8A - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Terrible shooting plagues 'M' in tough loss at home Wolverines shot under 25 percent from the field against Fighting Illini By CHRIS MESZAROS Daily SportsEditor It's not often that junior guard Manny Harris misses a layup. And for the Michigan men's basketball team, when he misses four of them - some of them on fast breaks - it's not a good sign. In yester- day's 51-44 ILLINOIS 51 loss to Illi- MICHIGAN 44 nois, it sim- ply epitomized the Wolverines' problems. From the get-go, Michigan never really got in sync. The Wol- verines hit just 1-of-tO to start the game, their sole basket coming off a three by sophomore guard Zack Novak. In fact, it looked like Novak was the only one who came to play, scoring 12 points - one shy of the team-high 13, scored by Harris But beyond that, the Wolver- ines' shooting was simply dread- ful. Michigan shot 24.6 percent in the contest and just over 19 per- cent from behind the arc. "They're shooting not to miss," Michigan coach John Beilein said. "Or they're think- ing tlhey're going to get fouled and we just aren't clean with what we're doing. They're think- ing too much. It's a shame right now because I really thought we played one of our best defensive games of the year." That defense helped the Wol- verines (6-9 Big Ten, 13-14 over- all) stay in the contest, despite the lackluster field-goal percent- age. Down 41-35 with just over six minutes to play, Michigan looked poised to make a comeback. Just then, Harris stole the ball, drove up court and looked to have an easy layup. But instead of making the routine play, the ball clanked off the iron and into the hands of Illinois center Mike Tis- dale. "Definitely frustrating, it's something that all my life I've been able to do," Harris said of his missed layups. "When you get out there and get right to the rim and miss it, it's frustrating. While Michigan has strug- gled shooting all season, its two stars, Harris and senior forward DeShawn Sims are usually reli- able. But not last night. Harris shot 5-of-17 and Sims's impact was largely nonexistent, as he got into foul trouble and scored just seven points. Despite Michigan's poor shoot- ing - particularly in the first half when the team shot just 20 percent - Illinois turnovers kept the Wolverines in the game. The Fighting Illini turned it over 17 times, which prevented any lengthy second-half runs. And even with two minutes left, Illinois (10-5,18-10) had just a four-point lead and hadn't scored a basket in the previous three minutes, putting Michigan in a manageable situation. With the shot clock ticking down, freshman guard Darius Morris poked the ball away from Illinois's Demetri McCamey. After DJ Richardson picked up the loose ball for the Fighting Illini, he chucked it up just as the shot clock expired. Tisdale was there once again to grab the offensive rebound. From there, McCamey dished the alley- oop to Mike Davis and it looked like Michigan's chances were over. While Harris and Sims had off nights, the rest of the team besides Novak was worse. Sophomore Laval Lucas Perry continued his slump, scoring no points and extending his score- less streak to two games. Fellow sophomore Stu Douglass matched him, shooting 0-for-8 in the con- test including five misses from behind the arc. "Stu's not alone, he's not the lone ranger here," Beilein said. "There's a lot of guys. Laval, its been a longtime since he's made a shot out there." It drew a stark contrast to the two recent road games in Min- nesota and Iowa where the Wol- verines shot over 50 percent from downtown. But after two straight loss- es and with just three games remaining in the season, it is get- ting hard for the team toput aside all the negatives that have mount- ed so far. "It's all mental for everybody on the team. All mental," Mor- ris said. "You've just got to go out there and believe. I feel like a lot of people are not believing and that's a part. You've got to have faith and yourself and in your team and what we're trying to accomplish." 0 " JAKE FROMM/Daily D More photos at Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez looks on during yes- Muhe ~y m Ory terday's press conference. RichRod stands to lose mostfrom * NCAA violations Sims invisible in loss to Fighting Illini By NICOLE AUERBACH Daily SportsEditor Everywhere you looked, there was a problem. Everywhere you looked, there was a culprit, some- one or something to blame for Michigan's latest loss. But then, seemingly in the mid- dle of it all, there was someone missing - the invisible DeShawn Sims. He posted seven points, which would be respectable for any Wol- verines not named DeShawn Sims or Manny Harris, but two came when the game's outcome was already decided. He sat out a large part of the second half due to foul trouble, eventually succumbing to his fifth in the game's final min- ute. And perhaps most frustrating for the Wolverines, when the out- side shooters struggled, he wasn't there to take the ball in the paint and give the Michigan offense another dimension. It hasn't been a secret this year - the Michigan men's basketball team goes as Sims goes. He's more than just a backup plan, and his role on the team goes beyond his points down low. Though there were plenty of concerns after the Wolverines' loss last night, Sims's seven points certainly stood out. The only times Sims has scored fewer than seven in a game this season? A pair of four-point per- formances, in - not surprisingly - two Michigan losses (Boston College and Northwestern). "I don't know how many shots I took, but I wasn't efficient," said Sims, whose stat line read 3-for- 12 from the field. "I guess offense wasn't clicking for me today. The team went otherwise." But when the team plays with- out Sims at his best, it often strug- gles. The Wolverines don't just miss his scoring, either. It's his height down low, his rebounding and the way he draws defenders. Sophomore guard Stu Dou- glass said it's "hard to kind of get things going" without much action from Sims, whom Douglass called "arguably the best low-post offensive big man in the Big Ten - maybe sporadically, but at times, he can be unstoppable." "We've been going through him a lot this year," Douglass said. Douglass said the team didn't ignore the Sims-in-the-post option during practice this week, but it wasn't as available yes- terday as it has been in recent games. The Fighting Illini had a considerable size advantage, with two 6-foot-9 guys and a 7-foot-1 center in their starting lineup. That, undoubtedly, made the game plan a bit more difficult to execute. Sims mostly worked against the 7-foot-1 junior Mike Tisdale, and after the game, Illinois coach Bruce Weber said he was pleased with the way Tisdale guarded Sims. "(Sims is) 6-7-and-a-half up against a 7-1 guy, for some reason it wasn't working with him today, for obvious reasons, I should say," Michigan coach John Beilein said. "He's not going to post up and score over the guy inside. He had a couple of wrinkles that I think he could have got there, but did not have a great game." Both Beilein and Douglass made note of senior forward Zack Gibson's performance in Sims's absence, and spoke highly of the 6-foot-10 big man whose playing time has fluctuated all season. Douglass said Gibson provided a spark to' the team during the game's second half. Beilein went so far as to call Gibson's recent Finally, the suspense is over. Nearly six months ago, when the Detroit Free Press published a report saying Michigan football players were being over- practiced, the internet was ina fren- zy and Michigan fans came out in droves to talk about the once-lofty moral' values of their. program gone awry. ., And outside RYAN of the initial KARTJE backlash of the story, the reac- tions were the same: Don't most football programs overpractice their players? What does overpracticing mean per se? Confusion ensued. There were West Virginian tears. Defecting players. Angry fans. Dis- appointed alumni. You name it. It seemed like just about every- one had had enough of the new direction in which Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez was taking the football program - one that had been defined by inexcusable losses, a botched drug deal and possible NCAA violations. But with yesterday's announce- ment that the football program was indeed found to have committed NCAA violations, despite a continu- ing firestorm of mistakes made in the RichRod era, all IScan think about is how much worse the situa- tion could be. Looking through the five viola- tions with a fine-toothed comb, it's hard to find anything resembling a "major" violation. Sure, the environment Rodri- guez and the athletic department promoted may not have "assured compliance." A graduate assistant may have lied. And the quality control assistants may have partici- pated in a practice or two. Hell, they may have even forgot to count stretching as part of the countable practice hours. Butwhen I think of major NCAA violations, I think of recruiting fraud, paying players, cheating on tests and other obvious fraudulent charges that border on criminal - not a few extra wind sprints for skipping class. Clearly, the athletic department didn't think there was much of a problem, either, as it stood by while Rodriguez promoted one of those quality control assistants - Adam Braithwaite - to fill the Wolver- ines' vacant assistant coaching position. In no way am I condoning the alleged actions, which incoming Athletic Director David Brandon called "internal confusion." I'm sure there were a whole lot of con- fused participants in this charade. Whether they should have been so ignorant, we may never know. But I can't help but look out West and see schools like USC under the microscope with much more seri- ous NCAA violations and think, "This isn't so bad." In a salacious scandal that involved houses and cash for former Heisman-winner Reggie Bush as well as possible recruiting violations regarding star basketball player O.J. Mayo, the Trojans are in deep. The difference with USC is that its football coach from when these possible violations took place - now with the Seattle Seahawks - just happened tobea patron saint of Los Angeles. And Rich Rodriguez, well, he won't be canonized