The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Friday, March 22, 2019 — 8

For Charles 
Matthews, 
it’s back to 
normal

DES 
MOINES, 
Iowa 
— 
Charles 
Matthews ran down the floor with some 
urgency, shooting the moment the ball 
came to him. He heard the buzzer sound, 
saw the basket light up red and the ball roll 
around the rim with the guise of a shooter’s 
bounce, before falling out. Then he smiled. 
There was no reason for frustration.
Matthews, at that point, already had 11 
points on the night, more than he scored 
in the last two combined. He finished with 
22 on 8-of-12 shooting with 10 rebounds, 
which wouldn’t be particularly notable 
for him in a 74-59 win over Montana that 
defined routine, if the redshirt junior’s last 
month had gone normally.
But 25 days ago against Michigan State, 
Matthews got hurt and decided to play the 
second half through it. He finished that 
game with four points on 1-of-8 shooting, 
too hobbled to guard Cassius Winston or 
Matt McQuaid. Then he sat the next three.
“Dumb,” Matthews said of that decision 
last week in Chicago. “But you just get lost 
in the game sometimes. And I know I’m a 
competitor. I don’t think I’m much like no 
macho man or anything like that. I’ve got 
some toughness to me. It wasn’t the best 
decision at the time.”
When he said that, it was in Michigan’s 
locker room after a similarly nonchalant 
Big Ten Tournament win over Iowa. 
Matthews donned a brace in his first game 
back, played well enough on defense to 
mask any hurt but shot 1-of-9 from the 
field. That would have been an admission 
that he wasn’t 100 percent if Matthews 
didn’t make the confession himself.
Instead of being a part of the stretch 
run, and a second loss to the Spartans in 
which the Big Ten title was in the balance, 
Matthews sat on the bench. Instead of 
being able to give his best in the Big Ten 
Tournament, Matthews played with that 
brace, struggled, and the Wolverines lost to 
the Spartans again.
This came after a period in which 
Matthews played some of his best 
basketball and spoke at his loudest, publicly 
admonishing his team after a loss at Penn 
State and earning the full trust of his 
coaches in the process.
“When you got a player-led team this 
time of year, they’ve been through the 
ways,” said assistant coach DeAndre 
Haynes. “They’ve been on the floor. So 
they see some things that we don’t see. I 
was like that as a player, too. You see things 
like, ‘Hey, coach, we should do this.’ And if 
they feel like it’s gonna work, we trust them 
that it’s gonna be the right thing.”
On Thursday night, the brace was off 
and Matthews was every bit himself, and 
maybe a little more.
“I was happy just to be out there the 
last few games,” Matthews said. “It’s still a 
different atmosphere when you go, feel like 
yourself a little.”
Early in the game, as Grizzlies point 
guard Timmy Falls took what appeared 
to be an uncontested layup, Matthews 
swooped in over him, forcing a miss and 
prompting one member of Montana’s 
traveling party sitting on press row 
to exclaim, “Jesus.” The lone time the 
Grizzlies seemed to pull themselves within 
arms length, cutting the Wolverines’ lead 
to eight early in the second half, Matthews 
followed a Jordan Poole 3-pointer with a 
long two from the corner. Then he drifted 
into space beyond the arc off a Zavier 
Simpson drive and found bottom on a 
three.
Michigan’s lead never dipped below 
14 again. And if the Wolverines are to do 
more this month than beat up on a 15-seed, 
that’s the type of game they need from 
Matthews.
“It means everything for us, because 
when he’s able to play at this level, it opens 
up so much more for us offensively,” 
said assistant coach Saddi Washington. 
“Because it’s another guy in our arsenal to 
have to take account for.”
It’s more than that, though. Matthews is 
one of the most forceful voices in the locker 
room, one of the driving forces behind this 
team’s success on both sides of the floor. He 
and John Beilein agreed that they wouldn’t 
go over the top in rehabbing to get back 
for the postseason. Matthews was, by all 
accounts, as much a coach on the bench 
as any of the actual coaches. He still hated 
sitting.
Through all of that, though, the goal 
stayed the same. It still does. Matthews 
remembers the feeling of sitting in 
the locker room last year as Villanova 
celebrated down the hall. He wants to 
avoid it. “We really just, will feel empty if 
we don’t take it all this year,” he said.
So, as Matthews walked through 
the tunnel, slapping hands and signing 
autographs after an NCAA Tournament 
game in which he was the star — a moment 
in which he could have revelled — he had 
just three words.
“Let’s get it.”

DES MOINES, Iowa — Last year, 
when Michigan played Montana 
in the first round of the NCAA 
Tournament, 
the 
Grizzlies 
got 
out to a quick 10-0 lead before the 
Wolverines found a groove and won.
Watching film of that game ahead 
of the rematch, Michigan players 
cringed. This time, they knew 
they would allow no such thing. 
Sure enough, this time it was the 
Wolverines (29-6) who started the 
game off on a 10-2 run.
It 
seemed 
that 
every shot Montana 
took 
— 
threes, 
layups, 
even 
a 
fast-break 
dunk 
attempt — missed. 
The 
Wolverines’ 
shooting 
wasn’t 
particularly potent, 
either, 
but 
their 
defense 
clamped 
down, holding the 
Grizzlies 
to 
33 
percent from the field.
“We were really ready for them,” 
said 
freshman 
forward 
Ignas 
Brazdeikis. “And our intensity — I 
felt like we were really connected.”
Montana (26-9), a No. 15 seed 
out of the Big Sky Conference 
that doesn’t start anyone taller 
than 6-foot-7, had no answer for 
Michigan’s relentlessness.
It was a microcosm of everything 
Michigan has been all season. Lots 
of defense, just enough offense, 

loads of personality and — when all 
was said and done — a 74-55 win.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said freshman 
forward Ignas Brazdeikis. “When 
we play good defense it turns into 
offense for us I feel like. When we’re 
playing on defense then offensively 
we play good and we made stops, we 
got rebounds, we went out and run, 
we just had a lot of fun out there and 
I think it showed.”
Montana, which won the Big 
Sky thanks in large part to its 
3-point shooting, missed its first 
nine attempts from deep, clanking 
shot 
after 
shot. 
The 
Wolverines 
struggled 
from 
three, too, hitting 
just 5-for-17. But the 
difference was that 
they found passing 
lanes and got to the 
basket. 
Michigan 
had four dunks in 
the first half alone — 
including one where 
Brazdeikis knocked 
the ball away from Montana guard 
Donaven Dorsey and took it down 
the court for the slam, drawing a 
foul in the process. Junior guard 
Zavier 
Simpson 
finished 
with 
10 assists, creating looks for the 
offense all night. He frequently 
found Brazdeikis and junior center 
Jon Teske for open alley-oop layups 
and dunks, introducing a new hook 
shot-style pass in the process.
And in a size mismatch, the 
Wolverines’ 
forwards 
shined. 

Redshirt 
junior 
wing 
Charles 
Matthews got a double-double — 
scoring 22 points with 10 rebounds. 
Teske finished with double digits 
with 11 points and nine rebounds. 
Brazdeikis and sophomore guard 
Jordan Poole were also in double 
digits, with 14 and 10 points, 
respectively.
At the beginning of the second 
half, Montana briefly cut its deficit 
to eight with buckets on two 
consecutive possessions — including 
just its second three of the game — 
but Michigan responded with a 10-0 
run spurred by two consecutive 
Matthews triples and an alley-oop 
dunk by Teske.
“Right away, we responded,” said 
Michigan coach John Beilein. “So it 
was huge. Some of those points, if I 
recall, were not pretty points. We 
just got points.”
From there, the Wolverines kept 
rolling. They took a 20-point lead 
with 8:29 remaining and led by 
at least that much until the final 
seconds, when the freshmen and 
walk-ons got their time on the 
court.
As with many of their previous 
games against inferior opponents, 
the Wolverines didn’t always look 
their best, shooting 49 percent 
from the field and committing 10 
turnovers. But every time one of 
the Grizzlies tried to wiggle his 
way around a much bigger and 
more physical Michigan player, 
it was clear that Montana was 
overmatched.

ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Redshirt junior wing Charles Matthews scored a team-high 22 points and 10 rebounds in Thursday night’s opening round win over Montana.

