The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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MICHIGAN BASKETBALL John Beilein Not Apologizing For Any Big Ten Wins conference in America any way he can get it. He got one by the tips of Michi- gan's claws at Crisler Arena on Jan. 11, knocking off Northwestern 66-64 in overtime. The Wildcats didn't get off to the J best conference start, dropping to 1-3 after the crushing loss at Crisler. But Beilein was quick to point out that there aren't any gimmies, now that the conference season has begun. "Our kids know we earned this," Beilein said. "We did not play a low-IQ game today. We played a pretty high- IQ game. You can get a false sense of good if you win a game where you didn't play smart basketball. Today we played pretty smart basketball, but we played a very good team. "As I said to my team beforehand, if we were playing Texas, Florida, Vir- ginia, Xavier … I gave them a list of all these teams, and asked, 'Would you be jacked up?' They said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.'" Then Beilein delivered the rest of the story. "Their RPIs are all higher than Northwestern's," he told the Wolver- ines. "Northwestern is No. 33 RPI af- ter 17 games. That's legit. This was our best RPI win yet. This is not your grandfather's Northwestern. This is a really good team." Beilein's team certainly faced its big- gest adversity check of the season in any victory. It hadn't trailed at half- time in a game all season, and faced a 10-point deficit in the opening minute of the second half. The Wolverines were on their way to shooting their poorest percentage of the season (33.3 percent), but they called on the defense — and some football savvy — to pull the game out. "They scored one basket in the last 13 minutes, at 8:18, and then one in overtime," Beilein noted. "They went to the foul line a couple times, but that was it." Beilein culled the football aspect Count Beilein, who was happy U-M was able to outlast Northwestern 66-64 in overtime Jan. 11, is among those who believe the Big Ten is the toughest conference in America. PHOTO BY PER KJLDSEN 54 THE WOLVERINE FEBRUARY 2012 from former director of basketball op- erations Brian Townsend, a linebacker on the squads of Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller. Townsend, an ad- visor to U-M athletics director David Brandon, dropped a catch phrase on Beilein from his football days, one that the coach has adopted. "Brian Townsend brought it to me, and I just keep bringing it up, some- ohn Beilein will take a victory in what many consider the toughest