Max Bielfeldt’s lower legs are legendary. But lately, the large-calved forward is seeing less about them on Twitter, and he thinks that’s a good thing.
“I was making a joke the other day,” he said. “It’s a good sign that I’m playing better when after a game, back in the day, 80 percent of the Tweets were about my calves and now only 20 percent are about my calves. So I think that means I’m playing a little better.”
Known as “Moose” to his coaches and teammates, the 6-foot-7 senior is enjoying a late-career surge. Bielfeldt is averaging just shy of 10 points and 21 minutes per game over the Michigan men’s basketball team’s last three Big Ten contests, on the heels of three seasons in which he barely saw the floor.
He’s now known as a key contributor on a Wolverine squad that, as of late, has impressed with its resiliency in the face of injury and inexperience.
Following Mitch McGary’s departure for the NBA, Jordan Morgan’s graduation and Jon Horford’s transfer, Bielfeldt found himself the Wolverines’ lone upperclassman big man in 2014-15. With each passing game, it becomes increasingly clear he isn’t taking the responsibility lightly.
Rather, Bielfeldt has taken advantage of the role, climbing the depth chart to become — depending on the situation — Michigan’s first big off the bench. Despite their inexperience, it was freshman Ricky Doyle and redshirt freshman Mark Donnal who engaged in a preseason battle to start at the ‘5’ spot, with Bielfeldt viewed as the third horse in a two-lane race.
But that didn’t stop him from helping contain Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky and his five-inch height advantage in Michigan’s 65-60 overtime loss to the Badgers on Jan. 24, or shooting 6-for-9 from the field to help the Wolverines take down Nebraska on Tuesday.
It helps, of course, that Bielfeldt spends the days leading up to games impersonating the very players he’s later assigned to defend. He leads Michigan’s scout team, a role Michigan coach John Beilein says he assigned him “because he’s the brightest of all those guys at knowing college basketball.”
“On the scout team, you kind of see what (your opponents’) go-to moves are,” Bielfeldt said. “It expands your game a little bit. If they have a good turnaround jumper or something, and you try to emulate that in practice and it goes down for you, you might try to incorporate that yourself.”
While being assigned to the scout team is sometimes viewed as a sign that a player shouldn’t expect to contribute in game situations, it’s much the opposite this year for Bielfeldt.
“He’s on that scout team because that’s what the team needs him to do,” Beilein said.
Bielfeldt has been one of the scout team’s de facto captains throughout much of his career. But with LeVert out, he and junior guard Spike Albrecht are the only remaining upperclassmen on Michigan’s active roster, creating shortages on the experience and leadership fronts.
“Three was already a small number,” Bielfeldt said of the dwindling number of veterans. “Two is even less.”
The sheer numbers pose an issue when it comes to simply leading by example. With half a roster’s worth of upperclassmen, it’s easy for experienced players to set the on-court tone. In this particular circumstance, Bielfeldt says the instruction has to be a bit more explicit.
“You just have to talk to the guys more,” Bielfeldt said. “Back in high school, they might not have realized that you kind of need to jog the drill, keep the energy of practice up.
“When you only have two guys who have been here for more than a year, you have to say it more than do it … you have to instill it in them.”
Bielfeldt’s senior status in 2014-15 wasn’t always the plan. Though he has a year of eligibility remaining, Beilein and his staff decided in Summer 2014 that Bielfeldt would be listed as a senior this year.
The decision made sense for both parties; it opened up a scholarship for Michigan’s next freshman class, and it allowed Bielfeldt — who had just 38 career points prior to this season — to transfer for a final season elsewhere, should he choose to.
Bielfeldt took the news in stride, working to establish himself as a leader and taking advantage of his newfound health. He underwent hip surgery toward the end of Spring 2014, sidelining him for nearly the entire summer but relieving him of a major inhibitor to his play.
“Basketball’s a lot more fun when you land and it doesn’t hurt,” Bielfeldt said. “I’m having more fun and playing more, and with the hip surgery I’m just feeling better, so you know, just general cuts and jumps and all that.”
While he’s certainly having more fun playing, Bielfeldt is also flourishing in his roles as a mentor and tutor for his younger teammates. From a mentorship perspective, the Wolverines timed their international summer trip well (the program is allowed to take one every four years).
Michigan spent 10 days in Italy in the offseason, giving Bielfeldt a chance to get to know a class of freshmen that, mid-summer, would typically be busy throughout the day with practice, summer classes, tutoring and other introduction-to-college activities.
“It was nothing crazy,” Bielfeldt told the Daily in November. “I’d go walk around with (freshman guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman) or somebody, learn more about him, and I think overall we’re closer in that.”
It was the details, Bielfeldt said, that made the trip particularly meaningful.
“Little things, like me and Muhammad walking into some little shop and looking at some European soccer jersey,” he said. “I never would’ve done that in the past three years with an older player.”
While it’s not a yearly occurrence for a player who spent his first three years largely on the bench to emerge as a leader and major contributor in his senior season, Beilein says it’s nothing new.
“I’ve seen it before,” Beilein said, “where guys in that senior year all of a sudden are so valuable to you, because they’ve got the experience, that maturity about them, that they’ve been there and done that before.
“They’ve been waiting a long time for that opportunity, so that’s been huge.”
Bielfeldt, regardless of how he got there, is happy to finally be playing major minutes and contributing as much as he has been lately.
“Overall, you just have to be ready,” Bielfeldt said. “Next man up.”
Daily Sports Editor Max Bultman contributed reporting.