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