John Beilein was pleased with his team’s offense and even how his defense battled against Elon’s motion offense on Monday night.
Beilein praised the Phoenix and also discussed the decision to play Zak Irvin and the strong performances from Derrick Walton and Duncan Robinson.
Opening statement: “I was laughing this morning because I happened to be listening to a local radio show and heard one of their announcers say what a cupcake Elon would be. I’m telling you that team right there is going to win a lot of games this year. They have so many components that are tough to guard, they have all these shooters out there, great guard play, an excellent coach. That was a really good win for us.
“People look at this guarantee games and this actually part of the Atlantis tournament. That team is going to be a great RPI win for us because unless they have injuries they’ll be very good. They play a motion offense which you don’t see… you used to see that stuff all the time. You don’t see it much anymore it was almost like guarding a Princeton. Yesterday our scout team got us pretty good, we practiced two days on it and they were getting layups or open threes. I credit our kids a great amount because they looked at the film, we talked more. I just love the way they responded.”
On Derrick and Duncan: “Confidence right now. The other day Derrick and Duncan did not shoot the ball well. I want everybody every game to shoot like that, but it’ll be different people who will have those type of nights. In some of our shooting drills Derrick has been exceptional, but he’s got a lower percentage from what he can have in the future. He had that swag that ‘I’m a really good shooter’, but when you hesitate you lose all that.”
On the ball not sticking: “We had some issues early in practice with the ball sticking at different spots and one guy would take that extra minute. It’s really important that we look for each other. There was not much sticking today, we just kept the ball moving and found the open man. It happened to be Duncan, but Derrick took some huge shot clock threes off the bounce.”
On Zak Irvin: “He looked great out there. Our defense changed the minute he walked in that game. I’m not measuring him by whether he makes threes, I’m measuring him by his defense, his rebounding and his passing. As a shooter, that will all come.”
On Walton being aggressive: “If you watch him play, in a lot of our action his shoulders are turned toward the sideline. That means he’s looking to pass. You have to turn your shoulders toward the basket and be aggressive down hill and read. The fine line between running a play and being a player is the thing that we’re working with him on. This was a big game for him to be able to do that today.”
On the five position: “I like what Moritz is doing. HE weighed 231 (pounds) today so we’re now plus-20 from when he walked in. He’s on a different weight lifting thing. Mark took charges. Ricky had a rebound and dunk with both hands on the ball above the rim. DJ struggled in some other areas today, he’s just gotta concentrate on less things. I like the way Moe looks right now.
“We can’t rotate four guys there, somebody’s going to beat somebody out and we’ll go with two or three, usually you need three. Two primarily, a third guy will back him up and a fourth will wait his turn.”
On the rotation: “We’re still trying to find out what group works the best, who’s adapting the best, who’s applying the best and then we’re measuring it. We’ll get to a group and somebody will beat somebody out. We had a good lead and were trying to get rest as well, get Caris and Derrick down to 32 or 34.”
On Walton being aggressive: “That hunting mentality is something that he has to have. I think Trey was more of a scorer playing point guard and Derrick is more of a point guard who can score. We have to keep getting him more aggressive because as you can see he has a beautiful jump shot. People aren’t going to hedge hard anymore, they’re going to hang back and dare you to shoot it. He can really shoot it and we have to encourage that.”
On accountability: “Every day we’ve been keeping charts. We know who has won every game whether it’s a shooting game, we’ve been on that. There’s been some times still that I thought our progress has been really slow, way too slow. We’ve been holding every body accountable, we have subs ready to go, but we still our learning curve has to increase. We can’t just keep bumping our head on a ceiling.”
