John Beilein was available to speak with the media following his team’s 72-70 loss to Arizona at the Crisler Center on Saturday. The coach addressed Michigan’s defense, getting Glenn Robinson III involved in the offense and where the Wolverines go from here. You watch the press conference using the embedded media player below and read notes and quotes after the jump.
Opening statement: “What a great team we just played. I’ve had the opportunity to play a lot of really good teams over the time, whether I was at Canisius or Richmond or here … and we all know that’s about a bounce of the ball. But that is as solid, well-coached, put-together, length, speed, backcourt, everything that I’ve seen. We feel good that we were right there and with a break or two could have won the game, but Arizona’s really good. At the same time, it gives us great confidence but also a great attitude to come back and get better now. To come back and make up for the 17 offensive rebounds that were a huge factor in this game. And how can we shore that up against length, be more physical against length. We’ll move forward from it, our kids are all on the same page and I thought we made a major stride today, even in defeat, of just getting better.”
- On earning every basket: “We didn’t have any easy ones, did we? 47 percent against them was good, especially given the amount of threes we usually take. But they did a great job. Offense was not the issue. Getting the stops — in the first half we did a much better job. They were 55 percent in the second half and (they had) 17 offensive rebounds really killed in this game.”
- On how the offensive rebounds wore on Michigan: “It might have. There’s a lot of key plays in the game, but (TJ) McConnell running down that corner rebound, I think that’s the one where we fouled him on the drive, was a key play. But that was a big issue, the ability of those guys to miss their own shot and get the rebound. We teach our guys to be the second one off the floor. Well, if you’re the second one off the floor, you’re also the second one back on the floor and you’re right in there getting a rebound. That was challenging for us and it certainly didn’t help us.”
- On his team’s toughness: “We’re in rotations a lot. It’s part of today’s game. I think we made major steps in that area today. Some of that toughness, that’s in the weight room and that takes time. Other areas, it’s just a focus on being mentally tough to stay with a box-out, stay with your man, do different things like that. It’s not about right now, hey we’re going to go out and slam somebody. We’re talking about being mentally tougher and being a little more physical in what we do defensively.”
- On the difference between Glenn Robinson III in the first half and second half: “We were scoring in our offense. We shot 47 percent and we were looking in our gaps to see the right things. One of the reasons Glenn was really successful, and this is key for us, is that we were able to get stops in the first half and run the floor. That’s a big part of what he does so well. We couldn’t get a lot of stops (in the second half). But really we didn’t do anything really differently in the second half. We scored the ball. We couldn’t stop them.”
- On the team’s attitude after this game: “They’re still connected, but they’re still down. We practice really hard and we want to see results. But we have to just continue to understand that these little things, the devil in the details of getting better, is huge. I told the guys if this was two weeks ago and this was Duke here or somebody else, we don’t play to a last-possession game. We weren’t ready for that at that time. We’re getting better, but we’re certainly going to have to play a perfect game against Arizona.”
- On not calling a timeout when Arizona took the lead with 25 seconds left: “What we were going to do was try to run a quick-hitter and then call timeout and see if we had it open. Nik (Stauskas) elected to shoot the ball. He ended up getting a pretty good look. He opted out of what we had just a little bit to get a look but that was the idea. If we didn’t get a clean look on that first play, we were calling timeout. Rather than call timeout and waste 10 seconds, let’s see if we can get something clean. And then we had two possessions left with maybe 18 seconds to go in the game if we get seven or eight. So we decided to go. We missed the shot, but ended up getting a pretty good look.”
- On playing Spike Albrecht more than Derrick Walton: “Spike, he shot the ball really well. He shot the ball well since the minute he walked in here. He just has a little bit better rhythm right now of what people are doing and how they play us. There’s going to be games like that where it might be Derrick playing 35 and he plays five. But we felt he was really on his stuff today and did a good job guarding everything.”
