The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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former two-stars Albrecht and LeVert. "It makes the job a lot easier when you get to coach those kids instead of me," Novak deadpanned. "If you had told me he would be recruiting the top guys in the country, I probably would have said I don't even think [Beilein] wants to. But he's recruiting guys that still fit. "So you can be the No. 1 player in the country, but if you're not good for the program and not going to buy into what we're trying to do, he doesn't take you. He doesn't care. I think that's kind of where he differentiates him- self." REACHING THE PINNACLE Now, it's up to a mixed bag of re- cruits to carry the torch. Michigan's become an NBA factory almost by ac- cident, having to reload each year due to early entries. McGary and Robinson both left after their sophomore years, joining Stauskas in the 2014 draft (Mc- Gary went in the first round to Okla- homa City, Robinson in the second to Minnesota). There's still plenty of talent, albeit young. Sophomore wing Zak Irvin was a five-star and the No. 24 player nationally in the 2013 class, and sopho- more point guard Derrick Walton Jr. and redshirt freshman center Mark Donnal were four-star recruits. Five of this year's freshmen, including un- der-recruited guards Aubrey Dawkins and Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman, have a good chance to play this year, and a sixth — guard Austin Hatch — would have if he weren't still recover- ing from a traumatic head injury suf- fered in June 2012. The veteran leadership starts with Albrecht and LeVert, the foundation secure. The formula has yielded a team with off-the-charts chemistry. "Here's what I see, and I hope — that there's a blind faith with our young guys right now that we couldn't have been this successful in the past without the team-first attitude; with- out all these fundamental drills we do," Beilein said. "That's important. We have blind faith in them that they are going to do what the coaches feel gives us the best chance for success, and they have to have blind faith in us that we know what the heck we're talking about." The coaches won't always be right, he said, and they're going to "change like the wind" when they're not, he added. But more often than not, No- vak said, they will be. And while he gets the lion's share of the credit for changing the culture, Novak knows he couldn't have done it alone. "I think we had a lot of guys that had a hand in it," he said. "I was very vocal and outspoken so I actually got noticed more, but there were a lot of guys that had a big hand in kind of shaping the culture of what we became." Still, it started with Beilein, he said. "He told me I was going to work and earn everything I got and we were going to change the program," he said. "That was his big thing. Throughout recruiting early on, we were going to do this thing the right way and Michi- gan was going to get back. He had some conviction behind him, and for good reason. He got it done." Or, Beilein would say, they got it done. And they're not through yet. ❏