‘M’ relishes 
‘boring’ win 
in Tourney 
opener

DES MOINES, Iowa — As Michigan 
stormed out to an early but indestructible 
lead Thursday night against Montana, 
the word of choice across social media 
was “boring.” By the time the Wolverines 
jogged down the tunnel at halftime with a 
34-21 advantage that felt more comfortable 
than that, many back at home had already 
flipped to the evening’s more competitive 
action. Those inside Wells Fargo Arena 
surely wished they could do the same.
But in the moments after the eventual 
74-55 win, when a reporter began to relay 
that description to assistant coach Luke 
Yaklich, he interrupted midway through 
the question:
“Nah, I freaking loved it.”
The thing is, Michigan likes it this 
way. Eventually, the reporter finished his 
question. Yaklich, in typical form, followed 
with a minute-long response detailing 
the minutiae of the Wolverines’ defensive 
performance — a smile glued to his face the 
entire time.
Eventually, he got to his defense’s 
contest rate — 90 percent — and had to 
pause. His smile had become too wide to 
speak through.
Elsewhere in the Michigan locker room, 
Yaklich’s energy wasn’t quite mirrored, 
but the attitude was. No one, not even this 
Wolverines team that ranks second in the 
country in adjusted defensive efficiency, 
shares Yaklich’s childlike joy for defense, 
but they respect it. Even if that means 
winning “boring.”
“I don’t take this as a boring win,” said 
junior guard Zavier Simpson. “I actually 
take this as an exciting win. We got an 
opportunity to win the first game. That’s 
something that can be hard, especially 
with a team that doesn’t have as much 
hype that can be difficult to play.”
Throughout the locker room, the 
mood wasn’t celebratory as it was after 
blowout wins over Iowa and Minnesota 
in Michigan’s first two games of the Big 
Ten tournament. There was no distracting 
players as they answered questions or 
posing for triumphant pictures. But, unlike 
Sunday in Chicago, there were smiles and 
chatter.
It may not be an attitude that feels 
befitting of an NCAA Tournament win, 
but these Wolverines don’t need it to be. 
They know what comes next. Last year’s 
second-round matchup with Houston 
earned thousands of adjectives; boring was 
not among them. They also know what 
came before — a titanic, back-and-forth Big 
Ten championship game against Michigan 
State — and how that one ended.
“The Michigan State game was the 
Michigan State game,” Yakich said. “It was 
over. The NCAA Tournament for our guys 
who are used to making deep runs and 
having success in these type of games. It’s 
kind of tabula rasa there and we wiped the 
slate clean.”
This, a 15 vs. 2 game whose biggest 
storyline was that the same matchup 
happened last year, didn’t need any 
extraneous excitement. Within minutes, 
Michigan raced out to a 10-2 lead. By the 
8:25 mark, it was 21-6. Montana didn’t hit 
double digits until 6:09 remained.
So when the Wolverines re-emerged 
from halftime, there was no need for 
a spirited team talk. Jordan Poole and 
Jon Teske shared a relaxed smile before 
dapping up and going to defend their 
respective assignments. Beilein paced the 
Michigan sideline, arms crossed, before 
clapping in his team’s direction. “Let’s go, 
let’s go, let’s go.”
For a few minutes, the Wolverines failed 
to heed their coach’s advice. Montana, on 
a pair of baskets that were far easier than 
Beilein would have liked, cut the lead to 
eight. Then, the Michigan team of the first 
half returned. On a quarter of unanswered 
Simpson assists, the lead was back to 18.
“When you got a point guard who can 
just find your shooters, like (sophomore 
guard Jordan Poole), who, he didn’t have 
it going,” said assistant coach DeAndre 
Haynes. “So (Simpson) will tell him, ‘Hey, 
be ready, I’m gonna find you.’ And then 
those guys are locked in, ready to shoot. 
Same thing with (sophomore forward 
Isaiah Livers). Isaiah was open in the 
corner, he said, ‘Hey, be ready, I’m gonna 
find you.’ And that’s the type of point guard 
you want to play for.”
The rest of the night was back to 
boring, even if the Wolverines’ coaching 
staff refuses to view any game that way. 
On offense, coach John Beilein aired 
frustration. But on defense, it was Yaklich’s 
voice filling the air.
But back in the locker room, there was 
no displeasure to be found. This — a win, 
regardless of style points — was all that the 
Wolverines wanted.
“We’re trying to do something a lot 
bigger than just the first game,” Simpson 
said. “But we can’t accomplish that without 
winning the game in front of us.”

THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Editor

taking care of Grizz-ness

Michigan jumps all over Montana, advances to round of 32

DES MOINES, Iowa — Jon Teske 
crashed to the floor under the basket, 
hit from behind by a Montana defender. 
On the Michigan sideline, John Beilein 
turned to assistant coach Luke Yaklich.
“That’s 
a 
cheap 
shot!” 
Beilein 
exclaimed in disbelief.
If Beilein was right, maybe the 
Grizzlies just didn’t have another choice. 
If that’s the conclusion they came to, no 
one could really blame them.
Basketball, in its crudest form, is a 
game of height, and the Wolverines’ 
NCAA Tournament opener against 
Montana on Thursday was far from 
the most refined version of the sport. 
Michigan committed 12 turnovers and 
shot 29 percent from 3-point range. 
Montana was even worse, hitting just 20 
of 60 field goals and scoring 0.81 points 
per possession.
Ultimately, what gave the Wolverines 
a 74-55 win was just enough scoring and 
a defense as stingy it has been all season. 
And as usual, the defensive performance 
was anchored down low with Teske.
Teams from the Big Sky don’t usually 
match up physically with No. 2 seeds 
from the Big Ten. The Grizzlies are no 
exception — and that was before their 
regular starting center, Jamar Akoh, 

was lost for the season due to injury. In 
Akoh’s place, they’ve been forced to start 
Bobby Moorhead, a 6-foot-7, 192-pound 
shooting guard by trade, in the middle. 
Against the 7-foot-1 Teske, this went 
about how you would expect.
Teske had 11 points and nine rebounds 
in his 23 minutes on the court, Michigan 
outscored Montana by 25 points. The 
junior center constantly impacted shots 
around the rim, and on offense, the 
Grizzlies simply couldn’t deny him.
“He’s a mismatch problem,” said 
freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis. 
“They’re all really short, so just get him 
the ball. He can make plays, he can kick 
out, he can score.”
While the Big Ten has no shortage 
of physical beasts down low, the 
Wolverines 
spent 
most 
of 
non-
conference play dealing with smaller 
teams — Teske said Thursday reminded 
him of Michigan’s 56-37 win over 
Holy Cross in November, in which the 
Crusaders caught the Wolverines off-
guard at first with a series of small-ball 
centers.
This time, Michigan was ready.
“Just throw it up top,” Zavier Simpson 
told The Daily. “This guy is big — go up 
top and have him go get it. They wanna 
score, make a play, he’s gonna get it.”
Montana threw a twist in, however. 
It knew the Wolverines would be able to 

easily run offense through Teske, so its 
defensive strategy focused on denying 
him the ball in the first place. The 
Grizzlies tried to trap Simpson on the 
perimeter and switch on screens, just as 
many of Michigan’s Big Ten opponents 
have done.
Simpson said that he was impressed 
with Montana’s ball-screen coverage. 
But in a manner exemplary of the 
mismatch in sheer talent and physicality, 
the junior point guard still ended up 
with 10 assists — four of which Teske 
finished off.
“In the Big Ten, any time a team 
switches, now you got a 6-7, 6-8 guy 
switching on (Simpson), which makes 
that post entry pass a little bit tougher,” 
said assistant coach Saddi Washington. 
“They were 6-(foot)-3, 6-4, 6-5, and so 
we just basically had a jump ball-type 
pass that only Jon can get.”
Defensively, Teske although he didn’t 
record a blocked shot — altered the 
flow of the Grizzlies’ normally effective 
downhill 
penetration. 
Montana’s 
guards found their lanes to the basket 
completely shut off. As a result, the 
Grizzlies’ outside shooting suffered — 
they hit just five of 19 from beyond the 
arc.

Wolverines’ size overwhelms Montana

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

JACOB SHAMES
Daily Sports Editor

When we play 
good defense 
it turns into 
offense for us...

