By LEV FACHER
Managing Editor
Dan Dakich had a play drawn
up. Down two points in the
final seconds of regulation, he
was trying to squeeze the last
ounces of productivity out of an
exhausted crew of 17-year-olds,
and he knew he had to go for the
win.
So out came the clipboard, and
the former head coach at Bowling
Green and Indiana let his team, an
AAU squad known as the Indiana
Elite, know what was going to
happen. They’d isolate Mark
Donnal, now a redshirt freshman
forward for the Michigan men’s
basketball team, in the corner and
give him the chance to win the
game with a 3-pointer.
Everybody
was
on
board
except for Dakich’s son, Andrew.
He told his father the obvious —
they needed just two points to tie,
not three.
The elder Dakich, now a
college
basketball
analyst
at
ESPN,
recalled
the
ensuing
interaction like it was yesterday:
“Every single guy in the huddle
turned and said, ‘Andrew, shut
the hell up!’ ”
Donnal, Dakich’s teammate at
Michigan, drained the 3-pointer.
Andrew, now a sophomore guard
for the Wolverines, laughed as he
and his teammates celebrated the
buzzer-beater win.
“He was always talking,” Dan
Dakich said. “I used to have to
tell him, ‘sit the hell down and let
me coach the team,’ even though
he always had an opinion that I
privately thought was great.”
Regardless of whether he’s
playing in an AAU or a college
game, the younger Dakich has
never been shy about expressing
his opinions on the court or from
the sidelines. His father has a
picture of a young Andrew, no
more than nine or 10 years old, on
his mantle at home — he’s holding
a clipboard and dry-erase marker,
smiling as he draws up a play for
his teammates.
Dakich also hasn’t been shy
about his long-term interest in
a coaching career. It’s one of the
main reasons he chose to walk
on for the Wolverines instead
of accepting a scholarship at a
Division II school.
“Coach Beilein is a guy that
I’ve always admired, and I think
I want to get into coaching
afterward,” he said. “There’s no
better way than to be in a system
like his and learn from him.”
Coming to Ann Arbor wasn’t
without its downsides, though.
Dakich knew full well that joining
a team fresh off a Final Four
appearance as a walk-on would
make getting minutes far more
difficult than it would have been
at a Division II school or a less
competitive Division I program.
All the same, one would
expect
Dakich’s
transition
from a starting role and scoring
average of 14.1 points at Zionsville
(Indiana) to his role as a reserve
with extremely limited minutes
at Michigan to have been difficult.
That’s not the
case, according
to
the
men
who have spent
more
time
than
anyone
else
coaching
him: his father
and Zionsville
coach
Shaun
Busick.
“Andrew Dakich is a very
selfless young man,” Busick said.
“He had no illusions about what
he was getting into. The fact
that he turned down Division
II scholarship offers to come to
Michigan shows that he really,
really, really wants to play, and he
loves the game.”
Still, Dakich found himself at
the end of the bench during his
freshman season with an unusual
amount of time on his hands
during games. Accustomed to
being on the court constantly at
Zionsville, he needed to find a
way to contribute. The solution
was the Bench Mob, a Dakich-led
crew of reserves who expressed
their satisfaction with Michigan’s
play on the court in an unusual
and unimaginably enthusiastic
manner.
Dakich
even
inspired
a
YouTube montage of his sideline
dance
moves,
entitled
“UM
Hoops: Bench Mob Revolution,”
that has over 18,000 views. He has
a knack for predicting the future,
too — many of the clips show him
leaping from his seat on the bench
to celebrate a made basket, never
mind the ball not even having left
the shooter’s hands.
“That all started at Michigan,”
Dan Dakich said. “He was always
in the game (at Zionsville). He’s
just an enthusiastic kid. If kids
called him up in the neighborhood
and they were going to play
baseball down the street, he ran.
He was the first one there.”
Andrew Dakich has plenty of
examples to draw from for his
creativity. Apart from having
spent his youth watching his
father coach basketball — even
apart from Beilein — Dakich has
a number of coaching role models
at Michigan. Assistant coaches
Bacari Alexander, Jeff Meyer
and
LaVall
Jordan
regularly
advise him not just as an aspiring
basketball player, but as an
aspiring coach.
Alexander, Dakich said, is the
coach with whom he speaks the
most about his aspirations in the
field. There’s plenty to say and
even more to show — beyond his
coaching
prowess,
Alexander
is known for off-court antics
that leave his players with no
other option than to absorb his
message.
In 2013, Alexander famously
took a stack of Pringles and placed
a single potato chip on each of his
players’ shoulders, instructing
them to — wait for it — “play with
a chip on their shoulder” in their
upcoming game against Ohio
State.
“When
you’re
a
coach,
regardless of the sport, it’s
important to use different types
of
analogies
and
metaphors
to
engage
student-athletes,”
Alexander said. “As humorous
or creative as a pregame speech
might be, it also serves as a
mechanism
to
get
guys
to
encapsulate a message that goes
way beyond antics.”
To Alexander, it’s obvious that
Dakich encapsulates whatever
message
his
coaches
and
teammates leave him with.
Dakich’s communication skills,
poise and basketball knowledge
also made an early impression on
Busick when the family moved to
Zionsville prior to his freshman
year.
“He moved here the summer
before his freshman year, I
believe, and I could tell then that
he had a great knowledge of the
game,” Busick said. “And I give
my point guards a lot of freedom
to talk to me about things, to give
me suggestions. Andrew would
always have something good.”
Dakich said he has always
viewed his position as a sort of
floor general, a traffic director
who distributes and stays away
from a scoring-first mentality.
“My role is to get people open,
get open shots for other people
and be a coach on the floor,”
Dakich said. “That’s kind of
always been my role, growing up,
so I think that I just add another
vocal piece to the game.”
Clearly,
though,
that
role
extends
beyond
his
actual on-court
minutes, which
were far and
few
between
until recently.
Dakich’s
plan
entering
his sophomore year was to sit out
the season as a redshirt. It made
sense — he hadn’t played much
his freshman year, and taking
advantage of an opportunity
to play a fifth year in a less
competitive conference was a
no-brainer.
But the circumstances have
changed in a big way since the
preseason — to say the least,
Michigan’s 2014-15 season hasn’t
gone the way its players and
coaches had initially hoped.
Coming off an Elite Eight
appearance,
the
Wolverines
began the year ranked No. 24 and
had high expectations despite
having lost three players — Nik
Stauskas, Glenn Robinson III and
Mitch McGary — to the NBA.
Those hopes took a tumble
when Michigan sustained early-
season losses to the New Jersey
Institute
of
Technology
and
Eastern Michigan, and they went
into a full-on nosedive when the
Wolverines lost junior guard
Caris LeVert and later sophomore
guard Derrick Walton Jr., to a foot
injuries.
Michigan’s
suddenly
short
rotation gave Dakich an obvious
opportunity to burn the redshirt,
something he had wanted to
do for weeks, even before the
injuries to two of the Wolverines’
most important players.
“My plan, ever since I got here,
was to play for the University
of Michigan,” Dakich said. “I
talked to Coach Beilein and
Coach (Alexander) right after
the Northwestern game, after we
heard the news about Caris, and
they were asking me if I was sure
I wanted to do this. I said I was
100 percent in, whatever way to
help the team.
“To be honest, I just thought
the fifth year would help me
either possibly play here, or
possibly somewhere else. My
goal is not to leave the University
of Michigan. My goal is to play
here. If I can play here for the
fifth year, fine, if I can’t, then
I’ll maybe figure something out,
go somewhere else for another
year.”If playing a fifth year is still
Dakich’s goal, using his junior
year to redshirt would be the
logical option. As of now, though,
there’s no plan either way.
“That’s going to be up in the
air,” Dakich said. “I don’t know
the answer to that right now.”
Dakich’s on-court presence
did beg an important question,
now that he’s playing meaningful
minutes: who would run the
Bench Mob with its leader
preoccupied
with
playing
basketball?
“That’s
a
good
question,”
Dakich said. “I think we all kind
of get hype for each other. We all
play off one another.”
It
took
him
six
game
appearances to score his first
points of the season, a 3-pointer
from the corner in Michigan’s
64-57 upset of Ohio State on Feb.
22.
“I was just relieved,” Dakich
said. “I haven’t been playing the
way I think I can, sometimes,
and to finally hit that first shot —
I couldn’t stop smiling, because
I’ve waited for this moment my
whole life, and to do it against
a really good Ohio State team is
pretty cool.”
Beilein,
Busick
and
Dan
Dakich were all thrilled to see
the shot find net, but as basketball
coaches, they shared a common
complaint.
