For most students at Michigan this week, it’s finals week. For the men’s basketball team, though, this week serves a different purpose: It’s a week for self-improvement.
Following their loss to Arkansas on Tuesday, the Wolverines have eight days before their next game against Oklahoma on December 18th. With so much time to practice without having to prepare for a specific opponent within the next day or two, Michigan can look inward at how it can improve as a whole.
“It gives us a few days to spend on us,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said Friday. “If you’re typically playing every three days, you get back at 5 a.m., and then you obviously can’t practice the next day. So we would be preparing for a game tomorrow, and you would shift all focus toward (that). Now we’re focused on us, but also taking the lessons from last game and then start applying them to how it relates to Oklahoma.”
During this week to work on itself, Michigan has focused on its two sticking points to date: turnovers and defensive rebounding. Both issues were on full display against the Razorbacks, as the Wolverines turned the ball over 12 times in the second half and allowed 12 offensive rebounds in the 87-85 loss.
While Michigan has largely managed to overcome those two issues, both are holding the Wolverines back from reaching the best version of themselves.
“We looked at KenPom, we’re an elite team in almost every facet except for those two things,” redshirt junior forward Will Tschetter said. “We watched every single turnover we had in that game, how we could fix it. Watched every single board that we didn’t grab defensively and how we could have fixed that. And then, you know, emphasized that to a T during practice.”
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