The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1111798
MAY 2019 THE WOLVERINE 41 For the next 14 seasons, Michigan never touched 30 wins, and went without an NCAA Tournament ap- pearance for 10 consecutive years before Beilein showed up. He has guided them there nine times in a dozen years, including the three 30-victory campaigns. The first, of course, involved the run to the 2013 NCAA championship game, when the Wolverines went 31-8 and lost the title to a team even- tually hit hard by NCAA sanctions. The recent back-to-back 30-win sea- sons make it three in the past seven years for Beilein's program. That's not the only point of pride for the Wolverines of 2018-19. Their oft-stated goal of making it back to the national title game ended with a Sweet 16 loss to Texas Tech, which very nearly won it all afterward. But Michigan making it to the Sweet 16 for a third straight season isn't any small matter. That's also never happened before in the present 68-team configuration of the NCAA Tournament. The Wolverines hadn't made the Sweet 16 three straight seasons in any NCAA format since 1992-94, when all or part of the Fab Five got there. The first two of those involved making the NCAA championship game, while Jalen Rose led the '94 Michigan team to the Elite Eight. The Wolverines featured plenty of very strong teams through the 1970s and '80s, but never ones that ad- vanced to the Sweet 16 three straight times. You have to go all the way back to the Cazzie Russell squads of 1964-66 to come up with three straight Sweet 16 crews. In those years, the tournament consisted of anywhere from 21 to 25 teams, making the Sweet 16 much less of a challenge. The Wolverines have never pulled off four straight Sweet 16 appearances, but will have a chance to smash down that barrier in the coming season. "I think everybody agrees it was a great year," Beilein said, prior to the team's annual postseason ban- quet. "It wasn't a good year, it was a great year. … I'm really proud of these guys, the way they conducted themselves the whole year. We talked about this after the loss to Texas Tech, what a good team this was. "It probably exceeded expectations going into the year, and then once you go 17-0, the only expectation is you'll never lose another game. And of course, that's unrealistic." AH, BUT WHAT ABOUT … It was unrealistic, but what wasn't involved the Wolverines seeing a chance at a Big Ten championship, not once, but twice. Those titles came down to the final contest of the regu- lar season at Michigan State and an- other showdown versus the Spartans in the Big Ten Tournament champi- onship game. The Wolverines won neither, go- ing 0-3 against MSU this year. Later, the loss against Texas Tech (which also eliminated the Spartans in the Final Four) ended Michigan's season sooner than it hoped. Disappointment? Without ques- tion. That in itself makes a statement, Beilein noted. "What's hard to say with a smile is, it's a great statement of where our program is right now," he said. "I still remember … when we made the Sweet 16 back in '13, it was like this [huge] headline, 'Sweet 16!' "It was 20 years since we'd got- ten in it, and it was like, wow, we made it! We made it! Now, you just Freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis was a catalyst for the Wolverines all year, leading them in scoring (14.8 points per game) and finishing second in rebounding (5.4 a contest) en route to Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN