Concordia will probably be the only team all season to arrive in a 15-passenger van driven by one of its players.

But that doesn't matter to Michigan coach John Beilein when it comes to looking at what Michigan will get out of its closer-than-it-appears 86-65 victory over the Cardinals Monday night.

Specifically, the Wolverines will look at their defensive struggles against Concordia. The Cardinals, an NAIA team, have proven to be a team capable of high-scoring games — they put up 98 points against Michigan-Dearborn on Saturday. What made them so effective against Michigan was their offensive movement.

“We’re just really having trouble thinking the game so quickly, just calling switch,” Beilein said following the game. “A couple of our guys are calling switch when it’s too late, when there’s an obvious screen.”

But the Wolverines’ inexperience was made evident by their difficulty in dealing with screens, often leaving shooters open on the wing or allowing gaps in the defense.

Poor communication by Michigan led to wide-open shots and allowed the Cardinals to score 65 points on the Wolverines. Only one other team this season has match that total amount on the Wolverines — the University of Texas El Paso.

“I don’t that there’s gonna be any game that we can just play … (when) our inexperience doesn’t show through and then we’re exploited because of that,” Beilein said after the game.

Beilein and several players mentioned the importance of watching game tape this week in order to see the mistakes and miscues that were made defensively and alleviate as many of those errors as possible before Michigan takes on Utah this Friday.

“I’m always trying to move on and you’re always concerned if your team is improving at the right rate, but we’re going to be young all year long — it’s not going to stop,” Beilein said after the game. “We’ll just get better at being young.”

LINEUP CHANGES: Despite the struggles of freshmen Tim Hardaway Jr. and Evan Smotrycz in the past two games — the pair has shot just 5-for-26 from the field — Beilein doesn't intend to make a lineup change anytime soon.

Smotrycz is listed as a forward on the roster, though he has an affinity for shooting from behind the arc. But recently, he has had trouble defending the quicker guards on the perimeter. So when opposing teams start with four guards, Smotrycz and other big men are a liability on the defensive end.

In Saturday’s 65-62 win over Harvard, the Crimson started four guards at the beginning of the second half, which prompted Beilein to start junior Stu Douglass in place of Smotrycz in order to keep with the quickness of Harvard’s guard play.

But Utah only starts two guards, so it appears as though Michigan’s starting lineup will remain the same at least through this weekend.

BY THE NUMBERS: In a game in which most fans expected to see players like junior Corey Person and sophomore Josh Bartelstein racking up the minutes, it was the usual suspects for the Michigan men’s basketball team.

Except, even more so.

Against Concordia University, junior Zack Novak and sophomore Darius Morris both played 36 minutes.

That’s more than Novak played against Clemson and more than Morris played against UTEP. It’s even more court time than the pair saw when they faced off against then-No. 9 Syracuse.

“I came in here to play, just like any other game,” Novak said. “It’s just the way it worked out.”

Novak made good use of his minutes, grabbing a career-high 14 rebounds and scoring 12 points — his second straight double-double.

Morris added 19 points and had a 6-to-1 assist to turnover ratio.