COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Michigan basketball team didn’t play well Tuesday night, and John Beilein didn’t try to hide it. After the Wolverines fell to Ohio State, 71-52, Beilein said “nobody was very good today.”
Watch Beilein’s postgame press conference in the embedded media player or read select quotes below.
Opening Statement: “The start of the second half wasn’t pretty either, but the first half, we just didn’t play well. We didn’t play well. It didn’t help that Derrick Walton was not in the lineup most of the time in foul trouble. We didn’t play well, and they played very well. And we’re better than that. At the same time, we’ll learn a lot from it. We’ll get better, and our guys will come out of this thing a better team somehow. We’ll make sure of it.”
On whether Michigan displayed lack of energy: “I think you have to add to that the fact that Derrick Walton wasn’t out there. That was a big part of it, because all of a sudden, you have a couple freshman in there trying to figure things out, and they’re a very good defensive team. They turned us over in full court, they got offensive rebounds.
“You can blame it on energy, you can blame it on whatever. They got really talented players. We have to be in the right spots and have the right things.”
On whether the loss stings more because of recent momentum: “No. Every loss stings me the same way. I’m just talking personally; I don’t know about the team. We grow from it. That’s it. By the time we get home, I’ll have watched the whole game. We’ll try and find some answers to what we can do better.”
On amount of unforced turnovers: “We’re still learning. As people guard us differently, people will counter. Just having the team pass the ball, we call it ‘snap passing’ — hitting the guy very quickly when he’s open. It has to grow with this team.”
On guarding D’Angelo Russell after Walton’s foul trouble: “He was going to be a big part, we thought. We lose by 19 and we’re down 15 at half — I don’t think we’re down 15 at half if Derrick’s out there playing the whole time. We weren’t going to play him a lot more — get the third and we’re really done. We just have to continue to grow the bench so when he is in foul trouble — it’s going to happen again — and we need to get better off the bench.
“Nobody was very good today. Not just the bench.”
On playing the freshmen: “Our guys, it looked like they didn’t have some of the stuff we’ve had the last couple of games. Give them a little bit of rest, see if they can come back. When we play these two teams against each other [in practice], it’s a battle every game. Maybe we’re battling too much in practice, and we didn’t have any battle left in us today.”
On Mark Donnal’s good second half: “He hit a left-handed hook, and he had some really tough plays. Ricky took a charge. All our guys, we’re finding victories in all that stuff. We find victories within the losses because they’re making strides in the right direction.”
