The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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AUGUST 2017 THE WOLVERINE 25 BY CHRIS BALAS I n early November 2016, Michi- gan basketball fans — even its coaches — weren't quite sure what kind of team the Wolver- ines would have. They pointed to the mid-month 2K Classic at Madi- son Square Garden in New York as a litmus test for a group that still had plenty of question marks. Two impressive wins, blowouts of Marquette and SMU, had many na- tional pundits singing their praises. Redshirt sophomore D.J. Wilson started to emerge as a presence on both ends of the floor, and U-M shot the ball extremely well. Twelve days later … it was a dif- ferent story. A loss at South Carolina (granted, the Gamecocks would go on to become a Final Four team) was discouraging, but a home setback to Virginia Tech in the ACC-Big Ten Chal- lenge in which the Wolverines blew a double-digit lead down the stretch left many scratch- ing their heads. "At the begin- ning of the year, I saw we had great potential," head coach John Beilein said in July. "You could see it in the games at Madison Square Garden." There were good games and bad ones in the weeks that followed. The Wolverines laid an egg in a blowout loss at Illinois Jan. 11, after which a few Illini players questioned their tough- ness. U-M then played extremely well offensively in a 91-85 home win over Nebraska and deserved a better fate than a 68-64 loss at No. 17 Wisconsin Jan. 17, after leading for most of the game. Losses at Michigan State and at home to Ohio State followed a 90-60 blowout win of Indiana Jan. 26, and at that point nobody knew quite what to make of the group. The OSU loss, in particular, was tough to stomach, though in hindsight Beilein saw it as a turning point for his team. "There were a lot of turning points. I don't want to put it as just one," he said. "But after that game we all really dug down a little deeper, knowing we weren't going to the NCAA Tourna- ment if we couldn't win at home like that. "After that, everyone started doing a little bit more, and it was a big factor." The leaders, senior point guard Der- rick Walton Jr. and senior wing Zak Ir- vin, were the catalysts. Walton, sensing his Michigan career winding down, wasn't ready to go out with a whim- per, and he proved it over the next 15 games. Walton had been tentative at times, to the point that he wouldn't try to take big men off the dribble when teams switched on him. Beilein issued a challenge, and Wal- ton responded, averaging 17.8 points, 7.1 assists and 4.9 rebounds per game from that point to lead U-M to a 12-3 record and a Sweet 16 berth down the stretch. "He was very driven, but I think big- ger than that, he just wanted to maxi- mize his time at Michigan," Beilein said. "He wanted to leave here as a player everyone would really remem- ber fondly as a winner, and he did that." During that closing stretch, he shot 44.2 percent from the floor, 42.0 percent from long range and 85.5 percent from the line while also leading the team in steals. Irvin, meanwhile, elevated his game to the tune of 12.7 points and 4.5 re- bounds per game. He shot 49.0 per- cent from the floor in those 15 contests, 36.5 from three-point range and made critical shot after critical shot against Purdue in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament to help lead U-M to an overtime victory. "That was just a great story of perse- verance for him," Beilein said. "Things were not going well. He wasn't mak- ing shots, and it was affecting other parts of his game, but he never wa- vered. He never stopped working, never got down. He was like a breath of fresh air every day going to practice. "He might have shot 3 for 10 the day before and we lost, but he really had a lot of faith in himself that it would turn around." He also hit a critical triple down the stretch against Wisconsin to help pull away in the Big Ten Tournament title game. U-M captured the banner with a 71-56 win over the Badgers, capping a whirlwind weekend that started with the highly publicized plane accident that shook the entire team. The Wolverines took a vote after their jet skidded off the runway during an aborted takeoff attempt — to play or not to play — and decided to travel the following day. They beat Illinois in their practice gear, their uniforms still stuck under the grounded plane, and never looked back. "Any time you have something l i k e t h a t h a p - pen, there's that extra little some- thing we all need when it's a long season," Beilein said. "There are a bunch of defin- ing moments, and that certainly was one of those mo- ments. "We started to find our solidarity and our unity one more time." They'd been playing great ball even before the incident, though, having found their stride as a team. It wasn't hyperbole, Beilein added, when he stated the 2016-17 Wolverines were as close a group as he'd ever coached. "Without question," he said. "We have 15 guys on a team, and it's usu- ally eight, nine or 10 that are close. Some others, while good kids, are maybe not as involved in everything. They might be a little quieter or just not in the inner circle as much. "This team had a huge circle of every guy knowing he was a key part of this team, from the leading scorers to guys who did not play. They all had a lot of fun and all hung out together. It's rare to get everyone in like that." They also had different comple- ments to the seniors step up in a num- ber of games. Sophomore Moritz Wag- ner scored 26 points to help lead the MALE TEAM OF THE YEAR MEN'S BASKETBALL TAKING THE TITLE Basketball's Resurgence Led To A Banner Season