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

