When Michigan’s basketball team boards its plane to leave Atlanta on Tuesday, coach John Beilein wants to see smiles on his players’ faces.
“If they’re not smiling, we’re going to make them smile,” he said late Monday night (actually early Tuesday morning).
The Wolverines, a No. 4 seed with three freshman starters, were disappointed by their 82-76 loss to Louisville in the national championship game at the Georgia Dome. But they did seem open to the idea of soon smiling about the season they had, if not the way it ended.
“It hurts a lot,” guard Trey Burke, the national player of the year, said. “(But) a lot of people didn’t expect us to get this far. A lot of people didn’t expect us to even get past the second round. You know, we fought. We fought all the way up to this point.”
It was an interesting game for Michigan, which ended the season with a 31-8 record. In the first half, Burke hit his first three shots but played only six minutes because of foul trouble. Spike Albrecht came through with 17 points off the bench, hitting four consecutive 3-pointers.
“He may not win the look test, but he’s going to make plays for this team,” Burke said later of Albrecht.
“Honestly, probably back to high school days,” Albrecht said when asked the last time he’d had such a hot streak. “Coach Beilein doesn’t play guys with two fouls in the first half, so I knew I was in for the rest of the half. I was fortunately hitting shots. Teammates were finding me. That’s about it.”
The Wolverines led by a dozen points with 3:56 remaining in the half, then saw it evaporate under a 16-5 Louisville run to close the half.
“But we were still up 1, and the player-of-the-year had only played (six) minutes,” Albrecht said. “I still felt good going into the second half.”
In the second half, Burke scored 17 points (to finish with 24), but Albrecht scored none (to finish with 17). The Wolverines’ last lead came with 15:46 to play, although they were within four with 1:20 left.
“It was a great game,” Michigan freshman guard Nik Stauskas said. “Everybody saw two really good teams go at it.”
“Obviously, we’re all very disappointed in the loss, but we battled the whole time,” Albrecht said. “That doesn’t take away from all the success we’ve had all season and all the hard work we’ve put in. … But Louisille was the better team today.”
Michigan had reached its first championship game in 20 years with a stirring tournament run that included a come-from-behind victory over No. 1 seed Kansas in the Sweet 16 and victories over Florida in the Elite Eight and Syracuse in the Final Four. Then Louisville’s toughness and quickness — “I have not seen that quickness anywhere,” Beilein said — stopped the Wolverines.
“I’ve had a lot of really good teams over the years, some emotional locker rooms,” Beilein said. “That one was as emotional, or the most emotional, we’ve ever had.”
His was a special team even in defeat, he said, because of “the team unity that we had, the sacrifice we had from the five seniors who did not get to play very much (and) these young guys just buying into the whole team concept.”
