Michigan coach John Beilein joined the other Big Ten coaches on the weekly conference call on Monday morning. You can read transcribed notes and quotes from his interview below.
- On Iowa’s Roy Devyn Marble: “What people did not realize, and we studied, was his young birthday. He was actually a senior and he could have been playing in 16-and-under leagues. So he was a very young birthday. What you saw was not necessarily what you were going to get because of his youth.
- On Marble ability to finish in transition: “Here’s what I’ve seen in transition: he’s one of the few guys who can take it right to the rim and pull up. There’s very few who can do both of those things. I would say there are many who can take it to the rim, finish in different ways, get to the foul line. But there are very few — we have someone do full-court jumpshots sometimes where they have to pull up at 15 while running full-court. Or pull up at three. Devyn can do that.”
- On playing a team for the second time in Big Ten play: “It’s a combination. You only know the way you play and how they responded, but we will watch — as many games as they played since then, that wasn’t against us, we’ll watch every one of them as well.”
- On the possibility of Iowa playing Nik Stauskas differently than the first time around: “We try to do the best we can to prepare for what we imagine people are going to do, but the imagination of basketball, what you can do defensively, there’s so many different scenarios it’s impossible to practice all of those. Especially this game will probably be a one-day prep because were playing a bunch of two-game in-between games. We won’t have time to over-prepare.”
- On Yogi Ferrell’s performance: “A couple of the shots — ironically, I call them ‘Hardaway shots,’ not from Tim (Hardaway Jr.) but from his father, watching him just create his own shot. It’s a dribble and a half type of move that I’d have to explain to everybody, but it’s tough to stay in front of him and stop a long range jumpshot because if you rise up he’ll cross you and get in and if you stay back. He created two or three of those. The game plan for them, create two or three of those and we created two or three of those. It was a combination of a lot of those. What’s in that game was six assists for Indiana. They played great off the dribble, finishing their own, shortening the game.”
- On the defense Indiana played: “When you’re consistently switching a certain screen that very few people switch on, it took us a while to respond. And when we did, we didn’t finish or rushed ourselves or did things. That was it. I can’t explain it any more.”
- On Nebraska playing well and Terran Petteway: “I think that he’s a really good player. He’s getting points. People know what he’s going to do sometimes and can’t handle it and the league can’t stop him. He’s got a 3-point shot, he takes the ball to the basket, he finishes going right, he finishes going left. Right now, he just played against some really good defensive coaches, and he’s still getting buckets. But he’s not the lone one on that team. (Shavon) Shields is shooting great from three the last five games, he’s 4-for-9. Your point guard knows exactly his role on the team and reminds me of what Yogi Ferrell was doing last year for Indiana. He knew he had really good players around him. You have to guard (Ray) Gallegos. And that defense is really solid, just really solid. You look at who they played recently, Indiana just beat us, Ohio State is really good — Ohio State did not lose a non-conference game — and I think those are their last two games. They played very, very well.”
- On Nebraska’s new arena and being the only coach who’s won there this season: “It was a terrific atmosphere. Because it is sort of a downtown arena, it reminded me a bit of the Kohl Center. It’s bigger and broader. It’s not like the Indianas, the Purdues, the Michigan States where you sense the fans are more on top of you, but it’s still an arena that’s a terrific venue for games.”
- On how his team will react to the loss at Indiana: “Today we won’t do very much. We have to rest. We’ll watch about an hour of film. We’ll address the issues we think we have to improve on. The areas of growth. And then we will do a little bit with Nebraska, maybe 15-20 minutes with Nebraska and then we’ll lift weights. And then tomorrow will be our major prep day. We expect them to get back on the horse and just keep learning. I think our staff does a great job of framing up these games so we can learn from them.”
- On Caris LeVert: “I think our backcourt overall, both Caris LeVert and Derrick Walton, have been key to any success that we’ve had. Everybody knows that Nik (Stauskas) and Glenn (Robinson III) are high talents, our two centers, Jordan Morgan and Jon Horford, have been terrific. But you don’t do any of those without good guard play. Jeff Meyer, my assistant who’s probably as wise as anybody out there, mentioned to me a couple months ago: we have to improve our backcourt because they’re so young. We’ve really got to work with them. Between LaVall Jordan and our whole staff, these guys have really grown. And Caris has been a great example of that.”
