8 — Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

With OSU loss in past, Michigan looks forward

Growing 
up, 
Josh 
Metellus’smother 
would 
tell 
him not to set his expectations 
higher than reality. 
“You’re always going to (get) 
let down when you do that,” the 
junior safety explained Monday 
afternoon, 
“because 
you’re 
never going to reach those goals 
you really, really want.”
The expectations — those 
goals Michigan really, really 
wanted — are off the table now. 
There’s no Big Ten title for the 
Wolverines, nor an upcoming 
College 
Football 
Playoff 
appearance. 
Instead, 
reality 
came crashing down 10 days ago 
in Columbus, and now, players 
are left picking up the pieces.
Perhaps 
anti-climactically, 
the season will end in the Peach 
Bowl in Atlanta, Ga., on Dec. 
29 against No.10 Florida — an 
opponent the Wolverines will 
have faced three of the last four 
years.
“We had a lot of big goals 
— 
National 
Championship 
goals — at the beginning of 
the year. Obviously those now 

are unattainable,” said junior 
guard Ben Bredeson. “But we’re 
definitely very motivated to try 
to win that last game.”
Bredeson insisted the mood 
around the team has stayed 
positive. Some guys, he says, will 
sear the pain of the 62-39 loss to 
Ohio State in their memories, 
pooling it for motivation in 
the years to come. Bredeson, 
on 
the 
other 
hand, 
watched 
the game once, 
picked out what 
he did well and 
what 
he 
did 
poorly, 
then 
moved along. He 
found no use in 
dwelling.
“Nobody came 
here 
with 
this 
gloomy, drowned 
face,” said redshirt junior tackle 
Jon Runyan “… We know what 
happened, we’ve got to move 
forward from that, pick each 
other up, and go forward and 
get this win that everybody 
wants. That’s the cure for it, 
another win.”
For 
the 
most 
part, 
attention has shifted past the 

demoralizing loss and toward 
the future. Junior defensive 
end Rashan Gary has already 
declared for the NFL Draft and 
decided he will not play in the 
bowl game. Ben Bredeson all but 
said Monday he’d be returning 
to school next year, though 
“it’s not official,” he clarified. 
And wide receivers coach Jim 
McElwain 
was 
announced 
Monday as the 
next head coach 
at 
Central 
Michigan.
More 
decisions 
— 
most 
notably 
from 
junior 
linebacker 
Devin 
Bush, 
junior 
cornerbacks 
Lavert 
Hill 
and David Long, and junior 
quarterback Shea Patterson — 
are likely forthcoming.
Despite the moving parts, 
players insist that winning the 
Peach Bowl is important for this 
team and for the trajectory of 
the program. Michigan has won 
one bowl game in the last seven 
years.

“It 
matters. 
We’re 
really 
sick of losing the last game of 
the year,” Bredeson said. “This 
team, we’ve had adversity worse 
than any team I’ve been on since 
I’ve been here. So if there’s one 
group that will bounce back and 
get a big win at the end of the 
year, I think it’ll be this one.”
Prior to Harbaugh’s arrival 
in 
2015, 
Michigan 
hadn’t 
finished with double-digit wins 
in back-to-back seasons since 
2002-2003. With 10 wins, the 
Wolverines have done so in 
three of the last four seasons. 
Against Florida, Michigan will 
go for 11 wins for the first time 
since 2011.
“We’ve lost to two rivals and 
everyone tries to make it out 
like we had a bad year, but we 
finished 10-2,” Bredeson said. 
“It’s not the year everybody 
wanted, but it’s a great year 
nonetheless, and I think we 
really just need to cap this off 
with a great bowl win, and 
everybody will remember it as a 
great year.”
Others might beg to differ.
But, really, in the end it’s all 
relative to expectations. Just 
ask Josh Metellus’ mother.

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Junior safety Josh Metellus and the Michigan football team set lofty goals this season but were unable to reach them after losing to Ohio State. 

MAX MARCOVITCH
Daily Sports Editor

“We’re 
definitely very 
motivated to 
try to win.”

