Poole said he felt like the most ready
freshman of the group, and it showed
in those early practices. He talked
trash. He was loud. He took every shot
that came to him.
And he backed it up. Poole hit a
whole lot of those shots — teammates
knew right away he would have a role
to play down the line. Beilein did too,
but Poole had to learn to play with
structure.
When Beilein culled the rotation,
about a week before opening night,
Poole wasn’t a part of it. Instead, for
the early part of the season, he was
resigned to the scout team.
In his year at LaLumiere, a prep
school in LaPorte, Ind., Poole was the
sixth man — a product of the talent on
the roster, which included five-star
recruits Jaren Jackson Jr. and Brian
Bowen II. Even then, Poole estimated
he still played more minutes than the
starter at shooting guard.
The scout team — that was unheard
of for someone with Poole’s talent and
effervescent confidence.
“When (Beilein) first said it, I was
kinda like, in shock,” Poole said. “...
And then that hurt, for a little bit. But
then I realized why I was on the scout
team. I was gonna get up more shots
and be aggressive and just hoop at the
end of the day. That’s kinda what the
scout team really is. It wasn’t as bad as
people make it seem.”
Sitting in Crisler Center’s media
room with a year of perspective under
his belt, knowing how well things
worked out, Poole can say that. At the
time, it wasn’t so easy.
Poole is, for good and for bad,
himself. That means wearing his
emotions on his sleeve, and at first,
this one was disappointment. The
rest of the team could feel that he was
unhappy. Beilein rode him, calling
Poole out in practices whenever
he saw something. Poole took it
personally. At times, responsibility
fell to Wagner, Zavier Simpson and
Charles Matthews, who took care
to make sure Poole was attentive,
listening and above all, encouraged.
Poole was too good — too important
— for them to let him get down on
himself.
“We all kinda knew that we were
gonna need him,” Wagner said. “And
he kinda needed to understand that.
… We really pushed him to keep focus
on the practice, even when it seemed
like it wasn’t gonna have any impact,
which is not true.”
It didn’t take long for Poole to play
his way off the scout team. He got
his first big chance on Dec. 2 against
Indiana, when Matthews got in early
foul trouble. Then he ran with it,
scoring 19 points on 5-of-10 shooting
from 3-point range. The fourth of
those five — a pull-up jumper over the
Hoosiers’ Zach McRoberts from a step
inside the 28-foot line — set the tone
for the rest of his season.
Poole, still, took risks. He took
those deep threes (and made a good
amount), ball-watched on defense and
turned it over more than he assisted.
One December day, sidelined with
an injury and watching a practice in
which Poole was playing well, Wagner
turned to Beilein.
“Man,” he recalled saying, “this kid
is really good.”
“You know what’s crazy?” Beilein
responded. “He can be so much better.
That’s what I see.”
“I probably have said that to many,
cause you could see the talent oozing
out of him,” Beilein told The Daily.
“But knowing how he can be more
efficient with his game. If you saw
his assist-to-turnover ratios — you
didn’t see the practice ones — and you
saw his shooting percentage, you’d
say, ‘He’s better than this. These are
like, tough guys that aren’t very good
players.’ ”
***
Beilein is a perfectionist, and every
bit as stubborn a personality as Poole.
Just days ago, he walked into a press
conference and called the Wolverines’
performance at Selfie Night — a fan-
friendly open practice the team puts
on in lieu of Midnight Madness — a
“defensive massacre.” More than that,
his system demands adherence.
Poole needed to understand that
this
wasn’t
about shot-
making,
it
was
about
the
little
things.
Watching
film.
Defense.
Playing
within
the
system.
“I didn’t
know what
a bad shot
was, but I
wouldn’t
stop taking
bad
shots,”
Poole
said. “... I
wouldn’t
really
lock
into film as
much as I
should have,
only because
I was more
thinking
about,
‘Let
me
show
(Beilein)
I
can
make
this
shot.’
Or, ‘Let me
show him I
can do this. Let me show him I can do
that.’
“I was just out there hooping, but
then when I really settled down and
looked at film and started thinking,
‘Alright, what’s a good shot? What’s a
bad shot?’ And try to think more about
the game without thinking too much
about the game is where I found a
happy medium.”
Nearly everyone asked pointed to
either the Maui Tournament over
Thanksgiving or the Indiana game
a week later as the place where that
medium was found. Everyone except
two people: Jordan Poole and John
Beilein.
Those games got Poole into the
rotation, but that was about it. Still,
the same issues existed, and Poole
struggled to rectify them. For both
Poole
and
Beilein,
finding
that
medium took the whole year.
“I think that in high school, he was
a really, really good player. Certainly
the best player on his team,” Beilein
said. “And, perhaps, it was very
difficult, where he probably thinks,
‘Oh, I gotta carry the load for this
team.’ And he doesn’t. He’s got other
good players around him. And then
you get there and the pressure on a
freshman, especially one as highly
recruited, or highly-rated, to live up
to expectations, it just wraps them all
up.”
“I didn’t realize it until the end
of the year that it wasn’t more like,
he was picking on me cause I was a
freshman. It was more like he just
wanted me to be able to do this,” Poole
said. “... As the year starts to go on, you
realize that he just wants the best for
you. He wouldn’t have recruited you if
he didn’t know what you were capable
of. I realized that later in the year, and
that’s when our relationship really
started to grow.”
Most of that adjustment was Poole’s
to make. But some of it fell to Beilein.
As the gregarious freshman learned
to tone things down and focus on film
sessions, the coach learned that Poole
does well with positive reinforcement.
Now, when Beilein sees Poole
commit turnovers in practice, he
doesn’t get on him unrelentingly,
instead asking the sophomore what he
saw and working from it.
“As I watched him adapt, right, I
could see that he was trending in the
right direction,” Beilein said. “And
it’s never fast enough for a coach, but
I could see him trending in the right
direction. So, I embraced that.”
That
doesn’t
mean
Poole’s
personality is gone — it’s very much
intact and always will be. That’s part
of the package, and there’s a notable
upside to his personality.
Poole talks people up, taking his
confidence out on the rest of the
team. He saw himself as a leader from
the moment he stepped in the door
at Michigan. At the Final Four, he
walked the walk. Beilein mentioned
his “leadership possibilities,” but for
Poole, that’s already a reality.
When he talks, people listen. It
has been that way at every level Poole
has played basketball, he said, and it
was no different last year despite his
freshman status.
“We use technicalities as like, the
juniors and seniors are the leaders of
the team,” Poole said.
“But I feel like I was always trying
to find a way to give us a boost.”
Still, he could get away with having
a bad day last year. That’s not the case
anymore. When you’re always on, you
always need to be on. Otherwise, it’s
noticeable, and it rubs off.
One day this year, Poole let himself
have a bad practice. The rest of the
team followed suit. That’s the burden
of being the guy who calls Beilein over
the summer asking to meet.
The challenge in front of Poole has
shifted. Now, he wants to be the one
pulling someone aside to offer help
instead of the person receiving it.
Yet, in so many ways, it comes back
to the same theme, one that Poole has
wrought through the last year of ups
and downs — sulking on scout team,
hitting that shot, embracing those
cameras, calling that meeting.
Through change and through
growth, Jordan Poole will always
have the challenge of being himself.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
TIP OFF 2018
5B