2B — December 7, 2015
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
F
ifteen minutes before the
Michigan women’s basket-
ball team played Pittsburgh
in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge
on
Thursday
night, a few
fans stood up
and
cheered
along
with
the band as it
played
“The
Victors.”
The
players
warmed
up
on the floor,
and a guy sit-
ting courtside
wearing a maize and blue Incred-
ible Hulk fist held up a highlighter
yellow sign that read: “Fight 4
every rebound.”
The upper bowl of Crisler
Center was curtained off, and
empty blue chairs occupied much
of the lower bowl. When the fight
song ended, you could hear the
players encouraging one another
from the top rows of the arena.
At first, the scene seems bleak,
like just another chapter for a
program that has historically
experienced more failure than
success.
Michigan
has
never
made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA
Tournament or won a Big Ten
championship.
But then the game begins.
The Wolverines punch the
Panthers in the mouth from the
get-go, taking charges and taking
names against a team that defeated
them by 21 points last season.
Michigan leads by 22 points at the
half on its way to an 82-45 victory.
Freshmen and sophomores score
59 of the Wolverines’ points, and
Michigan improves to 7-0, tying
its best start in program history.
Michigan coach Kim Barnes
Arico, in her fourth season in Ann
Arbor, is starting to see things
take shape. Her first three seasons
at the helm of the program saw
little roster continuity, but a great
deal of overachievement.
She coached a senior-laden
team in her first season at
Michigan in 2012-13 and led it to
the second round of the NCAA
Tournament.
The
Wolverines
returned only one starter the
following year, and Barnes Arico
led the makeshift group to 20
wins and a WNIT appearance.
Last year, the team was led by a
trio of seniors in Nicole Elmblad,
Shannon Smith and Cyesha Goree,
who had higher expectations. But
once again, they won 20 games
and made the WNIT.
Now, they’re all gone, too,
and Michigan must depend on
its youngest players. Freshmen
and sophomores have scored 72
percent of the Wolverines’ points
this season. With this new core,
Barnes Arico believes her building
process is truly getting started.
At this point, none of the
players
on
Michigan’s
roster
have played for a coach in college
other than Barnes Arico, and that
prospect excites her. She has been
preparing to coach this freshman
class since she arrived four years
ago.
She has watched freshman
guard
Boogie
Brozoski
since
she was in middle school and
freshman guard Nicole Munger
since she was 14. Former Michigan
coach Kevin Borseth told Barnes
Arico she needed to call now-6-
foot-5 freshman center Hallie
Thome soon after Barnes Arico
took the job. The three freshmen
were rated in the top 100 in their
recruiting class by ESPN, and they
all decided to take a risk alongside
Barnes Arico.
She made them want to come
to Michigan by telling them they
could do things that have never
been done before, like putting
together a run in the NCAA
Tournament. That’s what she told
star sophomore guard Katelynn
Flaherty, who was being recruited
by top schools all over the country.
Barnes Arico’s plan toward this
relevance hinges on one motto,
and it has for all four of her years
at Michigan: that the Wolverines
are the hardest-working team in
America.
It
sounds
like
typical
coachspeak at first. What coach
doesn’t think his or her team is
the hardest-working? But then she
keeps going.
“So when we say hardest-
working team in America, well,
how do we judge being the hardest-
working
team
in
America?”
Barnes Arico said Wednesday.
“We can’t just say that. What
does that mean? I want proof. We
chart practice every day. How
many loose balls are you getting in
practice? How many charges are
you getting in practice? And then
we do it in the games.”
For those, Barnes Arico has
a sticker system. Each player is
awarded stickers that are placed
on a block ‘M’ for her performance
and how many of the “intangible”
things she does during games, like
diving on the ground for loose balls
and taking charges. Those are
frequently the measures Barnes
Arico uses to judge her players, not
points scored or assists dished out.
If a player has only a few stickers,
she will hear it from Barnes Arico.
How could someone possibly be
one of the hardest-working players
in America if she has just three
stickers?
Barnes Arico knows she can’t
yet recruit players as talented as
the ones perennial powerhouses
Connecticut and Notre Dame are
getting, but she’s starting to sign
players a step below that level.
Multiple recruiting sites rank the
recruiting class that will arrive
next fall as one of the top 25
classes in the nation.
