On March 4, 2021, the final
seconds ticked off the clock as the
Michigan men’s basketball team
swarmed together at center court
following a win over Michigan
State. With the opening notes of
Drake’s “Trophies” blaring over
the PA system, a mass exodus of
Wolverine players, coaches and
managers alike ran out from the
sidelines and began dancing,
jumping and hugging as they
celebrated a Big Ten regular
season title on their home floor.
It was a heady mixture of relief,
pride and triumph, all exactly
seven years to the day after their
last regular season conference
title.
The 2013-14 season didn’t
always look like one destined to
end in a Big Ten regular season
title. Following the departures of
star guards Trey Burke and Tim
Hardaway Jr. to the NBA Draft,
Michigan limped into conference
play with a 6-4 record and
without a bona fide closer. The
situation looked even tougher
when then-sophomore forward
Mitch
McGary,
a
projected
lottery pick, suffered a season-
ending back injury.
“It was one of those things
where we looked at each other
and we were like, ‘Look, he’s
not coming back anytime soon.
There’s no one coming in to save
the day for us. This is all we have,’
” then-sophomore guard Nik
Stauskas told the Daily. “I think it
was that kind of realization where
we said, ‘We’ve gotta do our part
in stepping up and helping this
team win if we wanna turn this
season around.’ ”
But in the furnace of conference
play, the Wolverines started to
forge an identity. After picking up
four games against middling foes,
Michigan had to run its toughest
gauntlet of the year: playing top-
10 opponents Wisconsin, Iowa
and Michigan State all in the same
week. Similarly to this season,
there was no margin for error
against any Big Ten opponent.
“That’s what you get with Big
Ten basketball,” then-sophomore
guard Spike Albrecht told the
Daily. “There’s no nights off no
matter who you’re playing. Every
time you go on the road, you know
it’s gonna be a challenge.”
Added Stauskas: “We knew
coming into Big Ten season, ‘This
is who we have, and we have to
turn it around.’ ”
Coming into a road game
against Wisconsin in Madison on
Jan. 18 that year, the Wolverines
were heavy underdogs against
the top-ranked team in the Big
Ten. With the game on the line,
Michigan coach John Beilein
tried to draw a play up with his
team clinging to a one-point
edge with a minute left. After
passing up an open shot prior
to the timeout, Beilein told
Stauskas he didn’t think he was
ready to be the team’s go-to man
in the clutch. The Wolverines’
search for a closer would remain
open.
Stasukas wasn’t having it.
“I think he knew saying
that would kinda light the fire
underneath me, that made me
furious,” Stauskas said. “I was
like ‘No, coach. I got this. Run
it back.’ So we came back out on
the floor and ran the same play,
and that’s the play where I hit
that stepback. And that’s why
when I was walking back to the
bench, the camera zooms in on
me and you can see me saying,
‘I want this,’ and it was just me
telling him, ‘I’m not scared of the
moment.’ ”
Carrying
the
momentum
from the win over the Badgers,
Michigan went on a tear. With
wins over the Hawkeyes and
Spartans,
the
Wolverines
launched into the top 10 of that
week’s AP Poll. With an official
closer and a newfound level
of confidence, the Wolverines
became the team to beat in the
Big Ten.
“As a team, we just had this
confidence about us like, ‘No one
in the Big Ten can mess with us,’ ”
Stauskas said.
While
Stauskas
was
Michigan’s unquestioned star, the
Wolverines were aided in large
part by the play of two freshmen,
guard Derrick Walton Jr. and
forward Zak Irvin. The two were
irreplaceable parts of the 2014
squad who played with veteran
poise and made a plethora of
clutch shots and big plays in their
debut campaigns.
“Both of them, they weren’t
scared of the moment,” Stauskas
said. “They always wanted more.”
On March 4, Michigan traveled
to Champaign. While Illinois was
a middling team in that year’s Big
Ten, the Wolverines refused to
look past them. This wasn’t just
another conference game: this
was a chance to clinch a Big Ten
regular season title.
“I think we knew with the
way we were playing that year
we were going to win that game,
but (Beilein) didn’t want us to
take them lightly,” Stauskas
said. “And the amount of focus
and concentration that coach
Beilein had, he was not gonna
let us lose.”
Sure enough, the Wolverines
blazed their way to a dominant
win, clinching the Big Ten
regular
season
title
with
an 84-53 victory. While the
celebration was sweet, it was
even sweeter when the team
celebrated its title at Crisler
Center following a win over
Indiana later that week.
“That
moment
of
accomplishment on your own
court, to be the sole champion,”
Beilein
said.
“Just
think
about how many times that’s
happened. That hasn’t happened
a lot. We won two of them and
one of them was a three-way
tie.”
And seven years later, the
Wolverines added another Big
Ten regular season title banner
to the Crisler Center rafters
as Beilein watched from the
stands.
“It does mean a lot to win the
regular season championship,
because it means you withstood
the
test
of
time,”
Beilein
said.
“Only
the
National
Championship is a better gauge
for how good you are.”
While this year’s Michigan
team has not finished writing
its narrative, the 2014 team
can see pieces of themselves in
what they have accomplished
to this point. Besides following
suit
by
winning
a
regular
season championship, the way
the Wolverines of today play
together reminds its former
players of their own days on the
court.
“The biggest parallel is that
they look like they genuinely love
playing together and playing for
one another,” Albrecht said. “I
think that’s part of the reason
we were so successful. We were a
really close-knit group, all really
good friends, had fun going out
on the court.
“Nobody
cared
who
was
scoring, making all the plays.
At the end of the day we just
wanted to win. And I think that’s
something that this group does
as well.”
This fall, Michigan will raise
another Big Ten regular season
banner to stand beside 2014’s.
Whenever Stauskas returns to
Ann Arbor, he reminds himself
that the banner bearing his squad’s
name is a sign that they left their
mark. Now that this year’s squad
has accomplished the same feat,
he hopes it feels it, too.
“You’re a part of history,”
Stauskas said. “You’ve left your
mark on the school, and it’s a
good feeling knowing whatever
new players are stepping into
that arena and are a part of that
program, they’re gonna look up
and see that part of history.”
16 — Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily
Michigan won its regular season championship on the same day that the 2014 squad won its championship.
The best coach in school history
had just left only a year after signing
an
extension.
Warde
Manuel
started his coaching search with an
idea of where to go.
He’d been the sport administrator
for Michigan hockey for some time
in the early aughts, getting to know
now-Michigan
coach
Mel
Pearson
well.
Manuel knew,
of course, that
Red Berenson
would
be
leaving
after
the
2016-17
season.
He
approached
the
interview
process with a
crisp professionalism, Pearson says
— one interview, no conversations
before or after until the job was
offered.
All
things
equal,
he
preferred someone with a Michigan
connection, Berenson said. It wasn’t
long before Pearson received an
offer.
“I thought they were really
thorough on the process, what
they needed to know and who they
talked to,” Pearson said.
The hire of Pearson was Manuel’s
first high-profile personnel move
as athletic director, and it paid
immediate dividends. Pearson led
Michigan to a Frozen Four in his
first year coaching the program
and has the Wolverines on pace for
an NCAA Tournament berth this
year after netting an NHL prospect-
laden recruiting class.
Meanwhile, on Sunday in East
Lansing, Juwan Howard — Manuel’s
hire as men’s basketball coach —
wrapped up a regular season that
culminated in a Big Ten title and
will likely yield a No. 1 seed in the
NCAA Tournament. Howard, in
just his second year as a head coach,
has made Manuel look like a savant.
Between him and Kevin Ollie, who
led UConn to a national title the
year after Manuel hired him there
before NCAA sanctions crippled the
program, the man seems to have a
way of finding basketball coaches.
To find out why, let’s start with
a common description of Manuel.
He’s direct and honest, the kind
of boss who can be firm while
letting you feel you were heard.
The best way to say it comes from
Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun:
“He’s not a bullshitter,” Calhoun
said.
He tells a story to demonstrate.
After Calhoun retired, Ollie was
widely considered an easy pick to
replace him. Initially, he didn’t want
to do it.
“Warde said, ‘Tell him he’s got
two hours,’ ” Calhoun recalled.
“Within two hours, under my
advice, he took the job.”
Manuel didn’t have time for
bullshit then, and he didn’t have
time for it in May 2019. He read
the stories during an unusually
long wait between Michigan hiring
Howard and the school introducing
him at a press conference. They
described the hiring as a risk and
a gamble, given Howard’s lack of
head coaching experience.
When a reporter asked Manuel
about that perception, he spoke
for over five minutes straight,
voice rising with inflection as
he went. Softball coach Carol
Hutchins started out as a part-time
administrative assistant, he said,
football coach Jim Harbaugh as a
part-time assistant under his father
in the offseason. He issued a plea —
let Howard evolve.
“In the last two years, folks, 110
schools have changed basketball
coaches. A lot of those people
who change have great deals of
experience,” he said, throwing his
arms out. “Let him evolve, let him
develop into a head coach of his
own. That’s what I’m gonna do.
Support him, answer questions,
put people around him and let him
evolve.
“All these things about, ‘He hasn’t
coached a game’ and ‘What’s Warde
doing, oh my god he’s taking a risk
and a gamble’ and all these different
things — I’m gonna gamble with
people who love this place the way
he does. That gets emotional when
he looks at his family and he talks to
those kids. I’m gonna take that risk,
I’m gonna take that challenge. Put it
on me.”
Manuel, through a spokesman,
declined an interview request for
this story. Suffice it to say, though,
he should be happy to have the hire
put on him.
It’s important to note that
Manuel’s performance as athletic
director has not been perfect. In
early 2019, he green-lit the hire
of Rhonda Faehn, a former USA
Gymnastics
official
who
had
allegedly waited a week after being
told of Larry Nassar’s abuse of
athletes before reporting it to the
FBI. Manuel admitted in a public
statement that doing so was “the
wrong
decision,”
firing
Faehn
just days after her initial hire and
apologizing after a Michigan Daily
story on Faehn sparked outrage.
More recently, Manuel also failed
to follow University policy with
regard to the Robert Anderson
investigation, forwarding a letter
alleging sexual assault by former
team doctor Robert Anderson to
University lawyers instead of Title
IX investigators.
Manuel’s
performance
as
athletic director, in sum, includes
all of those issues every bit as much
as it includes who he’s hired. When
all is said and done, the Anderson
scandal could eclipse any good he
or other University administrators
have done.
Manuel, though, has telegraphed
a desire for stability above all else
through who he’s hired. He wants
coaches he can trust and coaches
who will stick with the program.
It helps of course that there’s been
no need to start firing anybody,
but keeping everyone on board is
an achievement of its own. Manuel
wants to stay out of the public eye —
since hiring Howard, he’s done just
two formal press conferences — but
among his most revealing public
comments came in May 2018, when
he said he wanted Harbaugh and
John Beilein to retire at Michigan.
Soon after, it was reported
that Beilein — in the midst of
negotiating a contract extension
— had interviewed for an NBA job
with the Detroit Pistons. Beilein
told Manuel he could take back
the contract he offered, as he’d
extended it without knowing there
was discussion between Beilein
and the Pistons. Manuel told him
no. Beilein eventually returned
to Michigan another year before
leaving for the Cleveland Cavaliers
the next summer.
“When
(Manuel)
likes
the
direction of your program,” Beilein
said, “he’s gonna stick with you
through thick and thin.”
Manuel’s persona fits the politics
of Michigan well, his background
as a football player in Ann Arbor
tends to come up. More important
to his success, though, is that in an
environment where the University’s
administration wants its high-
profile athletics program to be
anything but a headache, he is, for
the most part, able to keep things
above board.
That is what makes his decisions
surrounding Harbaugh and the
football program so compelling.
After a Murphy’s Law-inspired,
2-4 pandemic season, Manuel
extended Harbaugh, but did so
on a University-friendly contract
with a low buyout. “Following the
completion of the season, we talked
for many hours on what it will take
for Jim to lead and get us back on
the right trajectory,” Manuel said
in a statement announcing the
extension.
That unto itself represents a
departure from the hands-off style
Manuel usually employs. During
one stretch early in his tenure, two
basketball assistants both left the
program, leading Beilein to meet
with Manuel a handful of times to
get new hires sorted.
“I think that in the future,
you’ll find out I won’t be in your
office unless you want me here,
but a couple times a year,” Beilein
recalled telling him.
This
to
say
—
big-picture
conversations about the trajectory
of the program aren’t the sort of
thing Manuel’s having regularly
with all his coaches.
Given the circumstance wrought
by the pandemic, both financial
and on the football field, where
opt-outs and injuries helped the
team’s misfortune spiral, Manuel
took the easiest option in front of
him. If things don’t work out with
Harbaugh, he can move on at a
low cost at a point where it’s more
financially prudent to do so. If
Michigan gets back to winning nine
games next year, he can go back to
ignoring the portion of the fan base
that calls for a coaching change
after every loss.
Ironically,
it’s
a
third-way
move — the opposite of a gamble.
Different circumstances dictate a
different approach, though Manuel
might still dispute the notion that
Howard was a gamble to begin
with. Howard, who earlier this
season aimed a diatribe at the
doubters who questioned his hire,
might as well.
“He will, in my opinion, evolve
into a great coach, a great head
coach,” Manuel said in 2019, “cause
he’s already a great man as you all
saw.”
On Thursday, when Michigan
clinched the Big Ten title, Howard
found Manuel in the stands and
pointed
amid
the
celebration.
Socially distanced, they shared a
moment before Howard returned to
his team.
Sears can be reached at searseth@
umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_
sears.
TEDDY GUTKIN
Daily Sports Writer
Seven years later, 2014 squad reflects on Big Ten regular season title
SportsWednesday: The vindication of Warde Manuel
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel’s coaching decisions have proven
to pay immediate dividends.
ETHAN
SEARS
Michigan’s run the the Big Ten gauntlet was reminiscent to that of the 2014 team’s defining run.
ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily