Video, Notes & Quotes: John Beilein on Indiana Win

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John Beilein met with the media following Michigan’s 68-56 victory over Indiana. Here’s video of Beilein, followed by notes and quotes after the jump:

• Opening statement: “Some days guys had a great game and we were able to eke by and win, another day someone else has been on the top of their game. I just said, ‘It is okay if everybody plays pretty well on the same day.’ And today was supposed to be the day. Well, for those first ten minutes, it certainly was. Even the bench came in and gave us a great lift.”
• On Trey Burke: “This young man has seen everything, whether they double, whether they go under the screen, whether they hedge and recover. He’s trying to read it all the time…they’re putting a big guy on him, they’re putting a small guy on him. He’s learning all the time. He gets confused out there as to what the role is, but we work with him every day… You just don’t see this in high school and you certainly don’t see it in summer basketball.”
• More on Burke: “He wants the ball at the end to shoot foul shots. They could have switched a lot of screens as well, but we’re just trying to get him to create action so that the residual action gives us good looks.”
• Michigan hasn’t lost two games in a row all season, which is a big sign of the resiliency of this team. “It’s very natural to them. They’re just really good kids who get that there’s a process involved in becoming a good team. And they know who they are. They know that we’re not going to dominate teams. You’re not gonna play 31 great games, so you have to be able to bounce back.”
• After Tim Hardaway Jr. had two looks that both went in and out to start the second half, “I was worried about, are we gonna finish this game with that same thing. But our defense bailed us out there… I have confidence that down the stretch we’re gonna make the right play.”
• There were several similarities in this game compared to the game in Bloomington a few years ago – except this time, Michigan jumped out early and Indiana responded. “They jumped out on us, a very similar game. We closed a little stronger than they did, but they jumped out on us the same way we jumped out on them.”
• On Hardaway Jr.: “He just continues to learn all the time, just move on. I love his attitude. Does it need to be improved? Exactly, but what he’s not doing is pointing the finger at his teammates, the refs, the system. He just points the fingers at himself and says, I gotta get better. I’ve seen him understand, I’ve seen some break-throughs.”
• On the bench play in the first half: “I thought that was a big point in our season. Blake (McLimans) now has hit some back-to-backs (threes), Evan came in and hit an inbetween, Carlton (Brundidge) is in there, Matt Vogrich is in there, they maintain the lead or they got out on it. We’re sitting there, and maybe I went back too early. Maybe I should’ve let them play there.”
• More on McLimans: “He’s been the sixth or seventh best guy in practice for the last couple of weeks. So that’s good news.”
• On Douglass’s late three: “We were looking for some action, and we decided to go right back. It’s a different look, but we went right back to the look before. Tim wasn’t open, but Tim made the one more. He saw Stu. It was really important that everybody made the right play. Nobody tried to hit a home run. Everybody tried to hit a single.” Beilein also credited Jordan Morgan’s offensive rebound that kept the play alive in the first place to allow Douglass to have the opportunity to shoot it.
• On the difference between this year’s team and last year’s team: “I think we were really young last year. We had an extremely difficult schedule at the start of last year… and we’re a year older. We understand how it all works and can bounce back maybe. I can’t say that we didn’t get it last year, we just weren’t ready to win some of those games last year.”
• On close games in the Big Ten: “The coaches here, really, you have an overwhelming majority who are disciples of a Gene Keady, Bob Knight, a Dick Bennett… so they kind of gravitate. The whole Big Ten does. And as a result, they value possessions. It’s great basketball, but the games are gonna be really close. I’m so proud to be associated with this coaching fraternity in this league. This is a strong bunch of coaches.”
• On Jordan Morgan: “Most times, the better you screen, the more you’re gonna get open… When he screens really well, we can get him the ball in some pretty good situations. They’re always collapsing on him, and big guys need to score in a crowd too. He’s still working on that.”
• On Jon Horford, who dressed for the game tonight: “That’s no sign at all. He just wanted to dress. He didn’t practice yesterday on anything that was full court.”
• On defending Watford and Zeller: “We started out with a really experienced, really good defender with Zack Novak on him. Last game, we had a sophomore, Evan Smotrycz, who’s still getting accustomed to playing perimeter defense… He’s comfortable on the perimeter offense, but guarding perimeter guys that can shoot… most players are like Evan, they get lost. With Zack, Watford was not gonna get lost today.”
• On Novak, specifically his three late in the first half at the end of the shot clock: “They went zone defense against us, and we ran the worst zone offense in the history of zone offenses. We ended up at half court somehow…  We’re not putting that play in, whatever it was. But then, his second (three), we ran a little bit of a fake screen, re-screen, and we were struggling…he hit a beauty.”