Norris out for season with undisclosed injury

Josh Norris — a sophomore 
forward 
who 
ranks 
second 
on the Michigan hockey team 
in points — will miss the 
remainder of the season, the 
team 
announced 
Thursday 
morning. 
Norris 
sustained 
an 
undisclosed injury at the 2019 
World 
Junior 
Championships 
earlier 
this 
month and has 
not dressed for 
the Wolverines 
since returning 
from 
the 
tournament. 
His injury will 
require season-
ending surgery. 
“It’s 
disappointing to have my season 
end and I’m going to miss being 
on the ice with my teammates 
every day, but it’s something 
that I have to take care of,” 
Norris said in a statement. “I 
am looking forward to working 
hard during rehab and am 
excited to get back on the ice. 
I’m going to be here supporting 
my teammates throughout the 
rest of the season and wish them 
the best of luck.” 
Norris’ 10 goals through the 
first part of the season is tied 
for first on the team with junior 
forward Nick Pastujov. His 19 
total points rank second behind 
sophomore defenseman Quinn 
Hughes, who has three goals 
and a team-leading 19 assists for 
a total of 22 points. 
Prior to the World Juniors, 
Norris 
centered 
Michigan’s 
top line and was leading the 
team in points. He was the 19th 
overall pick in the 2017 NHL 
Entry Draft by the San Jose 
Sharks, though his rights have 
since been traded to the Ottawa 
Senators. 
“I feel bad for Josh. He 
was 
having 
an 
outstanding 
season,” said Michigan coach 

Mel Pearson in a statement. 
“Knowing him, he will work 
extremely hard to come back 
stronger and become an even 
better player. We look forward 
to having Josh continue to be a 
part of our team this season.” 
Both Pearson and Norris’ 
comments left the idea of 
whether Norris will be back 
with the Wolverines next season 
or sign with Ottawa open to 
interpretation, 
though Pearson 
said 
Thursday 
that he expects 
Norris to be back 
next year.
“We’ve 
had 
some 
conversations 
prior 
to 
the 
injury,” Pearson 
said 
Thursday 
in 
his 
office. 
“We haven’t discussed any of 
that since the injury because 
we want to focus him on getting 
healthy and that. But I do (think 
he’ll be back). Now, having said 
that, he might, he might not be. 
I mean, he’ll have options. We’ll 
just see how that plays out, how 
his recovery goes and how he 

thinks. What he wants to do.”
Moving forward, Michigan 
must find a replacement for 
Norris. It’s hard to replace him 
with just one player — and the 
Wolverines aren’t planning to 
try to do that.
But 
since 
they’ve 
been 
without him for six games 
already, Pearson has a better idea 
of what the team might look like 
in his absence. In the six games 
without Norris, 
Michigan posted 
a 2-2-2 record, 
including 
two 
road wins over 
top-15 teams in 
wins at No. 4 
Ohio State and 
No. 
12 
Notre 
Dame.
“In that six 
games, I liked 
a lot of things 
without him,” Pearson said. “So, 
we’ve already played without 
him. I think that’s a key. If all 
of the sudden we just found out 
today, you’re going into a big 
weekend and wow, you don’t 
have him, then there’s a little 
more, I think, panic or concern. 
Because of that, I think we’ll be 

in good shape. You don’t replace 
— no one’s going to step up and 
replace a player like (Norris), 
especially how well he was 
playing.”
And though Norris is the 
second Wolverine in two years 
to miss the second half of the 
year 
after 
a 
season-ending 
injury at the World Juniors — 
junior forward Will Lockwood 
saw his sophomore campaign 
cut short after a 
shoulder injury 
last 
year 
— 
Pearson doesn’t 
plan 
to 
stop 
allowing players 
to 
attend 
the 
tournament.
“There’s 
some concern,” 
Pearson 
said. 
“But 
we’ve 
done it for years 
here at Michigan and I guess 
our stance is we’ll always do 
whatever we can to support 
U.S. 
hockey 
and 
especially 
the World Junior team, the 
World Championship team. If 
we have players that have the 
opportunity to play there, then 
we’ll continue to support that.”

BAILEY JOHNSON
Daily Sports Writer

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Sophomore forward Josh Norris will miss the remainder of the season after sustaining an undisclosed injury.

“I feel bad. ... 
He was having 
an outstanding 
season.”

“We’ve already 
played without 
him. I think 
that’s a key.”

‘M’ falls to Iowa, 75-61

Thursday night, the Michigan 
women’s basketball team looked 
to get its first road conference 
win of the season.
That was set to be a tall task 
as the Wolverines were slated 
against No. 22 Iowa — a squad 
led by forward Megan Gustafson, 
the nation’s leading scorer — but 
despite the odds Michigan trailed 
by just three points at halftime.
After the break, though, the 
Hawkeyes turned it up a notch. 
They started to push the tempo 
and saw results. Fewer than 
three minutes into the quarter, 
they drained a triple from the left 
corner to make it a 10-0 run.
The 
Wolverines 
called 
a 
timeout but never recovered. 
Iowa (13-4 overall, 4-2 Big 
Ten) widened the gap, handing 
Michigan (11-7, 2-4) a 75-61 loss 
— the team’s fourth loss in its last 
six games.
“Through our growth process 
and through our improvement 
is the decision-making when 
other teams are going on a run,” 
said Michigan coach Kim Barnes 
Arico to WTKA. “… We called a 
timeout. We tried to regroup, 
I mean, we had a better fourth 
quarter but we were down a little 
bit. And we scored in the fourth 
quarter; we just couldn’t get the 
stops that we needed to get.”
Contrary to recent games, ball 
handling wasn’t an issue. Prior 
to the game, the Wolverines 
averaged 
a 
whopping 
16.7 
turnovers per contest, but against 
the Hawkeyes, they lost the ball 
just seven times.
Rebounding was not alarming 
either. Michigan was outmatched 
by just four boards while the 
team actually won the battle for 
offensive rebounds.
Shooting, however, was a key 
problem. The Wolverines went 
1-for-15 from beyond the arc, 
with the lone 3-pointer coming at 
the start of the final quarter.
The Hawkeyes, on the other 

hand, 
excelled 
at 
shooting. 
Michigan often double-teamed 
Gustafson, but that left her 
teammates open. They finished 
the game shooting 57.6 percent 
from the field — a step up from 
Michigan’s 41.8 percent.
“We miss a lot of shots and we 
gotta get better at finishing some 
of those shots too,” Barnes Arico 
said. “And then we gotta get some 
key stops when we need to, and I 
think we need to understand the 
sense of urgency with that.”
The game was set to be a battle 
between senior center Hallie 
Thome and Gustafson.
Gustafson had the upper-hand 
to start the game. She scored from 
under the basket on her team’s 
first offensive possession and 
then further imposed her will 
by blocking Thome on the other 
end. Thome would fight back, but 
Gustafson still led her team with 
21 points and 16 rebounds.
Iowa’s guards added to the 
offensive clinic, showing off their 
ability to attack the basket early. 
This — coupled with Gustafson’s 
success — helped the Hawkeyes 
establish a five-point lead a few 
minutes into the contest.
Freshman 
forward 
Naz 
Hillmon 
soon 
checked 
in, 
though. She missed a shot from 
close right away, but got her 
own rebound and capitalized on 
the second-chance opportunity 
to give her team a spark. She 
finished with a team-high 16 
points.
Less than a minute later, 
Hillmon dove to the floor to win 
a loose ball around midcourt. 
This led to a bucket from junior 
forward Kayla Robbins.
Sophomore 
guard 
Deja 
Church then followed suit. She 
immediately stole the ball near 
midcourt and took it to the basket 
to give her team a 16-10 lead.
But the Hawkeyes countered 
with a 6-0 run to tie the game at 
the end of the opening frame. The 
remainder of the first half was a 
balanced affair, but ultimately, it 
wouldn’t matter.

The previously untold story of Zavier Simpson’s recruitment to Wisconsin

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

ROHAN KUMAR
Daily Sports Writer

ANNIE KLUS/Daily
Junior guard Zavier Simpson was recruited by Wisconsin before committing to play basketball for Michigan.

On Saturday afternoon, the 
Michigan 
men’s 
basketball 
team will stake its claim to be 
the nation’s top-ranked team 
for the first time in half a 
decade.
If it does, Zavier Simpson 
will have helped the Wolverines 
defeat the school he almost 
attended.
It 
seems 
impossible 
to 
imagine now — with Michigan’s 
and 
Simpson’s 
identities 
inextricably intertwined — but 
four years ago, the pair had 
barely crossed each other’s 
radars. 
The 
Wolverines’ 
recruiting efforts were centered 
around 
now-Michigan 
State 
point guard Cassius Winston 
and, as a result, Simpson had 
yet to even consider Michigan.
Instead, the junior point 
guard 
seemed 
destined 
for 
Wisconsin. Now, four years 

later, neither Quincey Simpson 
— Zavier’s father and AAU 
coach — nor Lamont Paris, the 
assistant coach who nearly 
recruited him to Madison, can 
recall which major conference 
school was the first to enter 
Simpson’s recruitment.
The consensus? It wasn’t 
Michigan.
It may have been Wisconsin, 
but Quincey also remembers 
Illinois 
and 
Northwestern 
heavily pursuing his son at the 
time. The Badgers, though, 
were the most comfortable 
option for the Simpsons. Paris 
and Quincey grew up just 30 
minutes apart — Quincey in 
Lima, Ohio, where he raised 
Zavier, and Paris in Findlay, 
just 35 miles up the road. They 
got to know each other in the 
early 90s, facing each other 
in high school basketball, and 
have maintained a relationship 
ever since.
So 
when 
Paris 
began 

recruiting Zavier, it was a 
natural fit for both.
“It was an easy conversation,” 
Quincey 
told 
The 
Daily. 
“Because, like I said, he’s from 
Findlay 
and 
we’ve 
known 
each other. So it was really 
comfortable talking to him. 
But I do remember when that 
process 
started. 
They 
just 
reached out to me and we just 
kind of built a relationship and 
we built a rapport.”
“I first knew (Quincey) and 
then I saw Zavier was coming 
up and was a good player,” 
Paris, now the head coach at 
Chattanooga, 
added. 
“And 
I knew where he had been 
recruited and what kinds of 
schools were recruiting him. 
It probably was, originally, not 
at the Big Ten level, which, we 
didn’t care that much about. I 
just knew he was a good kid and 
a good solid player and a good 
leader.”
Quincey, though, knew not 

to magnify the importance 
of previous relationships, or 
which school offered when. 

A former Division II player 
himself, he instead advised 
Zavier to concern himself with 
fit and development — two 
boxes which Wisconsin ticked 
just as well.
“It was intriguing because 
Wisconsin has been known 
for the way that they develop 
players,” Quincey said. “And so, 
seeing some of the guards that 
they have had 
in the program, 
we were really 
happy that they 
were 
keying 
on 
my 
son’s 
recruiting.”
Then, 
the 
summer 
after 
Simpson’s 
junior 
year 
of 
high 
school, 
everything 
abruptly changed. A friend of 
Quincey’s was a scout and told 
him that both Michigan and 
Michigan State were heavily 
pursuing 
Cassius 
Winston. 
Whoever didn’t get Winston, 
he explained, would be left 
without a point guard.
Quincey knew the Spartans 
coaching staff through an old 

AAU player of his, but had no 
previous 
relationship 
with 
Wolverines coach John Beilein 

or his staff. Still, he reached 
out to then-assistant Bacari 
Alexander to gauge Michigan’s 
interest. Soon, both Alexander 
and Beilein began showing 
up to Simpson’s AAU games. 
Beilein, though, acknowledged 
that his interest in Simpson 
was dependent on Winston’s 
decision.
“He just said, ‘Hey, if I ever 
get 
the 
sense 
that I may not 
get 
(Winston), 
then I’m gonna 
go in hard with 
(Zavier).’ 
And 
we 
understood 
that,” 
Quincey 
said. “Most kids 
probably would 
take that as a 
diss, 
we 
took 
that 
as 
being 
honest, and we respected that.”
But soon after the Wolverines 
started pursuing Simpson, it 
became clear that Winston was 
destined for East Lansing. So 
only one week after using one 
of their five official visits with 
Wisconsin 
that 
September, 
Quincey and Zavier hit the road 
for what would become the first 

of countless drives up I-75 to 
Ann Arbor.
It took less than half the 

visit for Quincey to be sold on 
Michigan, but he didn’t want to 
force a decision on Zavier. A few 
hours later, on the drive home, 
he found out he didn’t have to. 
Zavier was ready to commit.
“We always kept a pros and 
cons list for every school,” 
Quincey said. “And there were 
absolutely no cons when we 
visited Michigan. Every box 
was checked, so there was 
nothing else to wait around 
for.”
Within 
days, 
Simpson’s 
commitment 
was 
official, 
stunning the Badgers — and 
every other school that had 
pursued him.
“I hadn’t heard Michigan that 
much,” Paris said. “I had heard 
a couple other schools, but I had 
not heard Michigan so that was 
kind of out of nowhere.”
Then, 
Paris 
paused 
and 
took a moment to reflect on 
Simpson’s recruitment process 
— something he hasn’t done in 
years. 
“Anyway, it works out how 
it’s supposed to work out.”
Three 
years 
on, 
the 
Wolverines 
can 
have 
no 
disagreements.

THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer

“I had not heard 
Michigan so 
that was ... out 
of nowhere.”

8 — Friday, January 18, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