The plan is progressing on the
court, too. Flaherty is averaging
21.3 points per game. Thome starts
in the low post for the Wolverines
and is the team’s second-leading
scorer. Brozoski and Munger are
aren’t far behind, each coming
off the bench as freshmen and
averaging more than eight points
per game.
Michigan won its first seven
games of this season by at least 17
points, but it knows tougher times
are ahead. Sunday, the Wolverines
lost to Princeton, a borderline top-
25 team, by 17. Four Big Ten teams
are currently ranked in the AP
Poll, and Iowa is the first team out.
Barnes Arico won’t put a
timetable on her plan for Michigan
to arrive as a major player on the
national scene, but she believes it
will happen. She wouldn’t have
left St. John’s, where she led the
Red Storm to the Sweet 16, if she
didn’t hold that belief.
Her goal is to make things
happen for Michigan women’s
basketball that haven’t happened
before. Now that she has all of
her own recruits in place, making
a run to the Sweet 16 some day
down the road in front of a packed
Crisler Center doesn’t seem like
such a pipe dream.
“And we always talk about that
when you get to that point, it’s one
game,” Barnes Arico said. “And
who knows what could happen?”
What could happen is that
maybe, just maybe, if the players
who are almost talented enough
work harder than everybody else,
Michigan could be among the best
teams in America.
Barnes Arico wouldn’t mind
adding that to her motto.
Cohen can be reached at
maxac@umich.edu and on
Twitter @MaxACohen.
RITA MORRIS/Daily
Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico finally has a roster full of her own players in her fourth season as the Wolverines’ coach. Now, she has a better opportunity to keep building with the new core.
MAX
COHEN
At Princeton, ‘M’ suffers
first defeat of the season
By TED JANES
Daily Sports Writer
The
Michigan
women’s
basketball team was able to
redeem one of its early-season
losses
from
last
year
this
weekend,
but it couldn’t make up for both.
After crushing Pittsburgh — a
team that beat the Wolverines
last season — on Thursday, the
team couldn’t produce the same
result Sunday against Princeton.
Sophomore guard Katelynn
Flaherty put up an impressive
33 points against the Tigers, but
Michigan didn’t get much help
from anyone else and fell on the
road, 74-57.
The loss is Michigan’s first of
the season but second straight
to Princeton (6-1). Last year, the
Tigers beat the Wolverines (7-1)
by 30 in Ann Arbor, the team’s
worst loss of the season.
Matching up with Flaherty for
the second time in as many years,
Princeton looked fully prepared
to isolate the star guard. The
Tigers, though, didn’t need to
rely on defense, because the
Wolverines were doing all the
work for them.
Michigan’s Achilles’ heel was
a poor shooting performance in
the first half. Excluding Flaherty,
the Wolverines shot 2-for-19 in
the half, and until five minutes
remained in the second quarter,
Flaherty was the only Wolverine
to make a field goal.
Playing catch-up all game,
Michigan managed to bump its
shooting up to 36 percent by the
end, but it looked nothing like
the squad that was averaging 87.9
points per game before heading
to New Jersey.
“We
couldn’t
really
get
anything going on the offensive
end, so I thought maybe if
we changed the defense and
pressure them a little bit maybe
we’d be able to get anything off of
turnovers,” said Michigan coach
Kim Barnes Arico. “It really
didn’t happen.”
The Wolverines turned on the
press in the second quarter, but
getting Princeton to turn the ball
over was far more difficult than it
was against previous opponents
like Oral Roberts and Pittsburgh.
Led
by
guard
Michelle
Miller’s 24 points and eight
rebounds, Princeton’s starting
five outperformed Michigan’s.
Three of its starters ended with
double digits, while Michigan’s
second-leading
scorer
behind
Flaherty was junior guard Siera
Thompson, who had eight.
Michigan
has
just
four
scholarship upperclassmen, and
its inexperience finally surfaced.
“We really looked young,”
Barnes Arico said. “For the first
time all year long we were really
exposed.
“When I was in the locker
room talking about the freshmen,
I just see Katelynn Flaherty just
shaking her head the entire time
like ‘I was there. I understand
what
you’re
going
through.