in Ann Arbor any time soon. Rodriguez's stock continues to fall in an awful bout of bad karma and questionable decision-making. By now, I'm sure he realizes he's not in West Virginia anymore. These violations, in addition to his signing day fiasco involving blue-chip recruit and suspected felon Demar Dorsey have made his seat scolding hot in 2010. Still, Brandon made it clear that rash decisions won't be made this offseason on the Wolverines' embattled coach. "Rich Rodriguez is our football coach, and he will be our football coach," Brandon said. In the end, these NCAA viola- tions will most likely have little effect in tarnishing the Michigan tradition. Sure, the Wolverines will no longer have the spotless record they once had. And there's some- thing to be said about the program's image, in that sense. Truth be told though, a slap on the wrist, probation sod a few docked scholarships probably won't do much to derail the entity that is Michigan football. It's Rodriguez who stands to suf- fer from this. After all, for a coach who has already pushed his luck with the Michigan fan base, with the baggage of a $2.5 million buyout from Morgantown and little on- the-field success, these violations could be the straw that broke the camel's back come next offseason. Kartje can be reached at rkartje@umich.edu. Senior DeShawn Sims scored just seven points in last night's loss to Illinois. He fouled out with 28.7 seconds left in the game. play a "bright spot" during the team's latest "funk." Though Michigan is trying its best to find and focus on positives right now, like Gibson's perfor- mance, doesn't exactly make up for the glaring absence of Sims, one of the Wolverines' most important players. After Sims fouled out with 28.7 seconds remaining in yesterday's game, at the end of the de-facto senior day, the student section chanted an appreciative "Thank you, Peedi," referencing the four years of work he's put in. Maybe he wasn't invisible after all. Unlike past senior nights, this year's holds postseason implications for Wolverines By MICHAEL FLOREK Daily Sports Writer In the past, senior night for the Michigan hockey team hasn't been all that climactic. Usually, there's no lingering possibility that this could be the last game in front of the home crowd; usually, the Wol- verines have already guaranteed themselves a home playoff series in the coming weeks. That won't be the case this year. Michigan currently sits in sev- enth in the CCHA. The team must win Thursday against Notre Dame and then in South Bend on Satur- day to negate any chance Michigan has of falling below the eighth spot and losing home-ice advantage in the opening round. More than anything, earning extra time at Yost Ice Arena for a playoff series is on the seniors' minds as Thursday quietly approaches. "I think the time it will set in is actually when I know I play my last game here," senior defenseman Steve Kampfer said yesterday. "But I think Thursday night will kind of be a wake up for me, but not right now. It hasn't set in at all." And Michigan coach Red Beren- son wouldn't have it any other way. The coaching staff scheduled the game on a Thursday so that stu- dents could be there to support the seniors. But he remembers good and bad performances from his seniors in the past. Because of this, he won't even mention the event to his team this week. "I've gone so far as, 'this game's for the seniors,' and we stunk the joint out," Berenson said. "You never know what the emotional trigger is, butI don't think it works for us." The 2010 class - consisting of Kampfer, fellow defensemen Chris Summers and Eric Elmblad and forwards Brian Lebler and Anthony Ciraulo - already knows that this regular season will be the worst of its career at Michi- gan. Barring a run to the CCHA Tournament Championship, the Wolverines will also miss out on their first NCAA tournament in 20 years. Despite the comparatively poor season this year, the class has a CCHA title and NCAA Frozen Four appearance to their credit (both in 2008). They are also nearly 60 games over .500 in their time wearing the winged helmet, including a 55-16-3 record at Yost. Even with more games to play in the season and Berenson's opposi- tion to building up senior night emotionally, the team recognizes that it will be different from a nor- mal game. At the very least, the Wolverines' post-game routine will be different, if the game itself doesn't seem abnormal. "It's obviously going to be a pretty emotional affair," Sum- mers said. "It is every year for the seniors, even the guys that aren't seniors, seeing them do that whole ceremony after the game." As for who will get the most emotional, how about a 6-foot-3 inch, 212-pound Canadian? Both Summers and Kampfer joked that Lebler, the Penticton, British Columbia native, will get the most emotional when his name gets called over the loud speaker. "When I came in here I never thought that Brian would be a softie," Kampfer said with a grin. "I think now he's a softie. He's going to be the one that's going to tear up the most. There's been a couple of times he's choked up in meetings. Check in at for updates.