ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It’s an unfamiliar feeling returning to Ann Arbor — the feeling of a loss by the Michigan basketball team.
It’s been 10 months since the Wolverines‘ last loss, and that was in the Sweet 16 of last year’s NCAA Tournament. However, after starting 14-0 this season and ranking No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, in the NET rankings, and on KenPom (where Michigan still has the No. 1), the maize and blue now know the feeling of not coming out on top.
In some ways, that’s a good thing, head coach Dusty May says.
May met with the media after the 91-88 loss to Wisconsin at Crisler Center and had a lot to share about why things haven’t been as good as they were earlier in the season, why having a loss like this could be a positive, and what went wrong.
Here is everything he had to say.
Opening statement
I want to thank our fans. They created a heck of a home court environment today. They brought the energy, the enthusiasm, and I also want to give Wisconsin credit. They came in here, and they took a punch early, they responded, and went in at halftime with some positive momentum, and came out in the second half and knocked us on our heels a little bit.
They exposed some things with our plan, with our team, that we thought were going to be issues this year. We just didn’t think we would see so many of them on the same night. They made plays. Our plan, our coaching, our playing wasn’t up to our standards, but in reality, it’s been four games since we’ve played really well. To be honest, the only thing I’m disappointed in was when we started competing at a high, high level, it looked different than the other 25 or 30 minutes of the game. We can’t be a team with what we’re playing for that has two different levels of intensity, of relentlessness, and that’s what happened today.
I don’t want to take anything away from Wisconsin. They came in here, and they did it. They took it.
When did you see that change where the intensity picked up? Can you talk about Roddy’s impact on the defensive end?
Yeah, I thought Roddy played inspired defensive basketball. As far as the momentum, we had a 14-point lead. We went in for a timeout and came out, and they had the ball and a black hole bangs in a 3. I don’t remember what happened at the other end. He got another clean three. I thought that changed the complexity of the game, and then from that point on, they controlled tempo. I thought they kind of scrapped their continuity motion and ran the clock down, got to a high ball screen or a match-up and took advantage of it. We’ve got to find some more solutions on the fly when things aren’t working. That’s what happened from my perspective.
54 points for them in the second half. How much does it tip your cap? They’re making shots all over the place. How much do you blame your defense for that?
It’s our defense. It’s a combination of our plan and our execution. Once again, they played well. I thought their ability to get where they wanted to off the bounce in some match-ups that we usually don’t have that happen against. It caused us to change our rotations. It caused us to change our coverages. It wasn’t as if they weren’t making plays. Especially Boyd Blackwell, the winner made a big shot or two. The thing that really jumped out, and I didn’t go back and look at the film was it seemed like several rebounds offensively, especially. We fought for them. We worked for them. We got in position to get them.
I thought we had them, and then they would come in with a fingertip or just a way to knock it loose, and we weren’t able to come up with those possessions. I thought in a game like this, when they were scoring like they were, if we could have gotten a few more offensive rebounds and made them play defense, then possibly you take a little bit of the rhythm out of the game for them, but we weren’t able to secure them. It was a night we needed some offensive rebounds, so we weren’t on the defensive end so long.
I think their time of possession was off the charts if we went back and looked at it.
Was 3-point defense one of the things you were talking about being exposed early?
Yes, absolutely.
Can this be a good thing, and how could this be a good thing moving forward for your guys?
Yeah, it’s a good thing. Whether we played poorly and won, whether we played poorly and lost, whether we played great and won, our mindset is good. Whatever happens, we’re going to respond to it in the right way. I do think, I heard a good friend say this the other day, it’s like your grass growing. You don’t realize it needs cut until you take a couple days off, and then you see it, and it’s grown, and you need to cut your grass. Our grass was probably growing a little bit under our feet. We weren’t quite as active or determined, and our processes haven’t been as good lately. Like I said, it’s been four games since we felt like we played really well, and with the competitive spirit we need to do what we want to do.
Now it’ll be how do we respond to this. It’s a great time for us to go on the road and grow together and become more accountable to each other as a group. Obviously, this one sting,s but we’re excited to see if we can bounce back because our season’s so long.
What is it with your perimeter shooting that you’re not getting quite as many open looks as one might anticipate and what are you doing to improve that? Is it just Wisconsin perimeter D that combatted you and missing several 3s versus theirs or are you just not getting enough open looks?
Probably like everything else, it’s a combination of all of them. Some are open, some are contested, some are off the dribble, some are off the catch. It’s tough to say that all 17 are under the same umbrella. I’d have to look at them, but I do think that they did a nice job down the stretch of taking away. When Rez caught the ball in the post, and when Aday caught in the post, there was three people within one step. We’ve got to find some solutions to get better shots. If we’re happy with the shots we got, then we need to live with the results and continue to find a way to defend better and offensive rebound better. I don’t know off the top of my head where they were wide open, where they kind of open, where they contested. If they didn’t go in then yes we need to generate better looks across the board.
You talk about levels of intensity. Elliot was talking to us back here saying that he felt like practice this week wasn’t up to your guys’ standard. Did level of intensity play a factor there and I guess how do you want to change practice moving forward after a week of two close games like this?
Absolutely, that’s what I meant about as far as our processes have to improve, our practice habits, our day to day habits have to be at a championship level or we’re just going to simply rely on the other team not playing up to their standards or off talent and that’s not a real healthy way to go through a Big Ten season. Yes, absolutely. Yesterday we had two days prior to that that weren’t up to our standards, and yesterday we finally brought it again but like I told them in the locker room, we can’t be celebrating having one out of three really good days of practice when you have as much on the line as we have.
If it was like both games this week the stretch five sort of really was one of those Achilles heels. Defensively I guess not every player can do everything on the court but how do you sort of combat that?
We changed our coverages, we changed our personnel and we didn’t do a good enough job. We actually worked three days on that contingency just because we knew it was coming, we know it’s coming and maybe because we haven’t spent enough time on it, maybe for whatever reason but when they make the first couple there’s such an overreaction then we changed our coverage and then I felt like we overhelmed on the paint touches but when they’re guards I think we probably underestimated how fast Boyd is to his left hand. We said it ad nauseam, and every coach says it.
I mean I bet you go back to their games that they won this year and say, probably the majority of them stood up there and said we told him he’s going left. Well, he still doesn’t. He’s fast, he’s deceptive, he’s got game, and so he got wherever he wanted, and then we came late to make plays, and then he made good decisions for the most part, and it fanned out for each so all of the above. The first couple are on our coverage, and then the next are on our lack of execution and discipline.
Elliot, he polished over on the first half and he just came out and played kind of an incredible nine minutes of the second half and then that was it. Talk about his play today.
Yeah, the foul trouble thing. I need to go back. He had the rebound in his hands. I don’t know how the second one was him. I just had a bad angle, but he plays so har,d and he’s aggressive. It’s tough to play him with two in the first half because he’s so important to us, and so we thought we’d just get it to halftime and we’re still where we need to be and yes, he ignited our offense in the second half. He was very, very effective, but during that stretch, he got in such a good rhythm our defense wasn’t able to give any stops, and so that’s kind of how it is when you lose. It’s the timing of it all.
Like I said, we know what our deficiencies are, and several of them were exposed on the same game, and credit Wisconsin because they’re capable of doing that. They were capable of doing that.
Can you talk about like Morez who was offensively had it figured out today and then maybe gave up some 3s defensively. How do you talk to a player after a game like this?
Yeah, we talk to him about what we need to do to get better. These seasons are long. You see so many different problems. Especially in our league now that there’s different styles. There’s different strengths to every team. There’s different schemes, and so we’ll simply watch his stuff individually. We’ll watch our stuff collectively and figure out what we need to do a little bit better and why it happened the way it happened. That’s our job as coaches to solve problems. We’ve got a couple we need to solve quickly, but we have the right guys in our locker room to fix things.
This is relatively late in the season to lose your first game. I guess does your messaging to this group reflect that 14-1 overall is no reason to panic?
We didn’t talk about the 14-1 or the 1-14. It was more of our process has slid a little bit. We haven’t been on it like we were most of this year. Let’s fix those things and feel like we’ve done what we needed to do to deserve to win. I’m not sure we feel like we deserved; the deserving team won this game. We don’t feel like that’s part of what makes it feel so different. It’s because you don’t feel like you deserve to win this game because of what we did in preparation for it.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Everything Dusty May said after Michigan basketball lost to Wisconsin
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