“I’m gonna give him the
business,” Beilein said after the
game, “because he made a 3 and
then … we gave up a 3 at the other
end. There was two or three steps
of celebration, and maybe relief,
that maybe (could be) attributed
to that. If it didn’t, I’ll make it
attributed to that.”
Though Dakich now has an
opportunity to build off his
increased playing opportunities,
there’s still a bottom line for
Michigan that hasn’t been met.
The Wolverines have lost five
of their last six games and are
struggling in their question for a
postseason bid.
The silver lining, according
to Alexander and Dan Dakich, is
that this year demonstrates many
coaching adages more clearly
than any spoken piece of advice
ever could.
“It’s just one of those things,”
Dan Dakich said. “When you have
success, enjoy the hell out of it.”
Alexander said that Dakich has
had the opportunity to observe
a “solution-oriented” coaching
staff. It’s a good experience,
Alexander said, for Dakich to
witness his coaches using a
“growth mindset” in dealing
with a problem that all coaches
face at one point or another: an
underclassman-laden team that
at the end of the day is simply
lacking savvy and experience in
big-time college basketball.
With
Michigan’s
players
having suffered more heartbreak
losses this season than they
care to remember, there are
opportunities aplenty for Dakich
to offer his teammates pearls of
wisdom.
From the sound of it, he won’t
have any trouble getting hired.
“He’ll be a more patient coach
than I ever was,” Dan Dakich
said.
Patience
or
not,
Dakich
won’t have to wait long to land a
coaching gig. But with Beilein,
Busick and his father as role
models, he knows he’ll be held to
the highest of standards.
ACROSS
1 Wrap giant
6 Reliever Orosco
with the MLB
record for career
pitching
appearances
11 Center of
excellence?
14 Quaking causes
15 Plant pest
16 Rest one’s dogs,
so to speak
17 It’s fraudulent
19 “Double Fantasy”
artist
20 Extras in an env.
21 Squeezed (out)
22 Web-footed critter
24 Mustard, for one:
Abbr.
25 Encouraging
shouts
26 Shout
27 It’s fabricated
30 “Saint Joan” star
Jean
31 __ Locks: St.
Marys River
rapids bypass
32 Hid the gray in
33 Brewers’
outfielder Braun
35 Creator of Della
37 Morales of film
40 Part of a foot
42 Pompous
authority
46 It’s fake
49 Beer with “Since
1775” on its label
50 Big dos
51 Grazing area
52 More of that
53 Detective Peter
of old TV
54 Estate attorney’s
concern
55 __ Lingus
56 Race errors, and
what 17-, 27- and
46-Across have
59 Mrs., in much of
the Americas
60 Classic six-
couplet poem
61 Has __: can save
face
62 Triumphant cry
63 Dost espy
64 Has a sudden
inspiration?
DOWN
1 Gets to
2 Heroine of
Beethoven’s
“Fidelio”
3 AAA, for one
4 AAA et al.
5 Enzyme suffix
6 Hiked, with
“up”
7 “The Comedy
of Errors”
setting
8 Word with wood
or water
9 Quote qualifier
10 Ex-mayor with a
cameo in “The
Muppets Take
Manhattan”
11 Abstruse stuff
12 Pedigree
13 Came (in)
dramatically
18 Convention
attendees
23 Exploit
25 “Live at the __”:
Patsy Cline
album
26 Venomous
arachnids
28 Sources of fine
wool
29 “... rapping at my
chamber door”
poet
34 Fish-fowl link
36 Filming sites
37 Heaven on earth
38 “Told ya!”
39 Natural light shows
41 Pours out
43 Short, tailored
jackets
44 Really dug
something
45 San Simeon
family
47 Guards may
prevent them
48 Antarctic
explorer
Shackleton
53 Pure delight
54 1985 U.S. Open
champ
Mandlikova
57 Modern art?
58 Recess game
By Mike Buckley
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/26/15
02/26/15
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RELEASE DATE– Thursday, February 26, 2015
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Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Thursday, February 26, 2015 — 5A
Andrew Dakich: The ‘coach on the floor’
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Sophomore Andrew Dakich is perhaps the most enthusiastic member of the Michigan men’s basketball team, a trait he hopes to one day take into coaching.
“He’ll be a more
patient coach
than I ever was.”