Josh Bartelstein’s e-Book We On: Behind the Scenes of Michigan’s Final Four Run is officially on sale and available for purchase. Bartelstein lumped all of his blogs, videos and more from Michigan’s NCAA tournament run into one comprehensive behind the scenes book. Zack Novak, Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Stu Douglass all participated in the project.
The book can be purchased for $7.99 through Blog Into Book at this link.
Bartelstein participated in a five part interview last month which covered the books content and much more. He also supplied an excerpt of the book from Final Four Saturday which you can read below.
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Final Four Saturday! We got to sleep in a little bit because we played the late game of the night. There was an incredible buzz in the hotel with Michigan fans everywhere decked out in Maize and Blue. We couldn’t really walk down into the lobby without being swarmed, so the players stayed in a secure area, but it was hard not to check it out. Gameday consisted of three or four different meetings: Offense, Defense, Special Situations, and then final thoughts. The plan was done, everyone knew how we were to beat Syracuse, now we just had to do it. We watched a ton of film, but it was really hard not to lose focus and start thinking about a night we had all dreamed of so many times. It didn’t help getting hundreds of texts from family and friends, some giving advice on how to beat the zone and others on how hard they partied the night before.
We had about a 40-minute shoot-around at the Georgia Dome. Very, very light, almost just getting shots up, but we needed to leave the hotel and get some fresh air. Sitting around all day until 7pm when our bus left would be torture. The mood was very relaxed, guys were joking around like it was the first day of practice.
The key was somehow finding a way to take a nap. You can’t watch any TV stations because everyone is just breaking down the games and at this point I couldn’t listen to it anymore. Around 6pm our uniforms got dropped off with the official Final Four sticker on them. There was no turning back now. The bus left around 6:30pm, but the town was incredibly dead outside. Everyone was inside the stadium watching the first game or at a bar. The streets were empty as we took the 20-minute ride in.
I don’t think I need to go into much detail as to what took place during that 40-minute game. But in case you forgot. Mitch was Magic Johnson picking apart that zone, Caris and Spike hit huge threes, Jordan Morgan took an iconic charge, and Michigan fans took over downtown Atlanta for the night. Our game plan to let a 6’11 freshman who just began starting games a month ago break down the best zone in the country in the biggest game of his life worked. Were you surprised? Honestly, I said it before, but you can’t give our coaching staff a week to prepare for a team. It isn’t fair; they had this scheme down to a T.
Make sure to also read our five part interview with Bartelstein discussing the book and Michigan’s season.
- Inside Michigan Basketball with Josh Bartelstein: The Book
- Inside Michigan Basketball with Josh Bartelstein: Regular season highs and lows
- Inside Michigan Basketball with Josh Bartelstein: Mitch McGary’s development
- Inside Michigan Basketball with Josh Bartelstein: The Final Four
- Inside Michigan Basketball with Josh Bartelstein: The Fab Five, 2013-14 Season
