The Michigan Wolverines are 7-0 and sit atop the NET, KenPom and Bart Torvik rankings, while coming in at No. 3 in the latest AP Poll.
Michigan had a huge last week, and with all the early success this
season, the Wolverines could have a “hunted” mentality, which could lead to slip-ups. But that is certainly not the case. Instead, Michigan has handled its success with caution.
The Wolverines played three straight games in Las Vegas and won by the largest margin ever (110 points) for a Division 1 program in that span. As the staff prepared for each opponent, they were given less and less time with the nature of the tournament. Despite the limited time, assistant coaches Justin Joyner, Kyle Church and Mike Boynton put together a solid game plan, and the players executed it to perfection.
“We realized less is more for a team,” Joyner told the media on Thursday. “We don’t wanna overload them with stats, coverages, or solutions offensively. We wanna give them the nuts and bolts, and we wanna try and prepare them for what’s gonna happen a lot in the game. And then allow them to be themselves and go execute at a high level. I think kind of the theme for this team has been just hit singles, like just keep it simple, hit singles. We have really good players around us. If we can do the simple things at a high level, we’ll be hard to beat.”
There is no question the Wolverines have “really good players.” Head coach Dusty May recruited the No. 11 high school recruiting class and the No. 2 transfer portal haul. He paired that with four returning players who made massive contributions a year ago. Despite the talent, chemistry and connection on the court takes time, and after a slower start to the season, Michigan is clicking on all cylinders.
“I think one of the things the portal can expose is your locker room a little bit,” Joyner said. “You’re bringing in new personalities on a year-to-year basis, so, you have to have your locker room intact early to have success early and I think we’ve done a good job. Luckily, we didn’t recruit guys that aren’t good people, and they like each other, so that’s a huge piece to it.
“I think our guys have learned a lot through film and learned a lot through failure. The best way to fail, I think, is to win, obviously. You look at some of our games earlier in the season, we didn’t play great, and people were kind of like, what’s going on? It gave us a chance as a staff to really hone in on some things that we felt were gonna help us in the long run, and I think our guys have taken hold to it.”
No one knows about learning through failure like Nimari Burnett. As a member of the 2023 team that won just eight games, he has stuck through the rebuild and has now taken on a major leadership role.
Burnett’s outlook is simple — those who stay will be champions. It is one thing to speak the famous Bo Schembechler motto, but it’s another to genuinely live it.
“I think we handle that success by understanding what’s at stake in the long run of things,” Burnett said. “Still got tons of things to play for — Big Ten Championship, National Championship, etc., and we feel like we have the group to do this. So although it feels good to have that early success throughout the season, we feel even more motivated to go out there and more confident to go out there and beat teams, whoever we step out against.”
The Wolverines will have a target on their back the rest of the season, so long as they keep winning. Success can get to a player or a team’s head and can cause mistakes, frustration and self-doubt if things aren’t going exactly the right way. But it can also bring out the best in athletes.
For Michigan, in the short term, the heightened success has brought out leadership, strong bonds and genuinely talented basketball that has put the entire country on notice. The only thing to do is to keep at it and continue to grow.
“Nobody feels like they’re better than anybody else, even now with all the success that we’re getting” Yaxel Lendeborg said. “Now, it’s like nobody thinks that it’s too much, too little, you know, we’re just so even keel and wanna be considered the hunters and not the hunted.”
Michigan will briefly open up Big Ten play on Saturday, hosting Rutgers, before taking on Villanova next Tuesday in Ann Arbor.
