‘It’s really slowed down for me’: How Jon Teske grew beyond his height

Jon Teske warms up down 
below as his grandfather sits. 
It’s a Sunday in mid-January at 
Crisler Center and Jim Zuidema 
is up in the corner wearing a 
Michigan pullover, sitting near 
the aisle.
Zuidema grabs his phone 
and pulls up his texts, looking 
for one in particular. It’s to his 
grandson and it’s a message to 
play “Teske basketball.”
Three hours later, a victory 
over Northwestern in hand, 
Teske has 17 points and 11 
rebounds to his name. He hit 
three 3-pointers and blocked 
two shots, affecting the game on 
every level. This, in the months 
before and since, has become 
Teske’s norm.
“I think it’s like (John) Beilein 
says,” Zuidema says on the phone 
the day after that game. “It takes 
a couple years to learn. And Jon, 
I think Jon’s right on course 
from what Beilein told me a few 
years back, how he thought Jon 
would progress.”
How Teske has progressed is 
this: Two years ago, he came to 
Michigan and his biggest skill on 
a basketball court was being tall. 
He got his ass kicked in practice 
and rode the bench in games. On 
the year, he played 60 minutes, 
made one field goal and blocked 
seven shots.
Since then, his development 
has proceeded with the slope of 
a 45-degree line. The next year, 
Teske backed up Moritz Wagner 
and looked good doing it. Then 
Teske broke out at the Big 
Ten Tournament final against 
Purdue, creating the lasting 
image of the game by dunking 
on Isaac Haas and yelling into 
oblivion. When Wagner went 
to the NBA last summer, Teske 
stepped into the starting role 
seamlessly.
He started every game of 
the regular season, averaging 
nearly 10 points and swatting 

away 7.8 percent of shots while 
affecting countless more, the 
backbone holding up a defense 
that ranks second in the country 
in adjusted efficiency.
“It’s really slowed down for 
me,” Teske told The Daily. “I 
think it’s just taking time. Some 
people get it right away, but 
others don’t.”
Teske’s path is rarely followed 
in college basketball nowadays, 
but it’s one that fits him. “I know 
Jon will hate anything that I 
said about him, that you write, 
OK,” Zuidema says toward the 
end of our conversation, and he’s 
doubtlessly right.
Zuidema 
talks 
the 
way 
grandfathers are supposed to 
talk about their grandsons. He 
adulates and adores, all while 
staying level about what his 
grandson wants and about his 
role in guiding him on the path. 
He is more interested in talking 
about Jon Teske than Jon Teske 
himself, which is both expected 
and defining.
Teske is one of few people 
on the planet who stands over 
seven feet tall and doesn’t 
automatically dominate every 
room he steps into. He’s cautious 
and 
circumspect, 
thinking 
through every word he says in 
front of a camera and falling 
back on polite clichés when 
the real answer has a chance of 
being twisted or misconstrued.
When I ask when he knew 
Wagner would leave, meaning 
he would start, Teske rejects the 
implicit assumption that there 
was no competition at center 
coming into this season.
“I knew the job would be 
open, that spot would be open,” 
Teske said. “Austin (Davis) and 
I, we worked hard all offseason. 
We knew Colin (Castleton) and 
Brandon (Johns) would be ready 
to come in, too, possibly. So I just 
knew we had to continue to work 
hard and try to help the team 
win. Just be ready for whoever 
won that spot to just go in there 
and do their job, right?”

The result of his demeanor 
is two-pronged: Teske doesn’t 
cause 
controversy 
or 
make 
himself a target for opposing 
teams or fans. He also doesn’t 
get the media attention that 
should naturally come to the 
anchor of one of the nation’s best 
defenses.
But Teske deserves that level 
of attention, even if he doesn’t 
want it, because he is just that.
***
 “No one wanted Jon on their 
team,” says Drew Zuidema, 
Teske’s cousin. “Not at the 
young age.”
There are 18 cousins on 
Teske’s mother’s side of the 
family, nine boys and nine girls. 
At a young age, living in Grand 
Rapids, they spent the summers 
at their grandparents’ house, 
with a hoop in front and a pool 
out back.
While everyone else swam, 
the boys played in front — 
basketball, football, wiffle ball 
— as their grandmother fretted 
about little kids near a busy road. 
It would be an idyllic scene, had 
Teske been on the winning team.
At 
that 
elementary-school 
age, Teske was gangly and 
uncoordinated. He would take 
the ball and run with it instead of 
dribbling, and when the cousins 
split up, old versus young, he’d 
be on the losing team.
“They’d kinda push and blow 
their way to wins,” Teske said. 
“Sometimes cheat their way to 
wins.”
Drew, in contrast, speaks 
with the verve of a winner.
“He was at that awkward 
stage and didn’t know what he 
was doing,” Drew said of Teske. 
“He was always very tall and 
gumpy.”
But Teske has always been 
tall. When the boys would lower 
the 10-foot hoop to try and touch 
the rim, he was the only one who 
could dunk. The rest, that came 
later.
Zuidema 
likes 
to 
tell 
a 
story from when Jon was an 

