John Beilein met with the media after his team’s 77-47 win over Cleveland State to advance to the NIT Season Tip Off semifinals next week. You can watch the full press conference in the embedded media player below or read the notes and quotes after the jump.
Opening Statement: “Really unusual situation to have your guys going back-to-back, going to classes, trying to play back-to-back while the other team’s in a hotel resting back-to-back. Turning things around, studying… That was a challenge and I’m really pleased with the way we responded. That is not easy when you’re playing in a tournament atmosphere with a quick turnaround. Especially coming out with that first half. Our defense was terrific, it fueled our offense, which was basically fast-break, and it really allowed us to get out front by so much that the lead was going to be hard to overcome no matter what Cleveland State did.”
- Cleveland State did a few things the Michigan coaching staff hadn’t seen from them on tape: “They went with a quarter-court trap, I was drawing things up on the sidelines — believe it or not, we don’t always have an answer for everything — they played a diamond-and-one (zone defense) on Nik, we had nothing for that … and then they played a 1-2-2 zone, which we hadn’t prepared for, either.” Given all that, “we still held them to 47 points.”
- On Nik Stauskas: “He sees a zone, and he certainly enjoys that.” Still sees room for improvement in aggressiveness: “I still think he can do more off the bounce. He’s got a feel for the game that, like I say about Glenn (Robinson III), is tough to teach.”
- Really appreciates the depth he has in the post: “We had the luxury of throwing in the big guys. When Jordan got in foul trouble, that helped us a great deal, between Jon (Horford), Mitch (McGary) and even Max (Bielfeldt), we can rebound with that size.”
- “As we try and figure out what the rotation is, and I expect it to still evolve, how can we play with two posts? Is it better to play with two posts? We’ve got to get out there and do it. Jordan has really evolved as a passer and ballhandler, so he’s done a good job in that category. I think that was Mitch’s best energy, best half so far. He gave us a lot when he got in there. He needs just another week here of Camp Sanderson and Camp Beilein just to get him in a little bit better shape.”
- On not having any close-game experience yet this year: “We’re going to work for days of late-game situations because getting those in these early-season games is always beneficial — we haven’t had any of those.”
- On Matt Vogrich’s 14 minutes: “Nik had it rolling, he came in and did a great job, and Matt was solid out there, we wanted to get him minutes. The two of those are sort of sharing that spot, and we’ll see who gets more minutes there this year.”
- Mitch McGary is showing serious improvement: “Every minute that Mitch practices, every minute he gets in the game, he’s moving in a positive direction. Even during failure. This young man, you’ll show him some place where he had a mistake, and he learns from it. … The better he gets, the more we can play two bigs at the same time. He can play much bigger than he is, he’s getting better at that, understanding the college game, he’s getting better at that.”