Jonathan Epstein

The Wolverines are hanging on to NCAA Tourney hopes by a very thin thread

Almost everyone believed that Michigan needed a couple more wins in their last four games in order to boost a resume that was once glorified but was now ‘just short of tournament ready.’ Questions rose on whether the Wolverines could recover from such a tough loss and from Harris’ benching. The questions were answered last Thursday, when the Wolverines held ground on their home floor against a top 25 ranked Purdue Boilermaker team. Deshawn Sims scored the most for Michigan with 29 points. Not to be outdone, however, by the 27 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists that Manny Harris put up. A statement game for a team that most, including many fans of the Wolverines, was thought of as down and out.

But they forgot about Michigan’s heart. They forgot that this team has been working relentlessly since last years big ten tournament defeat, eager to prove to the world that last year was just a transition. They forgot that this was a team coached by a man who prides himself on his work ethic. And they forgot about the Detrot duo of Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims, who come from a city, Detroit, that isn’t exactly a place where words like soft and pushover get thrown around.

And so Michigan, coming off a 5 point loss at Wisconsin on Sunday, has one more chance to show the world that they are for real before the big ten tournament begins on March 13th. 5 RPI top 50 wins, including 4 wins over top 25 opponents, doesn’t seem like it will be enough right now, so Michigan must win this Saturday at Minnesota to prove they are worthy of a bid on selection Sunday.

“The barn,” as Williams Arena has come to be known as, is a tough place to play, especially when the home team Golden Gophers are also playing for a tournament bid. If Michigan is going to win there, they will have to scrap and claw like Wolverines. It won’t be easy, but something tells me that the Wolverines will show their heart again.

Jonathan Epstein

      Help! Help! I can’t hang on much longer. Pull me up, hurry! That’s the Michigan Wolverine Basketball team crying out for a helping hand. They may need it on selection Sunday, or they may not. For now, they’re just hanging on the ledge by their fingernails. A loss to instate rivals Michigan State put the Wolverines in a position where they had to win four of their last six games to go .500 in the conference, the mark in conference that most believe would get the Wolverines into the big dance given their stellar out of conference resume. Included in those six would be home games against Minnesota and Purdue, two teams currently in the top six of the conference, and four games away from Crisler Arena.

No easy task…

Hurry!

      The first game of the ‘big six’ came last Sunday, when the Wolverines played against the Northwestern Wildcats in Evanston. The Wolverines never really got it going in the first half, with Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims combining for a meager three points.

Hurry!

      Second half. Harris put the Wolverines on his shoulders. He had Big Ten analyst Dave Revsine in awe as “Manny Fresh” scored in every way possible. The Wolverines had a 3 point lead and the ball with 38 seconds left in the second half before a pair of don’t do turnovers gave the ball back to Northwestern twice, and sharpshooter Kevin Coble made sure he got his team into overtime with an akward, though maybe not by Coble’s means, leaning three pointer.

      In overtime Harris continued to dominate the game. He scored six of Michigan’s first eight in overtime. His two free throws with 2:03 remaining gave the Wolverines a comfortable six point lead. Koble then hit a beautiful jumper, putting the Cats within four. Michigan then gave the ball back to Northwestern with a sloppy possession. That’s when one of the worst calls of the year in the Big Ten gave Kerry Coble three free throws. Coble pump-faked, and Deshawn Sims bit on it. As Coble was about to go into his shooting position, with Sims still in the air, a sneaky hand, that of Stu Douglas, cleanly swiped the ball away from Coble before he even got into his full shooting motion. Sims then landed next to Coble, barely grazing his jersey, and the whistle blew. Not only fouling out arguably Michigan’s best player, but also giving the Wildcats a free three points when it should’ve been game over. Manny Harris wouldn’t quit. He gave the Wolverines two more free throws, poised as always, and the maize and blue managed to hold on for a 70-67 win.  

      Five more to go. The Wolverines must keep hanging on. If they take care of business at home tomorrow night against Minnesota, I have faith that someone will eventually give them a hand and pull them up.

When Manny Harris got ejected from the Michigan/ Purdue game in West Lafayette this past Saturday and the Wolverines had a four point lead, Michigan fans lost control. A move that we see many players make so often at all levels of basketball, a sweep from one side of the body to the other(used to create space for an offensive player), got Manny Harris ejected from the game with almost a full half to go. It is my belief, and many others, that it was the wrong call to make. This was a kid that has a reputation of being humble. A kid that rarely argues calls. Someone who is considered to be a great teammate and a hard worker. His goal is always to win the game, not to win the physical matchup. Why then, on an already questionable call, was none of this taken into consideration? I don’t know. I can’t tell you what was going through the officials’ minds, but I have a feeling that if the game were in Ann Arbor and there was no blood that this wouldn’t have turned out the way that it did.
But the game wasn’t in Ann Arbor, and Kramer came up with blood gushing from his nose and a scrape below his eye. It was as if he had just gotten into a fight, and came out on the losing end. Harris was called for a flagrant, and automatically ejected. From then on, Purdue dominated the game in every facet. And so, Michigan finds itself at 4-6 in conference play, more than likely out of the big dance if it were to start today. They needed one big away victory, and with the lead at Purdue-a top 25 team- they were robbed. Now I am not saying that Purdue wouldn’t have won that game, I’m just saying Michigan might have. So where do the Wolverines go from here? Many say they look tired. Others say they just aren’t that good. I say they’re in a mid-season shooting slump that will end this Thursday in Ann Arbor, when the Wolverines host Penn State.
       No doubt the Wolverines must be frustrated right now with the way things have gone. The only team they have beaten in the last five games is last place Northwestern. Superb High School shooters such as Stuart Douglas and Laval Lucas Perry have missed open shot after open shot. And with each wide open shot missed, the Wolverines confidence sinks lower and lower. The good news is, this team started out the year cocky. That confidence shouldn’t all be gone quite yet. After a start that included two victories over top 5 teams, maybe they just became too cocky. It is really the only explanation I can come up with as to why they can’t make wide open shots.
I wrote in my article earlier in the season that I believed the Wolverines were back to being a tournament team, and I will not sway from that argument. I believe that the shooting woes will end this Thursday, and for the Wolverines hopes of making the tournament, I really hope I am right. This is a must win if there were ever such a thing.

Kelvin Grady, G, MICHIGAN

Grady, standing at a generous 5-11, arrived to Ann Arbor as a highly recruited point guard out of East Grand Rapids High School. His brother, Kevin, also very highly recruited but in football,  is a senior running back for Rich Rodriguez on the football team. Grady’s first year under Coach Beilein was a wild roller coaster ride that left the fan-base of Michigan basketball intrigued, perplexed, and eventually disappointed. It all started when the Wolverines traveled to Washington for a game against the highly ranked Georgetown Hoyas in just the third game of last year. Grady started. He scored. He passed. He broke presses. All this and he was just a freshman. Michigan lost the game by 22 points, but we fans didn’t care.

We saw something special in our new freshman point guard.  Fast forward several weeks to January 2^nd, when the Wolverines played host to the then number 5 ranked team in the country, the Wisconsin Badgers, who knew that would be the last game for the next several games that Grady would start.

Michigan fans were amazed when walk-on C.J. Lee, an energetic and feisty point guard, was the starter when the Wolverines played Purdue on January 5^th.  When the Wolverines were already 4-10, why would the superbly more talented freshman get moved to the bench? Shouldn’t we be developing him so we get better in the future?

Many wondered why Beilein decided to bench Grady. Fans and media couldn’t see into the head of one of college basketball’s most intelligent minds. It became known, through interviews, pressers and word of mouth, that Grady just simply “didn’t get it.” He had the ball handling skills, vision and jump-shot. The problem is, those are all the attributes that fans can see from the exterior;  yet we had no idea what Grady was like as a motivator- which is an important job for a point guard- or as a leader. With many fans still being unfamiliar with Beilein’s offense at the time, we also didn’t know if Grady was running the plays right, or taking shots at the right time. But soon, we would come to find out , his benching was precisely because he wasn’t leading, or motivating, nor taking the right shots. The rest of the year Grady seemed to have lost it. Perhaps it was because when Beilein sat him on the bench that day in West Lafayette, Grady lived up to his reputation and couldn’t handle it. His season didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to, much like Michigan’s, and what Grady did in the off-season seemed to be the model for his teammates. Work hard, listen, get better.

Fast forward to January of 2009. Now, Kelvin Grady is once again a starter. He didn’t start the year in this position however; he was only named the starter once senior guard David Meritt was sidelined due to illness. Grady has played with a swagger this year, and has garnered attention from the national media with several games on national television. In particular, the Wolverines victory against Duke early in the season saw Grady weaving in and out of defenders, breaking presses, setting up teammates, pushing the ball in transition, and scoring. He finished the game with 9 points and 4 assists, hardly a flashy stat-line. But then again, flashy is not what Beilein’s offense is about. It’s about ‘getting it.’ It’s about making cuts, playing tough, and playing smart. Grady is catching on. His teammates are also catching on. Michigan is 13-3 overall this year, and they are ranked in the top 25. Grady’s progress is a big part of the team’s improvement. You see him talking to his teammates more, and you don’t see his confidence go up and down as it did last year when Beilein first sat him on the bench. The team plays gritty. So much so that Beilein believes it can be a staple for his team. He wants them to be known as the team that out-works you. Grady wants the team to listen and look up to him, as they do Beilein, “I’ve got to be another him out there, to work in different situations without looking over to him, to just be able to play and flow.” Well guess what Kelvin? You have become another him out there. 

I’m not listening. Is there another team out there other than North Carolina (because they haven’t had one game that I’d so much as call a game yet) with a more impressive resume so far this season? Two wins over top five teams(at the time of the games) is something that no other team can match at this point. Maybe some teams haven’t been given the opportunity. But we can’t mess around with what if’s.

In John Beilein’s second year at the helm, his team has made drastic improvements, both individually and as a unit. Michigan has knocked off two of the super-giants in college basketball (Duke and UCLA) and its losses are quite impressive:  Duke (currently the seventh-ranked team in the country after Michigan defeated them the second time) and Maryland by five points in College Park (where the Terps are extremely difficult to beat).

Michigan improved towards the end of the year last year, and with the core all returning this year along with the fact that John Beilein has had a history of making his teams do a complete 360 in year two’s means this shouldn’t have come as a shock to many. The funny thing is, it did. Most “experts” had Michigan finishing somewhere between sixth and eighth in the conference. I guess I’m more of an expert than them, because I knew this huge leap was coming. How could you not? History doesn’t lie.  Beilein is the only coach in the history of men’s college basketball to have twenty-win seasons on four different levels. Everywhere he has gone, form Canisius to West Virginia, it’s ‘year one, learning, year two, let’s play ball.’

Everyone should have seen this coming. Last Saturday in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines didn’t just get lucky; they played with Duke the entire way and looked as though they belonged on the same court. John Beilein’s 1-3-1 defense, which is getting more and more recognition (Bob Knight said last week that John Beilein was “the best zone defense coach in the country.”) gave Duke fits all day long. It gave UCLA fits all day long as well.  Beilein has his team executing his style the right way; and he has clearly helped improve their individual games as well. Junior Deshawn Sims has quietly risen into a late first round draft pick on some scouts boards, when at the beginning of the year he wasn’t even in anyone’s top 100. Sophmore Manny Harris has gone from being a one dimensional player who could light up the scoreboard but struggled with decisions into what is now an all-around player. He rebounds, defends, plays smart, and creates for teammates consistently, while at the same time scoring efficiently. And Kelvin Grady has turned into one of the top five point guards in the conference when most last year weren’t sure if he was worthy of being a starter.

So I’ll leave you to think about the question: Is Michigan basketball back?

Jonathan Epstein

Threet or Sheridan? Another question in the long line of inquiries that Rich Rodriguez has had to field since his arrival in Ann Arbor.

After Nick Sheridan led the Michigan Wolverines to their first win in 6 weeks, he went from the guy that people had no faith in just a week ago to the guy that people now deem the best quarterback that Rich Rodriguez has.  Sure, Nick Sheridan played a great game on Saturday; and his passion for Michigan as well as the physical and mental toughness that we so often heard about in spring was finally shown on the field.  

However, people should take note of several things before making a conclusion on who the starter should be this week against Northwestern. The first (and probably most important thing to recognize) is that Steven Threet played just as well, if not better than Nick Sheridan, when he was the starter just a week ago against Purdue. Threet threw for two touchdowns, and, like Sheridan, committed zero turnovers. The undeniable progress of the other Wolverines’ grasp of the spread is what fans must not overlook. Moreover, you can only look at what Threet has done over the last few weeks if you are really going to compare him with Sheridan.

If you watched the game this past week, as well as the Purdue game the week before, you notice the drastic improvement in the teams grasp of Rich Rod’s complicated spread offense. The blocking has been night and day to what it was when Threet first took over this team; both with the wide receivers as well as on the line. And as you will soon find out, the blocking on the outside could very well be the most important aspect of this offense, as bubble screens and short passes alike are major components in a successful spread.

Bubble screens are not hard throws for quarterbacks to make, and the objective of them is to get your playmakers the ball quickly and let them do what they do best: make plays. The last two weeks we have seen the blocking finally begin to look like it should, and the results have been 45 points and 29 (while it could have been much more had it not been for several stalls in the red-zone). They are starting to get it, and the quarterbacks have looked much better in recent weeks because of it. Sheridan may have been good this last week, but Threet has been just as good as of late, and he was even better on the road at Notre Dame when not a single person on this team understood what they were doing yet.

I said earlier to only compare Threet in the last two weeks to Sheridan this week, but it is a major plus that Threet was able to perform the way he did in a huge rivalry game on the road when everyone was still trying to understand what Rich Rod wanted. I would say Sheridan has one distinct advantage over Threet; that is, the ability to throw on the run. You saw it several times Saturday, and it was certainly impressive when Sheridan was able to outrun several rushes and gun it while he was running for his life.

Still, do not do what many fan bases are so prone to doing in football, be it college or professional: give the backup too much praise while not giving the starter enough credit when it is deserved. Just make sure you remember the performance Threet had against Notre Dame in the pouring rain. Make sure you don’t forget the Illinois game, when Threet again threw for two touchdowns against zero interceptions. And lastly, don’t forget the day Threet had last Saturday at Purdue, when he should have gotten a win had it not been for the defense’s pathetic performance. 

Of course you can think twice about who the starter shoud be, but in my opinion Threet is still the guy who deserves the nod this weekend against Northwestern. In a season full of heavy scrutiny from the fan base, missed blocks, and lack of execution, Threet has continued to improve, and an injury should not be the cause of him losing his starting spot.