The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/589596
MICHIGAN BASKETBALL The four-year Wolverine opted to return to Ann Arbor for his final sea- son after missing much of last year with a foot injury sustained early in Big Ten play. At the time he went out, he led U-M in scoring (14.9 points per game), rebounding (4.9), assists (3.7), steals (1.7) and average minutes played (35.8). The watch list gets pared down to 10 in mid-February and to five final- ists in March. The winner will be an- nounced at the second annual ESPN College Basketball Awards Show on April 8 in Los Angeles. LeVert was also named to the Pre- season All-Big Ten team, voted on by a panel of conference media. Mary- land's Melo Trimble was chosen as the Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year and was also a unanimous se- lection to the Preseason All-Big Ten team, along with Michigan State's Denzel Valentine, Purdue's A.J. Ham- mons and Wisconsin's Nigel Hayes. Indiana's James Blackmon Jr. and Yogi Ferrell, Iowa's Jarrod Uthoff, Maryland's Jake Layman and Wis- consin's Bronson Koenig also earned Preseason All-Big Ten honors. LeVert's selection gives U-M its fourth-straight season with a pre- season all-conference pick. He is the fourth Wolverine to earn the award multiple times in his career, joining Maurice Taylor (1996 and '97), LaVell Blanchard (2001 and '01) and Manny Harris (2009 and '10). LeVert was named to the all-league squad prior to the beginning of last season. ❏ • Michigan head coach John Beilein and football coach Jim Harbaugh both admitted earlier this year they admired the way the other ran his program. Beilein went a step further this fall by spending a day with Harbaugh to see what made him tick. "I did go into the submarine for one full day of fall practice," Beilein said. "Jim really knows what to do. The teaching of all the assistants, I sat there and watched video with all the coaches … the amount of teaching going on, it's really good. Jim's delegated those things, yet he's on top of it, too. I just like the atmosphere, the environment of a practice. "I want to be known as a teacher myself, and that's what I saw." • Assistant coach Jeff Meyer cautions about any insistence that Michigan has great depth this season. It might look like it on the surface, but the Wolverines' brain trust knows how quickly that can change. "We came back from Europe last year and we really felt like we could play 10 deep," he said. "Aubrey [Dawkins] had shot the ball well, Muhammad [-Ali Abdur-Rahkman] got to the free throw line, Spike [Albrecht] was in a great rhythm, Caris [LeVert] was leading, Derrick [Walton, Jr.] had played well. "In the middle of the court, Ricky [Doyle] had shown signs of strength around MISCELLANEOUS NOTES