The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/201975
New Big World Michigan's In The Spotlight, Led By A HighProfile Frontcourt S By John Borton ophomore Mitch McGary shares the regional cover of basketball preview magazine with MSU's Adreian Payne. Sophomore Glenn Robinson III and Payne battle for position on the preview offering. McGary and MSU's Gary Harris augment the artwork for . The two Wolverines jammed the gear shifter from preseason potential to primetime production on the grandest college basketball stage of all last spring. When all but two-dozen of their contemporaries were reduced to "One Shining Moment" observers, McGary and Robinson were living it. Michigan fans even held their breath a bit in the weeks that followed, hoping the duo wouldn't follow backcourt standouts Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. out the door for the NBA. McGary and Robinson returned, meaning Michigan would again factor as a Big Ten contender and an NCAA Tournament threat. Perhaps, head coach John Beilein cautions. He knows all of what it took a year ago — including some good fortune — to carry the Wolverines all the way to the Monday night stage in the 2013 edition of the Big Dance. So he talks about the 2014 NCAA Tournament in terms of "if we make it." He's got another message as well. The Wolverines need to remember and try to recapture the intangibles that made it happen, ones well beyond a Trey Burke bomb against Kansas and the coming-out parties of rookies. Chemistry remains important, he insisted. So does handling attention, although the present group should be more accustomed to it than any that have gone before them, Beilein reasoned. "I think it's different for these young men, because they have grown up in this age of the last four or five years," Beilein said. "Back in our days, most of our days in this room, to actually think that somebody would follow you, and actually want to know that you're reading a book, or you're watching TV? That's what a Twitter following is like. "They're used to this. People are watching them. It's different. That's the demand of everyone at our age, when it becomes real, when they're playing college basketball, to focus on what's really, really important. What people