On this night, it was the familiar blend of turnovers, poor shot selection and an overall lack of offensive rhythm that doomed Indiana in a 69-45 loss. The Hoosiers were just 1-of-15 from behind the arc, shot 36.5 percent from the floor for the game and committed 19 turnovers, leading to 21 Michigan points.

“We got a lot of good looks, but they just wouldn’t fall,” Verdell Jones said afterward, referring in particular to the 3-point shooting.

Indiana fans can take heart in the Hoosiers’ defensive effort, which the final score probably doesn’t do justice. The visitors forced 16 turnovers and never let Michigan find its 3-point shot, one of the Wolverines’ preferred scoring methods. And it wasn’t until late in the second half that Michigan truly pulled away — cued, unsurprisingly, by Manny Harris’ 17 second-half points, most of which came in the final minutes.

“Credit Indiana, they did a wonderful job,” Michigan coach John Beilein said after the game. “I was really impressed with how they played defense today.”

Christian Watford continued to prove a bright spot for Indiana, finishing with 16 points and eight rebounds. As a team, in fact, IU finished with a 32-28 advantage in points in the paint and pulled down 12 offensive rebounds.

But even in their statistical victories, there were flaws. Too often, Hoosier guards drove the baseline only to fall to traps and subsequent turnovers. And Indiana’s perimeter players struggled to get the ball inside to Watford and other big men on several occasions, forcing bad passes into double teams, leading to more giveaways.

“We’ve got to swing it and drive so that we can get the defense rotating and then try and throw it in there,” Jones said of Indiana’s attempts to feed the post. “I think we were doing one pass or no passes and trying to throw it in, and they were reading on it.”

Again, Indiana fell short of the kind of signature conference win its fans would like to see, but this performance was not so listless as the first road loss this season, a 79-54 loss at Ohio State. But the one-two punch of DeShawn Sims and Manny Harris — good for 41 points and 14 rebounds by night’s end — was too much for the Hoosiers.

“At the end of the day, two of the better players in the country — two of the very best players in this league — were too much for us to handle,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “When we’re not clicking on all cylinders defensively, we don’t have enough guys that can make plays individually to keep people from going where they want to go. And (Michigan) just did an excellent job with it.”

“We kind of came unglued at the end, after playing a very, very strong game for so long, and never letting ourselves get rattled. But we did get rattled at the end, and it was because of the abilities of Manny Harris and the abilities of DeShawn Sims.”

John Beilein:

The Wolverines finished just 10-22 a year ago, but are 11-3 this season and own wins over a pair of top ten teams in UCLA and Duke.

The key to the turnaround: a balanced attack with 10 guys playing over 14 minutes per game and the play of sophomore guard Manny Harris and junior forward DeShawn Sims.

Harris is leading the Big Ten in scoring at 18.8 ppg and is making a living from the foul line. He’s connected on 83 of 95 free throw attempts (87%). The key to stopping Harris may be letting him shoot the three as he’s hitting just 30 percent.

Sims ranks third in the Big Ten in scoring with 16.6 ppg and is the conference leader with 8.8 rebounds per game.

Besides Harris and Sims, three other guards are seeing significant clock for Beilein’s club and two have Indiana ties. Laval Lucas-Perry, a transfer from Arizona, started for the first time in Sunday’s win over Illinois and is the third leading scorer at 11.6 ppg.

Zack Novak, a freshman guard from Chesterton, is one of the biggest surprises in the Big Ten. Beilein inserted Novak into the starting lineup prior to the Big Ten opener against Wisconsin and he responded with 20 points. Novak leads Michigan with in three-pointers made with 23.

“He’s got great confidence in shooting the ball,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “And the other thing that I think he does as well as anybody is this league right now is cut. His cuts are always fast, they’re hard, they’re definitive.”

Stu Douglass, a freshman from Carmel and former teammate of Daniel Moore, has started 13 of 14 games and is scoring 4.8 ppg in 19.3 minutes.

“They are a very good team and there are not a lot of weaknesses to their team,” Crean said. “They know exactly what they want to do and they know exactly who they are”

Related:

• John Beilein teleconference audio
• Bruce Weber teleconference audio

If second year coach John Beilein hopes to improve on his debut season in Ann Arbor, much of his success will be a direct result of the maturation process of sophomore guard Manny Harris.

The Detroit native averaged 16.1 points last season and was a second team All-Big Ten selection for a Wolverine club that managed just ten wins. If Michigan hopes to reverse the trend, they’ll need leadership out of their go-to-guy.

“The biggest thing that I slacked on last year that I can do better this year is being a vocal leader, making sure that I get through to the team with what we need to do,” Harris said at Michigan’s media day. “How I’m going to do that is by working hard myself everyday and in every practice so that it will be easier for them to listen to me.”

With the offensive freedom afforded by Beilein to his back court players, Harris should have no problem building on last year’s scoring totals. If he can cut down the turnovers (3.6 per game) and improve on his three-point shooting (31 percent), he’ll find himself on the All-Big Ten team.

The random assortment of observations that is this column starts … now:

– There were times I watched last night, and I felt like I was watching Memphis or North Carolina. In that, I mean that it was so clear one team was more talented than the other, that it became obvious that the more talented team didn’t need to do much strategically besides run down the floor and let their talent take over. The Michigan 1-3-1 zone was entirely ineffective against the half court, and the man-to-man was even worse. It was obvious: No matter what the Wolverines did, no matter what their players tried individually or as a group, they weren’t going to keep IU from scoring when it wanted to. As an IU fan, that was a tremendous feeling, and a totally alien one.

It also speaks, I think, to what we’ve been complaining about a little in the early stages of this season. Many of us have begged for more offensive structure. Many of us want to see Gordon running off screens all night. Whatever it is we want, Kelvin Sampson is clearly trying to strike a delicate balance between letting his talent do its walking, and letting his strategy rein it in. So far, it seems to be working.

– Poor John Beilein. Every missed three, every shanked layup, looks like it’s already taking years off the man’s life. At the very least, it’s robbing him of his few remaining hairs. It’s not his fault: This talent isn’t his, and with the exception of Manny Harris, Beilein has very little to work with in his first year. Surely he knew what he was getting into, so sympathy is probably wasted on him. Still, you can’t help but think he longs for the heady days of Kevin Pittsnogle and Mike Gansey, when the three pointers flowed like wine and the women flocked instinctively like the salmon of Capistrano.

— D.J. White was a monster last night, and is totally deserving of praise. That said, I’ll temper it a little bit, because within a few minutes it became clear as day that Michigan simply doesn’t have what any reasonable basketball fan would call a “post player” on their team. Sure, they have semi-tall guys. But those are merely that. Tall. They can’t score, defend, or rebound — or at least they didn’t last night — so D.J.’s big time performance is a little bit less impressive than it normally would have been.

All that said: D.J. was still a monster in almost every way. Bodes well for the immediate future, that does.

– I feel obligated to defend Jordan Crawford. Crawford caught a lot of hate in last night’s game thread from you Hoosier faithful, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Crawford didn’t shoot very well, didn’t take care of the ball, and even worse, chose to attack at all the wrong times. He was pressing, and he didn’t have a very good game. But it was one game. It’s important not to forget what we’ve seen from Crawford in past games, when he was a player that showed an uncanny knack for scoring the basketball in idiosyncratic ways. He remains a freshman, and will be prone to mistakes throughout the year; not only that, but his defense leaves a lot to be desired. But I think we know the alternative — Armon Bassett — is not exactly a defensive specialist himself, nor is he the most efficient court general either. So yes, Crawford had a bad game. But let’s not lose perspective about how good Crawford has been, or even more importantly, how good he can be.

– We learned a lot about Steve Lavin last night. Let’s count those things:

• He really, really, REALLY likes Eric Gordon. If Eric Gordon were an ice cream flavor, Steve Lavin would order him every time. Hey, I feel him. I would too.
• He is, apparently, an ass man. How do I know this? Throughout the game (but most specifically in a segment discussing DeAndre Thomas) he used the words “Fantastic Fannies.” I thought that was a clever little bit of alliteration, but little did I know he had an entire prepped segment discussing the college game’s truly “Powerful Posteriors.” Seriously! Also this: “The hips and girth are important. The gluteus maximus is underrated as a weapon.”
• He’s a baseball fan. Lavin called Gordon’s signature one-hand tomahawk dunk a “Tom Seaver by-the-blue fastball.” I get it, but I kind of don’t get it.
• He is a fan of Eastern cultures. He said DeAndre Thomas was “planting in the post like a sumo wrestler.” While visually accurate, I’m not sure how many sumo wrestlers plant in the post, let alone play basketball. Thomas might be the closest thing yet. (Disclaimer: Only kidding! I love Dre, and totally admire the amount of work he’s put in to get in shape this season.)
• His wife is an actress, but not only that, she just finished wrapping a music video with Ludacris. Rap videos are in a process of transition right now, transitioning (thankfully) from bootie-shaking cash tosses to gritty street realism. Still, the thought of Steve Lavin’s wife in a rap video — where women are rarely treated as such — is a totally odd thought.

All that aside, I’ll admit it: I love Steve Lavin. He’s thoughtful, articulate, intelligent, self-aware, and funny and, in my limited experience, a genuinely nice dude. The world needs more Steve Lavin, if you ask me, which you didn’t.

– Finally, Brandon McGee’s final shot was pretty silly, but the best thing about it wasn’t Sampson’s reaction (“Don’t do that!”) or the Michigan crowd’s (“Assholes! Assholes!”). No, it was Jamarcus Ellis trying to hide his smile in his jersey like a grade schooler trying not to laugh in class. We caught you, Jamarcus, but don’t worry: We were laughing too.

It was impossible not to laugh last night; that win was as good as they get. Here’s to plenty more of those in the Big Ten calender … and plenty more of Steve Lavin, too.

The 6-5 freshman guard from Redford High in Detroit enters tonight’s game against the Hoosiers averaging 16.5 ppg, good for fifth in the conference. He’s also among the league leaders in free throw percentage (83.2 percent, 4th), steals (1.57, 7th) and minutes played (31.7, 9th).

Harris scored 25 points in Saturday’s 65-58 loss to Purdue and was able to find a few positives from as the Wolverines fell to 4-10.

“Our best is still to come, and we’re still getting better,” Harris told Jeff Arnold of the Ann Arbor News. “You can pull a lot of positives out of this game, but it’s still a negative because we lost. We’re trying to learn what it takes to win every game we play. We just still have to get over the hump.”

While there are sure to be comparisons with Hoosier freshman Eric Gordon tonight by the ESPN announcing crew of Brent Musberger, Steve Lavin and Erin Andrews, Michigan coach John Beilein is not interested in comparing Harris with anyone.

“I don’t get into those things at all. That’s my biggest beef with the announcers, how they make such a big deal about the outstanding freshmen in the country,” Beilein said. There won’t be any talk of how they stack up against each other. Both of them are just trying to get better and play. They are good, but over four years there are going to be a lot of good players if they’re patient.”

(Photo credit: Rise Magazine)

There are two things you need to know about Michigan in 2007-08. The first: They have a new coach in John Beilein, a system-oriented coach known for maximizing his overmatched teams’ potential. The second: His new team has very little potential to maximize.

The Wolverines are almost entirely new this season. Not only do they have a new coach, but their starting five is 80 percent new; only Ron Coleman returns. That means no Courtney Sims, no Lester Abram, no Dion Harris, and none of Brent Petway’s occasionally brilliant highlights. That also means no Tommy Amaker, whose inability to turn last year’s senior-laden lineup into anything better than a marginal bubble team sent him packing to Harvard before he had the chance to coach this year’s rebuilding effort.

Unfortunately for Michigan fans, this year holds even less promise. Michigan’s pre-conference schedule hasn’t been the easiest (in other words, it’s no Hoosier schedule), but the Wolverines have hobbled to a discouraging 4-7. That includes understandable losses to Georgetown, Duke, and Butler… but it also includes tough drops to Western Kentucky, to Central Michigan and — perhaps worse of all — to Amaker’s Harvard squad. Is Amaker suddenly the talent-maximizer? What happened to Beilein’s scheme?

Hint: nothing, really. The Wolverines are playing just as slow as Beilein’s teams always have. Problem is, they haven’t yet made a shot. With only 63 or so possessions in 40 minutes, shooting is imperative, and a 49.6% effective field goal percentage will get you nowhere. Or, it will get you to 4-7 before conference play even starts.

The Bottom Line: As it is with everyone we’ve previewed so far — recurring theme alert! — the Wolverines are unlikely to be good in Beilein’s first season. This is a young team with a new coach, and if Michigan’s shots start falling they could be a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team. But Beilein won’t be judged by his first year in Ann Arbor, nor should he be. It’s what he does this year for the program’s long-term health that will matter most.

Read the Rest of our Big Ten Preview:
– