John Beilein was available to speak with media following his team’s 80-75 win over Michigan State in East Lansing. The coach talked about his team’s run of three straight wins over top-10 opponents, the matchup between Nik Stauskas and Gary Harris and much more. You can watch using the embedded media player below or read notes and quotes after the jump.
Opening statement: “It was a little like last Saturday when we were in Wisconsin. We talk so much about how this is a great win for us because of who we were just able to beat. It’s one of the classiest, best programs in the country. They do things the right way. They’ve got great players, they have a great coaching staff, they have a great plan and for our guys to come in and get the ‘W’ means a lot. The Big Ten, as you know, is once again one of the better conferences in the country; the best conference. In the seven years now that I’ve been at Michigan, I know that if you’re going to contend for this championship, you better have some success against Michigan State. This is one step in the right direction with a long way to go. Our kids are excited about it because of the atmosphere you all have up here and that makes it even sweeter because it’s such a great venue to play basketball. We’ll take the win. We’ll move on, we’ve got Purdue Thursday and that’s who I am, just take it game by game.”
- On the swagger of Michigan at the start: “It was almost that in our other games. They’ve got us from the 12-minute mark to the eight-minute mark; that was some really bad basketball Michigan played. We usually start the game that way. Today we got off to a great start and that gave us a little bit of confidence. Then their defense really heated up and we acted like we’ve never seen anything like that. Once we got settled down we were better. The start was helpful.”
- On beating three teams in a row ranked in the top 10: “The rankings right now are the rankings. You don’t know who’s going to be there in March; it’s just projections. I know we beat three really good teams. It’s three teams that I think will be in the top four or five in the Big Ten. To beat those, that’s what really means a lot because now you have a game up on them in some regard for the Big Ten Championship, which to every coach in this league is what we’re trying to do. The national stuff, forget about it. It’s about the Big Ten right now.”
- On halftime adjustments: “We had to change some things offensively that we were doing. Watching how they were playing us defensively. I walked into the locker room and my assistants were ‘bang, bang, bang, this is what we’ve got to do,’ and we went and did it. That really helped open up some things. We still, Gary Harris is such a great defender and to get Nik (Stauskas) involved with Gary on him is tough to do. He was limited to even touching the ball. Once we got used to that, then we said we’ve got to attack in different ways and Nik can score off some residual things or we’ve got to get him open better.”
- On slowing down Keith Appling: “Keith’s really quick in the ball screen, our senior and our junior, Jon Horford and Jordan Morgan, who have come up here four times, they’ve seen the good and the bad up here. If you’re going to guard Keith Appling, you better have a god ball screen defender as your big man because he will just slice through you. They did a wonderful job. Of course, splitting those minutes helps because they’re always fresh. Derrick did a great job, Spike did a great job, that was just as key as those two big fellas, who’ve really worked so hard.”
- On Derrick Walton: “One of the reasons I know why Derrick embraced coming to Michigan was the tremendous games he was going to be able to play in the Big Ten. This is a great environment, like all the great environments are. He hasn’t always knocked them down at the end. He’s had a couple of games where he’s made the end of the game a little bit nervous for us. All of our guys down the stretch, that was big for us to finish this way.”
- On his message to his players after this week: “I don’t like to be the killjoy here, but I’ll say, let’s enjoy this, but you know on Monday we’ll make you in practice forget all about this because we have a very dangerous Purdue team coming in next Thursday. Enjoy this. We’ve played seven games. Heck, there’s 11 more games to go in this league, and this is a tough league. I don’t care if we’re playing Michigan State or if we’re playing one of our guaranteed games. We just want our guys to approach each game individually. Just win that game. So we’ll just go back into that approach. I guarantee we’ll have two days of practice like we lost this game. We’ll get better.”
- On Caris LeVert: “With the exception of our Duke game, when we’ve had good wins, Caris has been a major part of some of those games. He’s had some moments when he maybe wasn’t as good offensively, but defensively did a great thing. He chased Gary Harris around the whole night, and that’s no easy task. Now he’s got the ball in his hands, and he’s chasing Gary. He’s in tremendous shape and it was a great effort.”
