The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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ups on teams that made deep NCAA Tournament runs. While 2014-15 would prove to be his best season individually, it came at a heavy price. U-M lost Walton and LeVert to injury during the season, and Albrecht — hobbling on two bad hips — was forced to play 32 minutes per game. "I'm never one to complain much, but I knew before the season started last year I probably needed the hip surgery," Albrecht admitted. "I didn't want to do it. I'm not a huge fan of surgeries. I just figured I'd tough it out, play through it and re-evaluate it at the end of the season. "In games it was okay because, lots of times, adrenaline kicks in, but if I cut weird one time or something happened, it could irritate it. Then the pain would be there, and it just wasn't good." He considered the surgery when former teammate Max Bielfeldt, now a fifth-year senior graduate transfer at Indiana, underwent a similar pro- cedure prior to last season. "Part of it is genetic. I've known since high school I was going to have issues because my dad has bad hips, has arthritis in both hips now and things like that," Albrecht said. "But the doctor just said all the use in bas- ketball — all the running, jumping and sharp cutting — doesn't help … it just makes it even worse. "I was just hoping I could kind of delay the inevitable at least until af- ter college, but with everything I was going through last year, I figured I might as well get it done now. But I don't like surgery. I decided I was pretty much going to let Max be the guinea pig." Despite playing with the pain, Al- brecht never complained. He aver- aged 7.5 points and 3.9 assists per game and earned the team's Bill Buntin Most Valuable Player Award, the Travis Conlan Sportsmanship Award, the Gary Grant Award for Most Assists, the Steve Grote Hustle Award and the Thad Garner Leader- ship Award. "I tried cortisone shots over Christ- mas break for the pain, and then they just kind of gave me, as needed, some medicine things like that, but I tried to stay off it," he said. "I'm not a huge fan of medicine, so I de- cided to play through it. Some days I'd wake up and knew it would be a bad day; other days I'd wake up, go through warm-ups and be feeling pretty good." A 44.5 percent shooter from long range in his first two seasons, Al- brecht shot only 36.5 percent last sea- son and 40.4 percent overall. "I know Coach B said he thought I was compensating a little on my shot, and who knows? I'm not sure if I was or not," he said. "But I tried not to really think about it when I was playing. I knew it was something I had to deal with, and I didn't want to ever use [injuries] as an excuse." He never will, either, though he cautioned that he might not be the same player he was prior to his in- jury. "I feel a lot better," he said sev- eral days before the season opener against Northern Michigan Nov. 13. "It's just nice to be back out there playing. I'm still not where I need