Michigan coach John Beilein spoke with the media following his team’s 85-67 come-apart in Iowa City against the Hawkeyes on Saturday afternoon. You can watch the full press conference using the embedded media player below or read notes and quotes after the jump.
Video footage from Brendan Stiles of HawkeyeDrive.com. Notes and quotes after the jump.
Opening statement: “We ran into a buzz saw today of Iowa. This is the way they were playing so much in the first semester no matter who they were playing against. They punched us early and it was hard to respond. Someone said to me it was like Yogi Ferrell shooting against us. No, we had somebody close to Yogi Ferrell. Somehow (Roy Devyn Marble) just got open, and we got to figure out what happened in that. But then overall, we knew the offensive rebounding was going to be a problem. They got some long guys that hit the boards. 15 was too many, probably five too many. All that being said, it was their defense that won the game. They had a tremendous game defensively. We couldn’t get anywhere we wanted to go, and they really guarded our players very well.
- On what Iowa did against Nik Stauskas defensively: “You’re going to have to watch film and figure that out. I don’t like giving out what happens all the time, but they did a great job of really paying attention to him and guarded him in ball screens a couple different ways.”
- On Iowa being a desperate team: “I respect every team in this league. I think everybody in February right now is in desperation to do the very best that they can. I didn’t watch much of their last two losses here, but they lost to two pretty good teams: Ohio State at one time was undefeated and Michigan State is a Final Four candidate. They haven’t lost to, like, bad teams. They certainly beat us today because they have a talented, experienced team with a really good coach.”
- On the halftime adjustments: “Yeah it was really remarkable, those three turnovers that we had to come out in the second half was not good at all. So we tried to do some different things. I thought the whole goal was to get under 10 at half and we almost got there. We still had a foul to give in the first half, and we didn’t do it. And then in the second half we came out and just threw the ball away. As I always say, it’s good for us. We can look at several of our players and say, ‘okay, they guarded us this way, what do we do?’ We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
- On Iowa’s transition offense and Devyn Marble’s threes: “The transition offense is really good here — I think you know that. They’re as dangerous after a make as they are after a miss because they push it so much. We’ve got to get back and match up, and they were much better at it than us today. I think that’s where he got a lot of those, and I think he got a couple of them off set plays. A couple of them we guarded, a couple of them we didn’t guard very well.”
- On Glenn Robinson III struggling: “He had a bad game. He had a bad game. He had a great game the other day.”
- More on Roy Devyn Marble: “That was a Player of the Year candidate performance right there, that’s for sure. He’s good. He’s a senior. There are some really good seniors in this league. They are so blessed to have him and (Melsahn) Basabe who are hungry, they were so close last year, they’ve watched the program just grow like this. And (Zach) McCabe the same thing. I mean, they got three seniors. And I’ve had some teams like that. The seniors — they’re going to make it happen. Those three are making this thing happen. It’s tremendous, it’s a great story.”
- On Iowa’s depth: “They can do a lot of things. I thought that was — when we got back a little bit in the first half and then he went back to his starters and then they took it away there at the end. It’s really good. We’re going eight deep and that’s all we’re going. Nine, 10, 11 can bite you sometimes because guys don’t get into a rhythm. But today it was really, really good.”
