February 28, 2011 - 11:23pm
Beilein: Michigan has moved on from Wisconsin heartbreaker
BY BEN ESTES
MINNEAPOLIS — If there’s one word that could sum up the week that the Michigan men’s basketball team has had, it’s devastation.
The Wolverines went from almost reaching the highest of highs — beating No. 12 Wisconsin, giving them a key resume-boosting win and likely putting them on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble — to the lowest of lows.
As the whole country has seen by this point, the Badgers’ Josh Gasser hit a wild bank shot 3-pointer with time expiring to defeat Michigan 53-52 on Wednesday night. Michigan coach John Beilein’s team was understandably silent in the locker room after the loss, shocked and distraught after falling the way it did.
Still, there’s no time to dwell on the defeat. The Wolverines still have a decent shot of making the field of 68, as long as they win their final two games of the regular season. But they’re no gimmies — Minnesota on the road today and home against rival Michigan State in a week.
Beilein said that despite the pain of the Wisconsin loss, his players have moved past the defeat and are focused on Minnesota.
“I’d be disappointed if they didn’t (feel down),” Beilein said on Friday. “You don’t lose many games like that. (But) I think everybody’s going to pick themselves up on what they could’ve done better in their play.
“We’ll find out (if they’ve recovered), because that was pretty low, what happened the other day. We’ll see how we bounce back.”
Though it’s always harder to win games on the road than at home — especially in the Big Ten — Beilein said that it’s a good thing that Michigan is taking on the Golden Gophers in Minneapolis. Junior guard Stu Douglass agreed.
“It’ll take us away from where it all happened,” Douglass said. “I think we’ll refocus once we hit that floor in Minnesota. We’ll be completely refocused.”
Douglass has been in this situation before. As freshmen two seasons ago, he and junior guard Zack Novak contributed to the Wolverines’ last tournament run, and with the team’s youth, remain the only players to have that experience.
In fact, late in the 2008-09 season Michigan also came to Williams Arena seeking a key win. But as Beilein pointed out, for those Wolverines, the win effectively clinched a tourney bid since they already had several big wins (Duke, UCLA).
Because Michigan fell short against Wisconsin, it needs to beat the Golden Gophers just to stay in the hunt.
“Who knows how many you need to win?” Beilein said. “(Do you have) to win (over) five or six top-50 teams, do you have to show you can win on the road? There’s a lot of things. But (Wisconsin) was one that was there, and didn’t happen. So you say, ‘Ok, now it’s a little harder, but it’s doable.’”
Michigan and Minnesota square off at 4:30 pm EST this afternoon.
