Michigan Basketball December 9 - sportznut02's Blog

sportznut02's Blog

Michigan Basketball December 9

Posted on December 9, 2008 at 01:54 PM.

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April 8, 2007 John Beilein was hired in as Michigan�s Basketball coach. Right after it was announced that Tommy Amaker was being let go, John Beilein was the guy that I was hoping would be the next coach of Michigan basketball. Luckily it turned out that he would become the next coach. My two favorite plays in basketball are the 3 pointer and the back door cut. Two things that John Beilein teams specialize in. Wherever he coached whether it Canisius, Richmond, or West Virginia he turned programs around and made them into winners.

We finished last week at 1-1. I thought we could do that but just a little different way. After losing to Maryland 75-70 last Tuesday, It didn`t look like 1-1 was going to happen. We had our chances in the Maryland game but couldn`t make the plays down the stretch.

Going into Saturday I thought we could play them close but I didn`t think we were ready to win games like this yet. Man does it feel good to be wrong. Yes I know that Duke was downright awful from behind the arc. But if you watch that game again you will see that Michigan missed numerous easy buckets around the rim. Deshawn Sims was "tremendous" with 28 and 12, Manny chipped in with 17 and Zack Novak helped out with 14 and two big 3 pointers late in the second half. It`s looking we may have found a 3rd scoring option in Novak. Let�s not forget Kelvin Grady who finished with 9 points and 4 assist and 0 turnovers in 28 minutes.

It`s nice to actually see players now developing for Michigan basketball. It seemed to me that players under Amaker never seemed to improve. You can see that here under Coach Beilein. Just look at Deshawn Sims who has grown leaps and bounds here in the last 2 years. We are even getting big minutes from Jovan Shepherd.

One player who I hope will improve as the year goes along is Zach Gibson. Hopefully he will be more aggressive on the glass, and not so passive on the offensive end.

We have four remaining non-conference games left with Eastern Michigan, Oakland, North Carolina Central and Florida Gulf Coast. Right now this team is looking at a 10-2 start heading into conference play as long as there are no meltdowns in the next 4 games. The 10 wins would match last year�s season total for wins.