Michigan head coach John Beilein was pleased with his team’s performance in moving to 2-0 with a win over IUPUI on Sunday. He discussed his team’s defense, Zak Irvin’s shooting stroke and mysterious injury and much more.
Opening statement:
“Really pleased to get that win behind us on short rest. We spent a lot of practice time getting ready for Howard because of the nature of their defense. I thought it might hurt us offensively today, but it didn’t. We focused back in. Little by little, the biggest thing is to develop this team—improve the younger guys, give them more time. Defense was much better, DJ Wilson is really changing the way we guard. We can switch more because he can guard five positions. We’ll talk the W and move on. Really good Marquette team on Thursday night, late. This team [IUPUI] was better than Howard. Marquette is going to be better than this team. And whoever we play after that will be pretty good.”
On DJ Wilson:
“When we recruited him, this is what we hoped. We recruited him and looked at potential. You see it will take a little bit. He didn’t have body or mindset. He developed his body, and now his mindset is to get in there and get rebounds, loose basketballs, everything. Defensively, last year, we couldn’t get him on the floor. Now he’s spent a year getting better. If he says to himself, ‘I am a rebounder and defender,’ he’ll get baskets. These guys will find him when he’s open.”
13-0 run:
“When Mark went into game it changed things defensively. He can plug gaps. Moe is still trying to learn where he should be sometimes. He’s guessing sometimes and the game needs to slow down for him in ball screen coverage. Mark doesn’t always get it right. This was a quick team. Five fifth-year guys. All three of those guards were going downhill. When they see a center trying to figure things out, they just attack the big guy. Mark plugged that up and that was a big difference.”
DJ and Moe on floor at same time:
“I think DJ gives us some great athleticism and Moe gives us great skill. If Moe can make same jumps DJ’s made—and Moe had some rebounds today, right?—if he can have same difference in mentality. It’s a matter of time. When you ask a guy who’s never been to asked to rebound in his whole life…he’s learning. But there are techniques and a mentality. Those two at 6’10—it’s tough to shoot over them.”
Bench:
“Xavier and Ibi will give us [bench production] eventually. Right now game is too fast for them. When we get those guys up to speed. Every day is another step closer for those guys.”
Balance of skill (Duncan and Moe) vs more d/rebounding (Wilson and Donnal):
“We’ll have to figure that out. What’s the best lineup for every game? There’s some hard-charging teams in big ten. If you have a bunch of skill guys, they’ll pound you into the ground. For other teams, skill will be more important. We have to grow DJ’s skill and get Mo more aggressive and more anticipating next plays; he’s a little slower reacting to it. Mark can do some great things; not going to jump out of gym, but he’s strong going after ball. I’m proud of way he’s play so far—two good games back to back.”
On Derrick Walton’s minutes:
“The nature of both games were, I wanted to give him more time the other day knowing we had a game coming back. But because all the others got in foul trouble, then we couldn’t take him out. Today it was more, ‘We’re going to rest tomorrow.’ We got out enough but not clearly enough. We’re trying to message to our young guys, ‘This is the way we play.’…. I tried to use those media timeouts to give him a little bit of extra rest (and) we’ll continue to work with Xavier (and) work with Ibi.”
On Zak Irvin leaving game for locker room early in second half:
“All of a sudden he just felt a little tweak with his body and wanted to go have the trainers look at it. He came back and felt fine.”
On Zak Irvin’s midrange jumpers:
“It was the first time we saw a hedge team like that. We predicted they would play man-to-man — they have a matchup zone and some other things in there — but we went to some of our package that we thought was most effective for him and our team. He sees over the defense really well…we’ve got to work it to the rest of the guys on the ball screen. Muhammad made a really nice play (today). We’ve just got to keep working….we’ve been here for four to five weeks, and we’ve been working with them. This is a team that some of them are really slow in developing. And we can’t say, ‘OK, they can’t do it.’ You’ve just got to keep plodding away. DJ is a perfect example. He’s a perfect example of when you just stay with him and stay with him, and they get to be third, fourth or fifth-year players, they get to be really good.”
On defending Darrell Combs:
“I think we took him very seriously (in the second half). Not that we didn’t (in the first half), but his quickness, I think we understand who he was and tried to load up a little bit more and challenge him to pass, and he did make some good plays. He’s just really quick to stay in front of. With the tempo the game and the way he was going downhill, until we went with ‘the late game, just get our starters out of there’ (mindset), they were under 50 points. And I think they scored 80 the other day. So we tried to roll up against him. Rahk has got to have this mentality that he is a stopper for us. When Zak was on him, Zak stopped him. We had that same mentality with Rahk and he did a better job in the second half.”
On Duncan Robinson’s playing time:
“DJ was really playing well. If Zak hadn’t come back, (Duncan) would’ve played more minutes. His role will be varied. Does he start, does he come off the bench? Love having a gunner come off the bench. (Robinson) made some really good defensive adjustments today. He’s just got to continue to embrace his role and keep working on his game. I love the idea that when he comes off the bench, he has free range to shoot, and it was nice to see him knock in a long one today.”
