The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/465847
INSIDE MICHIGAN ATHLETICS Nick Baumgardner covered the wild ride of Michigan football and basketball over the past several months, including an intensely followed coaching change in football and basketball's injury woes. He sat down with The Wolverine to dis- cuss the future of both those sports. The Wolverine: Can you talk about John Beilein's team, compared to your expecta- tions coming into this season? Baumgardner: "I don't think anybody could have foreseen the injuries and ev- erything else, but at the same time, I don't know if I was as optimistic that they would be this automatic cinch into the [NCAA] Tournament. I just thought there were so many things they had to work on. "I wasn't surprised when they struggled earlier, before these guys went down. But you look at the flip side of it, I am surprised at the way they have continued to develop so rapidly. They've pushed some of these teams right to the wire. They haven't won them, but … "I thought this was going to be — and I think Beilein has even said it a few times — a transition year, a rebuild, whatever. Inju- ries have probably made it more that than anything. But I felt like this was going to be a transition year for them anyway. "I think [sophomore forward] Zak Irvin still has a long ways to go before he's where he needs to be, and I thought [junior guard] Caris [LeVert] had a long way to go, too, before he got hurt. They'll be good moving forward, but I thought they'd take some lumps this year. I just thought that was expected." The Wolverine: What does the playing time for so many younger players mean for next year, and do you think LeVert will return? Baumgardner: "You're forcing all these guys, like [freshman guard] Mu- hammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, to play. [Freshman forward] Aubrey Dawkins is playing. They're playing 35, 40 minutes. Who would have thought, ever, at the beginning of the year, that that was going to happen? "They were going to have to do that eventually, but they're getting it out of Sitting Down With Nick Baumgardner, M-Live Beat Writer Baumgardner cited the inability of U-M quarterback Devin Gardner to take care of the ball as a key weak- ness of last year's team. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL