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.”