Now the ‘hunted’, the Wolverines 
prepare to take on Northwestern

Three hundred and one days 
ago, the Michigan men’s basketball 
team fell at Northwestern.
The 
Wolverines 
entered 
Allstate Arena on Feb. 6, 2018 still 
searching for consistency, their 
NCAA Tournament berth still far 
from secure. Despite this, they fell 
flat on their faces, putting forth 40 
minutes of sluggish, uninspired 
basketball in a 61-52 loss to a 
Wildcat team that would finish 
10th in the Big Ten.
Michigan hasn’t lost a regular 
season game since.
The last 301 days have been a 
whirlwind, and the Wolverines 
have 
blown 
away 
almost 
everything in their path. They 
won the Big Ten Tournament as a 
fifth seed and made it all the way 
to the National Championship 
Game, losing to a historically 
great 
Villanova 
team. 
In 
a 
November rematch this season, 
they clobbered the defending 
national champions.
Michigan is 8-0 and sits at 
fifth in the most recent AP Top 
25 Poll. Wednesday, it drubbed 
No. 11 North Carolina. Saturday’s 
victim was No. 19 Purdue. The 
Wolverines have won every game 
this season by at least 17 points.
Thus, 
Tuesday’s 
matchup 
with Northwestern in Evanston 
couldn’t 
look 
more 
different 
than it did last year. As Michigan 
prepares for its second true road 
game of the season, it sits firmly 
in the national conversation. The 
target on the Wolverines’ backs 
is bigger than it has been in quite 
some time.
“I don’t think when we went to 
Villanova we were the ‘hunted’,” 
said Michigan coach John Beilein 
on Monday. “ … Now we are, so 
we’re going to have to be that 

type of team that’s going to go 
on the road, knowing that you 
come in there with that target on 
your back. … The other team’s got 
extra juice when you’re playing a 
highly-rated team.”
Northwestern 
fits 
the 
definition of “trap game” to a 
tee. Last season’s loss, while 
a 
disappointment 
for 
the 
Wolverines, was hardly new — 
it’s been five years since they won 
there. Tip-off is set for 9:00 pm, 
and Beilein has previously noted 
the challenge of such late-night 
games for players. The Wildcats’ 
home arena, the 7,039-seat Welsh-
Ryan Arena, reopened this season 
after renovations, and Beilein 
expects a vocal, capacity crowd to 
greet his team.
Meanwhile, 
Northwestern 
appears to be somewhat improved 
from last season, at least in the 
early going. The Wildcats sit 
6-2 and No. 46 in KenPom, up 
from 85th last season. While 
one of their losses was a 19-point 
blowout at the hands of Fresno 
State, the other was a down-to-
the-wire defeat at Indiana this 
Saturday.
Northwestern 
will 
mostly 
rely on two key players. Forward 
Vic Law — a former high school 
teammate of Michigan guard 
Charles Matthews — scores 17.6 
points and records 2.8 assists 
per game, leading the team in 
both categories, while hitting 
44.7 percent of his treys. Dererk 
Pardon, the Wildcats’ starting 
center for the last two seasons, 
averages close to a double-double.
“They’re 
playing 
a 
little 
differently,” Beilein said. “They’re 
playing mostly man-to-man right 
now, they played almost all zone 
last year. Really aggressive man-
to-man. Their offense is quick, 
it’s crisp, it’s good. They just had 
a bad game against Fresno, but 

other than that, they were ahead 
40-20 on an ACC team (Georgia 
Tech) at halftime. So they’ve got 
a lot of tools there, and I expect 
it’s going to be a really difficult 
game.”
Beilein’s top priority leading 
up to Northwestern has been 
preparing for the intangibles. 
That means making sure his team 
is ready to take on the specific 
challenges that conference road 
games pose — in particular, “trap” 
games like Tuesday night — and 
ensuring his team is aware it will 
receive everyone’s best shot for 
the rest of the year.
“We went into that hornet’s 
nest at Villanova and played well, 
but we gotta go do that again and 
I don’t think you ever get used to 
that. You never go win there and 
say, ‘This is normal,’ ” Beilein said. 
“ … Handling the crowd, handling 
another away game, a Big Ten 
game, that’s probably the biggest 
thing.”
For 
all 
Michigan 
has 
achieved in the season’s first 
four weeks, Tuesday represents 
its 
culmination. 
Win 
at 
Northwestern, and the Wolverines 
will have shown they can do so as 
the hunters and the hunted alike. 
Win at Northwestern, and they’ll 
make a statement that normally 
wouldn’t be made following a win 
over a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten 
team.
The reason why? It’s been 
a while since Michigan’s been 
hunted like this.
“Coach 
(Beilein) 
talked 
about just staying humble,” said 
sophomore forward Isaiah Livers. 
“We’re going to have a big target 
on our back just because we went 
to the national championship and 
did what we did last year.
“ … Everybody’s going to be 
coming for us, we just got to be 
ready.”