People beat me. People were
physical.’ ”
Princeton shut down freshman
center Hallie Thome, usually a
reliable scorer. At 6-foot-5, she led
the nation in field goal percentage
with 76.7 percent prior to the
weekend. But Thome struggled
against the Tigers’ physically
stronger frontcourt, tallying just
three points while shooting 25
percent from the floor.
Michigan’s
other
key
freshmen, guards Nicole Munger
and Boogie Brozoski, combined
for four points and five turnovers.
Two of the starters — senior
guard Madison Ristovski and
sophomore
forward
Jillian
Dunston — failed to score at all.
It was an ugly loss, but
Princeton was also Michigan’s
first
actual
test,
and
the
Wolverines
couldn’t
have
expected
another
lopsided
win like they had become
accustomed to.
MICHIGAN
PRINCETON
57
74
RITA MORRIS/Daily
Katelynn Flaherty scored 33 points at Princeton, but it wasn’t enough.
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Sophomore middle blocker Claire Kieffer-Wright finished with 14 kills in five sets against UCLA on Saturday night.
Michigan’s season ends
By ORION SANG
Daily Sports Writer
Two sets into its second-round
NCAA Tournament matchup, the
Michigan volleyball team found
itself
up
2-0, one set
away from
knocking
off No. 14 UCLA in Los Angeles.
But the Wolverines couldn’t finish
the job, losing three straight
sets to drop their match 3-2 on
Saturday, ending their season.
It was the mirror opposite of
Michigan’s 3-1 victory against
Santa Clara the previous night,
when it rallied after losing the
first set to win three straight and
advance to the second round.
The loss ended a season in
which the Wolverines (20-13
overall) were able to make history,
beating
two-time
reigning
national champions Penn State
on the road for the first time in
program history, while dealing
with a flurry of lineup changes.
“One of the important things
about this team is that we changed
our lineup around almost every
match,” said Michigan coach Mark
Rosen. “It gave us the opportunity
to keep getting better, to keep
tweaking things, and the team
really responded to that.”
Against the Bruins (25-7),
however, the Wolverines were
unable to get the job done.
Michigan was jittery to open
the first set, losing the first four
points before righting the ship.
The Wolverines fought back to
tie the score at nine before falling
into another hole down 21-19.
Michigan showed resilience,
though, winning three straight
points to take a set lead it did
not relinquish, and sophomore
defensive
specialist
Caroline
Knop finished the set with a
crucial kill.
The Wolverines left the court
pumped up after their 25-23 first-
set victory, bracing for a second set
that was just as tight as the first.
The two teams went back and
forth throughout the frame, with
neither stringing together more
than three consecutive points.
Tied at 24, though, Knop came
through in the clutch again with
another kill to give the Wolverines
a one-point lead before a UCLA
attack error gave Michigan the
set, 26-24.
The Wolverines ran into the
locker room poised to take the
match. But when they returned,
things began to fall apart.
The Bruins quickly staked out
to a 7-1 lead in the third set, and
Michigan was unable to close the
gap, losing 25-22.
The fourth set was similar.
Michigan fell behind 18-13 after a
series of errors, perhaps reflecting
the Wolverines’ fatigue, and lost
the set, 25-20.
In the winner-take-all fifth set,
Michigan was outmatched by a
Bruins team that had momentum
from the third and fourth sets.
UCLA committed just two errors
and tallied 12 kills en route to
taking the set 15-11, earning a
berth to the third round.
It was a bitter ending to a season
that had many ups and downs.
After the loss, junior middle
blocker
Abby
Cole
reflected
upon her team’s season, which,
in addition to the road win over
then-No. 4 Penn State, included
victories over then-No. 14 Ohio
State and then-No. 18 Illinois.
“I’m really proud of this team,”
Cole said. “We’ve done some
pretty special things this season,
making history like beating two
top-15 teams back-to-back. It’s
moments like that we’ll really
hold onto, and I’m really proud of
this team.”
Added
Rosen:
“Wins
and
losses are huge, but how much
this team has grown individually
and collectively is what I’m
really going to remember about
this group. The hardest part is
this team doesn’t get to practice
tomorrow and doesn’t get to play
another match.”
MICHIGAN
UCLA
2
3
Not just a
pipe dream
SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN