Beilein On No NIT For Michigan: 'I Knew Going In This Was 50-50'
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - Just two seasons removed from playing for the national championship game, the Michigan Wolverines will end their 2014-2015 season without any postseason play at all. The NIT tournament selection committee passed over the Wolverines on Sunday, and head coach John Beilein was disappointed but not surprised.
"I knew going in this was 50-50," Beilein said on a teleconference Sunday night. "I sat there like that at Richmond and West Virginia twice, knowing that they were going to have to make tough choices, and sometimes you don't get that selection. So I don't think I had any real feeling other than just disappointment ... Our kids were excited to have this opportunity, and they don't get to have another year. I get to coach a long time, but they don't get to have that year back, so you feel bad for them."
Over the course of the season, the Wolverines played six teams ranked in the Top 25, and they went 1-5 in those games. They lost to Villanova on Nov. 25. They were obliterated by Arizona on Dec. 13. They dropped an overtime game against Wisconsin on Jan. 24. Michigan's lone win against a ranked team, an upset of Ohio State, came on Feb. 22. Less than a week later, the Wolverines fell to Maryland, and they again lost to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament.
Most of the losses were fairly competitive games, but Beilein understood why the committee deemed Michigan's season as not good enough to warrant inclusion in the tournament.
"I'm disappointed that we're not going to the postseason," Beilein said. "The real fact is, you don't get into these things and you don't go to tournaments when you just come close so many times. You've got to win more games and you've got to do better than we did, and that's a fact. So still proud of our team and how resilient they were all year long. I think we saw great growth in them as we've talked about, but really spots of what could be a brilliant future for the program, for them individually and of course Michigan basketball overall."
Michigan went 8-10 in Big Ten play, in part due to injuries that sidelined two of its best players, Caris LeVert and Derrick Walton Jr., for February and March. Still, Beilein would have liked to see what the Wolverines could do against competition outside the conference.
"In the Big Ten we know each other pretty well, but usually when we get out of the conference at this time of the year, we've had some success," Beilein said. "And just to play against somebody else and on two-day rest and just watch these new things that we're working on perhaps work again and again and again, going down all the way to New York, but it wasn't to be.
"When a team is not running for the bus at the end and they are really just focused on getting better and staying together as a team, it does hurt to end the season," Beilein continued, "but we realize that a lot of teams, there's some 300-and-some teams, and 200-and-some of them are in the same situation we are in, and that's what it is."
Despite the way the season ended, the coach is optimistic about the future, especially how the youngest group of players on this season's roster will be able to use the year's experience in future seasons.
"I think we're very excited about the future," Beilein said. "It's unfortunate you've got to go through a year like this, but we know so much more about our freshmen now than we would have. That's the only way we can look at it going forward ... Things happened, and it does happen to some programs at different times. It does. It's something that we're going to just embrace and move forward."