JACOB SHAMES
Daily Sports Writer

MEN’S BASKETBALL

‘M’ finishes fifth at the 
Cliff Keen Invitational

It was as dramatic an ending as 
anyone could’ve hoped for.
The bout neared its final 
moments and redshirt junior 
174-pounder 
Myles 
Amine 
desperately clung to a one-point 
lead 
over 
Missouri’s 
Daniel 
Lewis. It was the championship 
match at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas 
(CKLV) Invitational — arguably 
collegiate wrestling’s toughest 
tournament outside of the NCAA 
Championships — and Amine 
wanted the crown.
Using a strong approach on 
top, Lewis controlled Amine for 
the majority of the third period, 
close to securing the additional 
one point of riding time to send 
the match to overtime. Wanting 
to end the bout in regulation and 
seal his place as one of the weight 
classes’ most feared competitors, 
Amine took advantage of some 
awkward positioning to score a 
two-point reversal right at the 
match’s close. The clock read 
zeros, and Amine had once again 
downed a ranked opponent.
Strung 
along 
by 
Amine’s 
heroics, the Michigan wrestling 
team (2-0) placed fifth at the 
tournament despite lackluster 
outings from a few of the team’s 
other contributors. For Amine, 
though, this victory was a long 
time coming after he placed 
third in the last two years’ CKLV 
Invitationals.
“It feels really good to be able 
to bring home one,” Amine said. 
“Placing third the last two times, 
it’s kind of a bittersweet taste 
when you finish winning your 
last match, but you still feel like 
you came up short.”
Besides 
Amine, 
redshirt 
sophomore 
Kanen 
Storr, 
redshirt junior Logan Massa 
and sophomore Drew Mattin 
all had solid outings in Vegas, 
placing third, fourth and fifth, 
respectively.
Despite 
entering 
as 
the 
tournament’s top seed and fifth-
ranked wrestler nationally, Massa 
finished fourth after dropping 
two 
close 
matches. 
In 
the 
semifinal match, Massa fell to the 

eventual champion, Nebraska’s 
Isaiah White — an opponent he 
defeated at last year’s dual meet.
As the two wrestlers went 
head-to-head, the match ended 
up being one of the tournament’s 
closest, with Massa falling 6-2. 
On two separate occasions, Massa 
had White dead to rights on two 
takedown attempts, but due to 
some awkward positioning, he 
was unable to secure the points.
Despite the losses, getting 
experience 
wrestling 
ranked 
opponents is crucial for the 
Wolverines, 
particularly 
this 
early in the season, and there’s no 
better place to get that experience 
than at the CKLV Invitational.
With ten ranked wrestlers 
per weight class for a total of 110 
wrestlers out of 200 possible, the 
road to the finals leads through 
multiple ranked opponents.
Win or lose, Michigan used the 
meet as an opportunity to both 
demonstrate its dominance and to 
see what areas need improvement. 
As a team, Bormet asserts that his 
team needs to develop in two key 
areas — mental composure and 
bottom positioning.
“There’s always a lot of mental 
errors to work on, just composure 
and wrestling wide open in 
all three positions, so there’s a 
certain mental component to 
it,” Bormet said. “Then from a 
technical standpoint, I think 
we need to continue to improve 
our set-ups on bottom position 
wrestling a little as a team.”
Seemingly having the least 
room for improvement, Amine 
insists there is still work to be 
done even while basking in his 
most recent achievement.
“It’s good to see all the hard 
work and dedication that I’ve 
put into the room this summer 
and am continuously putting in 
is starting to pay off,” Amine said. 
“And so yeah, it means a lot, but 
at the same time, it’s right back to 
the drawing board. The season’s 
far from over. It’s a big stepping 
stone, but still a lot to improve 
on.”

WRESTLING

JACOB KOPNICK
Daily Sports Writer

Read the full story online at 
MichiganDaily.com

