The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/246097
"With Jordan, there's a reason the coaches in our league have chosen him for [the All-Defense team]. He's a terrific traffic cop. He sits in the middle of the intersection in the paint, gets guys in the spots they need to be. It also helps that he's not experiencing any more ill effects of the high ankle sprain he suffered last year. He has more ability to do the things he's accustomed to doing." It doesn't hurt, either, that both he and Horford have Stauskas, the team's assist leader with 60 as of Jan. 18, getting them the ball over the top of the defense many times as compared to the lower passes from the smaller guards, Alexander added. "It's a great luxury to have Nik in that role," he said. One they'll try to expand through the meat of a brutal Big Ten slate. Beilein said it was "better than nothing" that his team at least had some experience playing without McGary, and it was clear they were starting to jell offensively by mid-January, averaging 73.0 points per game in Big Ten play. "At the same time, we have to change, a little bit, some of the things that we were doing," he said. "One of the options we wanted this year was to play through Mitch more, and we were preparing for that in the summer and the spring. Then all of the sudden the injury comes [in August], and now we can't do that and now he starts coming back [in November] and we start moving back to that and now we've got to go back again. "Now it's definitive. There's no Mitch. We have to move on. That's the only relief in this thing — we can be definitive in what we want to do. While Jon and Jordan feel bad for Mitch, they've got to be excited about this — their opportunity." A LONG ROAD BACK As for McGary, some have speculated he may have played his last game in a Michigan uniform. Even with a limited sample size, including a freshman season in which he really didn't come into his own until the NCAA Tournament (where he averaged 14.3 points and 10.7 rebounds in six games), he was still projected as an NBA first-round pick and named a preseason All-American. The decision for surgery wasn't easy, he said, especially since he spent the summer getting in the best shape of his life. There came a point, though, where it just wasn't feasible to continue. "I was trying to rehab these last six months, and it was kind of painful to play through," McGary said. "It was the last few strikes that were wear and tear on my body that led me to this decision. "It all added up. It was a little overwhelming, because I wasn't back in the shape that I wanted to be in, and it added up over time." McGary declined to talk specifically about the injury, settling to call it a "lower-back condition." He did research the type of surgery he'd undergo, but he didn't have a timetable for when he would be back on the court. "I definitely don't want to injure my body more than it needs to be,"