underclassman at Medina High 
School in Ohio, playing under 
Anthony Stacey. A former player 
and current assistant coach 
at Bowling Green, Stacey was 
tough 
and 
demanding. 
The 
Teske family moved from Grand 
Rapids to Medina when Jon was 
in middle school, and Stacey saw 
the potential in him right away. 
After eighth-grade graduation, 
Teske estimates it was less than 
a week before he started for the 
summer high school team.
On this day, Zuidema sat in the 
stands and watched as Jon stood 
at the top of the key and checked 
the opposing point guard. “I 
about fell off the bleachers,” 
Zuidema said. It’s important 
to note here that Zuidema has 
kept relationships with all of 
Teske’s coaches, calling them 
after games, and isn’t afraid to 
let them know what he thinks.
Stacey came up to Zuidema 
after that game to get his 
thoughts. 
“Well, 
I 
got 
a 
question,” he responded. “Why 
you got Jon out at point guard?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Zuidema 
recalls Stacey responding. “I 
know Jon’s gonna become a 
player in college. I don’t know if 
he’ll play Division I, II or III, but 
he’s gonna play somewhere. And 
I want him to learn how to play 
defense and move his feet.”
Near 
that 
time, 
college 
coaches began taking notice. 
First a trickle of MAC schools, 
then a slow but steady increase. 
By the end of his sophomore 
year, Teske had Big Ten coaches 
calling him, and that summer, 
John Beilein started roaming 
the sideline at his AAU games.
***
The decision to come to Ann 
Arbor, when it came down to 
it, was easy. Teske made it in 
the first few weeks of his junior 
year.
Michigan 
was 
close 
to 

both 
Medina 
and 
Grand 
Rapids. Beilein had a record 
of developing players, and he 
— along with then-assistant 
coaches Bacari Alexander and 
Jeff Meyer — did the legwork 
in building a relationship with 
Teske and his family.
There’s also the education 
aspect of it. When you ask 
Teske, and those close to him, 
about his recruitment, words 
like, “degree” and “graduate” 
become motifs. On one visit, a 
coach showed Zuidema a trophy 
cabinet.
“He 
said, 
‘I 
want 
your 
grandson to win me another 
trophy,’ ” Zuidema said. “And, 
that didn’t go over very well 
with his grandma.”
When 
Zuidema 
sat 
with 
Beilein, the Michigan coach told 
him that yes, he wanted Teske to 
help him win games, but there 
was more to his pitch than that.
“He’s gonna be with you four 
years, coach,” Zuidema recalled 
saying. “You do what you have 
to. Remember, I don’t want him 
here just to win trophies for 
you.”
Of course, the decision wasn’t 
Zuidema’s to make, and nor is 
the one that will be in front of 
Teske when the season ends. 
Back then, he was a three-star 
recruit. Now, if he wants to go 
pro, he can.
It’s easy to see the Big Ten 
Tournament 
final 
against 
Purdue last season, when Teske 
scored 14 points off the bench, 
dunked on Haas and helped 
Michigan to a trophy on a 
postseason stage, as the turning 
point of his college career.
“I know that everyone talks 
about the Purdue game being my 
coming out party,” Teske said, 
stopping short of answering 
whether he himself sees it that 
way. That’s fitting.
“It just kinda showed people 

what I think I’m capable of,” he 
said. “Obviously my teammates 
and coaches have always seen 
that in me, since I’ve gotten 
here. I think it was just, for me, 
just go out there. Just on that big 
a stage, and Moe being in foul 
trouble, it all kinda came out to 
be like that.”
Teske isn’t brash — he’s not 
Ignas 
Brazdeikis 
or 
Jordan 
Poole. He won’t say he’s the best 
free-throw shooter in the world, 
or that he expects every shot 
he takes to go in. He’s caught 
off-guard when asked about the 
decision in front of him after 
this season, but knows full well 
he’s earned the chance to make 
it.
“Um, I wouldn’t say that 
(decision 
has) 
changed 
anything,” 
Teske 
said, 
swallowing his sound. “I think 
just coming in, I knew I wanted 
— I wanted to go somewhere 
that had a good place I could go 
get a good degree at. Just coming 
in here, I knew I was capable of 
doing it. And so we’ll just see 
what happens.”
In 
October, 
the 
question 
of whether he could replace 
Wagner seemed as if it may 
define Michigan’s season. It 
took Teske all of a couple games 
to answer, and the question 
soon shifted to whether the 
Wolverines are better off with 
Teske, and whether he deserves 
All-Big Ten honors.
But Teske’s story is one of 
linear development. He’s built 
strength and conditioning with 
Jon Sanderson in the weight 
room to the point of being able 
to play up to 35 minutes at 85 
inches. He’s gone from a one-
dimensional hand in the face 
to an all-around threat on both 
sides of the ball.
That shift, more than height 
alone, has come to define Teske 
basketball.

ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor

FILE PHOTO/Daily
Junior center Jon Teske grew up playing playing pickup basketball with his 18 cousins at his grandfather’s house.

8A — Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

