8 — Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

J

ust two 
of 351 
teams in 
Division I bas-
ketball remain 
unbeaten.
One is 
Virginia. The 
other is … 
well, if you’re 
reading this 
column, you 
already know the answer.
An undefeated record at this 
point in the season might imply 
some kind of otherworldly 
dominance. The Michigan 
men’s basketball team has had 
that at times, but by and large 
it hasn’t been the story of its 
season. When viewing the past 
17 games together, few season-
long trends emerge.
So what is the secret to the 
Wolverines’ success?
Answer: pre-
cisely that.
Michigan’s 
won games by 
blowing the 
doors off teams. 
It blitzed Vil-
lanova right out 
of the gate to a 
44-17 halftime 
lead and beat 
Purdue and 
Indiana on the 
strength of a dizzying first 10 
minutes. The Wolverines have 
won the hard way too, starting 
slow against Penn State and Illi-
nois before methodically grind-
ing them into a fine powder.
Michigan has had games over 
by halftime and has had to ice 
games at the free-throw line. 
It’s scored more than 80 points 
five times and under 70 five 
times. Right now, the only ques-
tion is which equally effective 
Wolverine team will show up.
“We’re such a day-to-day 
team, and I’m a day-to-day 
coach,” said John Beilein after 

Michigan’s latest triumph, an 
80-60 beatdown of Northwest-
ern on Sunday. “(The Wildcats 
are) just so good with what 
they run. They run pro sets, 
they show you one thing, they 
do another thing, and they’re 
really good defensively — they 
were leading the country in not 
giving up threes.”
The Wolverines aren’t neces-
sarily deep — just seven players 
get regular minutes. But that 
group is as balanced — five 
different players have led the 
team in scoring — and as well-
rounded as any in the country. 
Zavier Simpson and Charles 
Matthews are the defensive 
tone-setters. Jon Teske is the 
low-post anchor. Jordan Poole 
and Ignas Brazdeikis go and get 
buckets. Isaiah Livers and Eli 
Brooks bring needed versatility 
off the bench. It’s hard to imag-
ine a rotation 
without any one 
of them.
“You never 
know who can 
be the leading 
scorer on this 
team,” Mat-
thews said. “You 
never know who 
can be the lead-
ing rebounder, 
leader in assists. 
We just play to win.”
Michigan’s defense is 
unquestionably its backbone. 
The Wolverines rank in the top 
five in the country in steal rate, 
free throw rate and defensive 
rebounding rate per KenPom. 
But they rank 20th in adjusted 
offensive efficiency as well.
Michigan has areas which 
can be exploited, certainly. But 
in the same way that not all of 
the Wolverines’ strengths show 
up at once, neither do their 
weaknesses.
Just look at Sunday night’s 
victory, in which Michigan set 

the school record for most wins 
(17) to start a season.
The Wolverines’ first meeting 
with the Wildcats was a 62-60 
slugfest in Evanston. This, 
Michigan’s closest game of 
the season, was one of the few 
times its flaws were exposed 
to a degree that could cost it a 
victory.
Simpson, a career 30 percent 
3-point shooter, was lured into 
putting up five from behind the 
arc. He missed all of them and 
forced Beilein to take his best 
defender and floor general out 
of the waning moments of a 
one-possession road game. This 
was Northwestern’s formula for 
beating the Wolverines, and it 
just about worked.
On Sunday, the Wildcats 
sagged off the junior again. 

Again, it was working — until it 
wasn’t.
With 10:56 to play in the first 
half, Simpson, despite a 0-for-
2 start, canned a trey. Then 
another. And another. An off-
the-dribble midrange pull-up — 
a shot he’s taken probably once 
this year, if that. Another trey. 
And on the next possession, a 
crossover and a step-back into 
the most unlikely of heat checks 
— a 3-pointer that was one of 
those shots you simply knew 
was going in.
Meanwhile, Teske’s lack of 
outside shooting has yet to hurt 
Michigan, but Northwestern, 
seeing the 7-foot-1 center’s five 
threes in 22 attempts this sea-
son, made it clear it was fine 
with leaving him open. Teske 
shot that strategy down, going 

3-for-4 on his way to tying a 
career high with 17 points — in 
the first half.
It’s easy to forget it now, but 
3-point shooting was supposed 
to be one of the Wolverines’ 
weaknesses entering the sea-
son. Northwestern coach Chris 
Collins stated postgame that 
his team was going to live with 
Simpson and Teske firing from 
outside. What happens now that 
teams know it can kill them?
“Give those guys credit, they 
went 8-for-15 from the 3-point 
line,” Collins said. “When 
they’re shooting like that, and 
you add Charles and Jordan 
Poole and Iggy to that group, 
Livers and those guys off the 
bench, they’re going to be very 
difficult to beat.”
Added Beilein: “What we got 

to do in those situations, we got 
to find other people. ... You take 
away one thing from us, our 
hope is that we have another 
answer.”
The Wolverines almost 
always do have an answer — 
and that’s what makes beating 
them so challenging. The blue-
print for doing so, to the extent 
that there even is one, changes 
every game, and their weak-
nesses are mostly neutralized 
by their adaptability.
Want to know what that 
entails? Ask Collins.
“That’s why they’re 17-0.”

Shames can be reached via 

email at jacosham@umich.edu 

or on Twitter @Jacob_Shames. 

He’ll usually follow back.

How do you beat Michigan?

ANNIE KLUS/Daily
Michigan coach John Beilein leads a Wolverines team that ranks in the top-five in defensive rebounding rate and opponents’ 3-point percentage, among other stats.

“We’re such a 

day-to-day team, 

and I’m a day-to-

day coach.”

This is still Zavier Simpson’s team

Z

avier 
Simp-
son’s 
table wasn’t 
too crowded.
The date 
was Oct. 25, 
2017, the 
setting was 
Michigan 
men’s basket-
ball media 
day and the topic of conversation 
was the point-guard position. 
As it related to Simpson though, 
the question was not so much 
one of what but of when. Jaaron 
Simmons had been brought in as 
a graduate transfer, and it was 
only a matter of time before he 
supplanted Simpson as the start-

er. So the thinking went.
Asking around that day 
though, a kind of character 
began to emerge. Jordan Poole 
recounted a story of Simpson 
stealing the ball in a walk-
through, keeping the intensity 
high. Assistant coach DeAndre 
Haynes couldn’t recall a time in 
practice that Simpson’s team was 
losing. Finally, a question was 
posed to Simpson.
Who has the loudest voices on 
the team?
“Loudest voices,” he said, 
hesitating. “Loudest voices on 
the team. Ummm, lemme take a 
look.”
He leaned back in his chair, 
scanning the room.
“Lemme take a look. I’m 

gonna let my man — I’m gonna 
let my people answer this. I’ll let 
Naji (Ozeir) and Luke (Wilson) 
answer this.”
It didn’t take much thinking 
from Wilson.
“You’re looking at him right 
now,” he said.
In the last 15 months, that 
image has grown to a crescendo. 
Simpson was the catalyst of 
the Wolverines’ rebranding as 
a defensive-oriented team last 
year. He out-willed Michigan 
State’s Cassius Winston — not 
once, but twice — gaining 
personal vindication against 
a player John Beilein initially 
recruited ahead of him. He is the 
internal voice leading a team that 
not only made the national title 

game but has won 17 straight 
games to start this season.
On that media day though, 
Simpson was a 6-foot guard who 
shot below 40 percent from the 
field and averaged 1.6 points per 
game his freshman season — a 
direct result of his being 6-foot.
For the early part of his 
sophomore season, Michigan’s 
offense ground to a halt with 
Simpson on the floor. In Maui, he 
was benched for Eli Brooks, and 
Simmons still lurked as a veteran 
presence with scoring ability. 
Then, suddenly, things changed.
Simpson changed his 
approach to finishing at the rim, 
learning to go around bigger 
defenders in lieu of going over. 
He got his starting spot back. 

You know the rest.
The endpoint to that change 
in his inside shooting has come 
more recently, 
in the form of a 
suddenly lethal 
sky-hook. Finish-
ing is no longer a 
semblance of an 
issue — Simpson 
obliterated that 
challenge.
That takes us 
to Sunday, when 
Northwestern 
played Simpson 
to shoot. The Wildcats had done 
the same thing in December, 
with success, and, at first, it 
worked again. Then something 
clicked, and Simpson, a career 30 
percent shooter from three, went 
5-of-10, catalyzing a blowout.
Predictably, the questions 
afterward focused on that night. 
Beilein obliged at first, but then 
decided to offer a bigger-picture 
assessment.
“No — this young man is really 
special,” Beilein said. “As far as 
the type of grit and determina-
tion he has. You put a challenge 
in front of Zavier Simpson and 
he’s gonna eventually win. Time 
will run out sometimes in life, 
but he will eventually win if 
there’s a big challenge in front 
of him. And so that’s what it 
is. You challenge him, say you 
can’t — he gives some pretty 
good stares to people after he 
scores. Over them, around them, 
under them... He’s gonna beat 
the odds.”
That goes beyond Simpson 
though. The Wolverines embody 
that mindset. They took it to a 
Final Four last year. They’ve 
taken it through 17 games this 
year and the results have been 
pretty good.
This is a group that has lost 
just once since Feb. 11, 2018 and, 
remarkably, has rarely looked 
dominant in doing so. For every 
win in which Michigan has 
blown out North Carolina or 
Texas A&M, there’s another 
in which it has methodically 

ground SUNY Binghamton into 
dust.
It’s a culture that takes every 
stereotype 
coaches love to 
preach, then 
lives them.
“A positive 
culture just 
breeds itself,” 
Beilein said. 
“The impact 
that Charles 
Matthews has 
had on this pro-
gram — just play 
defense. And Zavier, coming in 
here and just saying, ‘I’m gonna 
find my way on the court and just 
play defense.’ The impact it has 
on the young guys that they look 
around and all the veterans are 
shooting before and after prac-
tice. They’re there early. They 
leave late.
“I think people notice, there’s 
one proven formula for improve-
ment. Not how fast you do — can 
be differential. There’s one prov-
en formula, and it’s hard work. 
And that’s what our kids do, with 
limited distractions. Right? Kids 
don’t miss class. We’re not run-
ning them. We don’t have issues 
in practice. And they’re still 
young kids. But at the same time, 
that’s been a big thing, too. When 
you don’t have a lot of distrac-
tions, you’re really allowed to 
coach a team.”
A few minutes before Beilein 
came to the podium, Simpson 
had been asked about his own 
role in creating that culture. He 
cut off the question.
“I just play,” he said. “Every 
single day, I wanna just get bet-
ter with my team. Practice, I take 
one day at a time. I don’t worry 
about the next day. I compete 
like it’s the first play. Like I’m 
competing for a starting spot.”
It’s a cliché. But it’s his cliché. 
One that his team embodies.

Sears can be reached at 

searseth@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ethan_sears.

ETHAN
SEARS

JACOB 
SHAMES

ANNIE KLUS/Daily
Michigan point guard Zavier Simpson replaced Eli Brooks as the starting point guard last season, and he hasn’t looked back since, serving as the leader of this team.

“There’s one 
proven formula 
and it’s hard 
work.”

