The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/279958
regular-season stats reveals LeVert showing up as often as a fat man on free pizza night. He wound up 11th in league scoring (13.6), 14th in assists (2.8), fourth in free throw per- centage (83.3), tied for ninth in steals (1.3), fifth in three-point shooting (44.1), ninth in average three-point- ers made (1.7) and sixth in average minutes played (35.1). Fast mover, indeed. ESPN analyst Dan Dakich marvels over the prog- ress LeVert showed in a relatively short span. "I look at his story at Michigan, and here's a guy that was recruited late, redshirted at first, and then after the North Carolina State game, they decided, 'All right, we need this guy and we need him now.' He doesn't miss a beat, and he continues to get better," Dakich said. "When I see that, I look back at last year and say, damn, this kid is really tough. He wants to be great. "You don't improve like he did last year during the season and over the summer and not have a true desire to be great." The desire has always been there. LeVert felt it at the age of 3, when he first clutched a basketball in his Pick- erington, Ohio, home. His late father, who passed unexpectedly when Ca- ris was in high school, taught him the game, and by the time freshman year rolled around, the young man knew basketball could be his ticket to success. After a near miss at a national championship as a collegiate fresh- man, LeVert knew something else. His desire and opportunity came rushing together on a collision course. "I knew with Tim and Trey leaving, I'd have a bigger role and a bigger opportunity," LeVert said. "I wanted to be ready." Thus began the much-publicized summer of 2013 for LeVert and Staus- kas, the latter driven by his substan- dard performance in the Final Four. The duo lived in a house with veter- ans Jordan Morgan and Jon Horford, and put full workdays (often eight hours) in to basketball after taking a class in the morning. Part of the afternoon-into-eve- ning effort involved strength and conditioning workouts with U-M fitness guru Jon Sanderson. Sand- erson planted the seed in LeVert to stick around over the summer, then helped the rising sophomore add 15 or 20 pounds more to the frame that had already taken on 15 as a fresh- man. "Sanderson came to me last year, in the middle of the year," LeVert re- called. "He talked about staying in the springtime. I told him I'd think about it. Then Nik talked to me a couple of weeks later, saying he was staying for sure. I talked to my mom about it and made the decision to stay. "It was definitely worthwhile. Nik pushing me, me pushing him, hang- ing out with Coach Sanderson, get- ting stronger, bigger in the weight room. It was just fun hanging out here with the guys." LeVert acknowledged Stauskas took the lead in workout develop- ment. The YouTube legend laid out the drills component of the day, and