John Beilein At Big Ten Media Day Comment Count

Brian

[Ed: I bet this causes something less than a 130-comment blowup.]

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Bryan Fuller

COACH BEILEIN: Good to get to this point of the year where we're ready to start another season. I like my team. I like the way we practiced. Different format has allowed us to experiment with some things and give us a little bit more contact with the players, more access. But it's a long season and we still have a long ways to go, even to get ready for our first games let alone our conference season. But I do
like our team. I like the way we've approached the preseason. But we have a lot of things to replace.

We have five seniors that graduated last year that were incredible leaders for our team and sacrificed so much for the other guys. Now you lose two guys to the first round of
the NBA. There's obviously some replacement to do. At the same time, there's 25 or 30 shots out there. There's another 80 minutes out there. I think our guys are embracing the opportunities that they have in front of them.

Q. Obviously recruiting is very accelerated, Coach, but how have you seen making it to a national championship affect recruiting since then, please?

COACH BEILEIN: That's a common question. Recruiting is such a unique science to it.
I think there's been good things and I think it hasn't made a difference in some other ways as well. Certainly I think we're on a lot of people's lists. At the same time, everybody has different reasons for choosing their next university, the university they're going to go to. So I've seen some really good things, but at times it's maybe not the right fit. So we just keep doing what we are doing.

The young men we did have in recruiting probably were not the Trey Burkes and the Tim Hardaways, weren't on the top of anybody's lists. There's a lot of different ways to form a good team.

Q. The past few years you've been here, can you sense the target on Michigan
getting bigger from the other Big Ten teams?

COACH BEILEIN: No, I don't think about that at all. I think all the time that we are – we're just trying to be the best that we can be. And we have enough things to do to grow our program right now let alone worry about any target on our back. We just keep playing and trying to improve and take each day trying to improve, really.

Q. There's been a lot of discussion about Glenn perhaps changing positionally a
little bit, moving more toward the perimeter. Is that happening? And, if so, how is his skill development affecting the process?

COACH BEILEIN: Really, last year he was not an inside player at all. So he's been a
perimeter the whole time. I think the biggest difference is what I just alluded to. There's 80 more minutes and there's a good 20 to 30 shots, scoring opportunities that Trey and Tim rightfully took upon themselves last year that are wide open.

We want him to fill a lot of those opportunities, attacking from all different sides.
We can play big. We can play guards – all guards. We can do a lot of things. He'll probably
be on the floor no matter what we do.

Q. Regarding some of the new rules aimed toward decreasing the physicality of the
game, the Big Ten's a physical league, do you think the league's in any way being targeted by those rules?

COACH BEILEIN: The people that have changed the rules over time have really had a
good record at doing this. There's some experimentation probably we would have preferred at times. But we led the country in not fouling last year. I think we were number one or number two in not fouling. So I don't think there's going to be a
big change in how we coach.

And the block charge, I hope it simplifies things. I do not know that it does. We have to wait. And this is where I defer to the experts and say, okay, if they think it will work, they've done enough research on it, we just go and we adjust from there.

But we've had a scrimmage and inter squad scrimmage. I haven't seen the difference, in
particular, in how the game was called against us. And I think other teams have a drastic difference. But who knows.

[ED: Was this five minutes long? Yeesh.]

Comments

ClearEyesFullHart

October 31st, 2013 at 12:09 PM ^

If the new rules truly stop teams from shoving, grabbing and holding cutting players...The B1G is in a whole lot of trouble.  MSU and Wisconsin are going to foul out their starters in about 5 minutes.