as we are on defense, you kind of get a little bit timid because you don’t want to get called for touch fouls.”
Against Iowa, the Wolverines shot only 32.3 percent from the field and 24.2 percent from three, which was one of Michigan’s worst offensive performances of the season. Poole said they are getting a lot of different looks from opponents’ defenses.
“They throw a lot of different coverages,” Poole said. “So last year I remember teams specifically doing one thing, now they’ll go from zone to switching everything to dropping to widening. So it’s not a consistent rhythm that you can come down the court and know what they’ll do.”
Since the loss, U-M and head coach John Beilein have focused on getting better. In practice before the Rutgers game, the Wolverines have focused on themselves instead of extensive scouting.
“The practice intensity level was ramped up for sure,” Brazdeikis said. “We did a lot of transition drills and a lot of different drills like that. It really changed up the flow of practice a little bit and it was kind of fun for all of us.”
U-M remains confident in its ability to rebound against Rutgers Tuesday night.
“We’re a really good defensive team,” Poole said. “I feel like our fouls kind of hinder our aggressiveness a little bit last game. But we’ll bounce back. We love playing defense.
Brazdeikis talked about his team needing to be locked in on the road at Rutgers.
“I feel like we should be aggressive, ready to play the game that we always play and have confidence in ourselves,” Brazdeikis said. “As long as we do that and focus in defensively, we really don’t have to worry about the outcome. It’s just about the process of the game.”
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