John Beilein spoke with the media on Monday regarding his team’s upcoming game against Pittsburgh, what he thinks of the addition of Maryland in the Big Ten and more. You can watch in the embedded media player below or read the notes and quotes after the jump:
- “Jamie Dixon is a great coach. I’ve had good games with him in the past. His record speaks for itself at Pitt.”
- On what he saw from his team on tape: “I think we need to communicate better and talk more. There were a lot of open shots that we gave up that people just didn’t make… Timing and communication. Same thing with our offense. We have to cut harder, run faster.”
- The coaching staff tried to simulate what would normally be a two-day prep for this game against Pittsburgh. “We had yesterday off and we pushed them really hard on Saturday. We had enough hours left where we could lift weights and have a full scrimmage.”
- On Mitch McGary’s fitnees: “We have this fitness test that that we do with people, and he made it. A fitness test is not a basketball test… but he’s making the right progression where he can play, effectively, for five to ten minutes at a time.”
- “We’ll treat this like any other game. We’re trying to win every game.” Beilein said they will have coaches at tables scouting teams they’re going to play next in the tournament. “For two or three days all we’ve been doing is watching Pitt.”
- “Because we’ve been in transition so much, I’m interested to see how we play against a great half-court defense.”
- On what the coaching staff has done in practice to simulate late-game, high-pressure situations: “We’ve done down with 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds to go. We’ve done situations where we’re up late and we’re not fouling, and we’ve done situations where we’ve had fouls to give. … end of first half. We do that all year long, but not with the amount of time we’ve spent on it in the last couple days.”
- On the addition of Maryland to the Big Ten: “I have left all those discussions to the Big Ten, and they’ve done a great job with this as you can tell. They studied this for a long time, I’m sure. Between the Big Ten Network and the strength of our conference right now, they’ve been very good to men’s basketball.”
- On the Beilein had with Dave Brandon regarding the move: “I haven’t talked to him about that at all. We talked expansion often before.”
- Said it has always been tough to recruit players out of the East Coast. “It’s always been tough for players from the metro Atlantic area to drive by the Marylands, the Georgetowns, the Villanovas to come to Michigan.”
- On Glenn Robinson III: “His speed it the biggest thing. When he makes mistakes, he can make up for them. … His speed is amazing. … His ability to play without fouling has been huge.”
- On playing in Puerto Rico for the 2013 Tip Off: “You have to plan these things out almost like a football schedule four or five years in advance.We do a lot of research on the tournaments beforehand… You’d like to maybe pick the four or five best tournaments and just start cycling those.”
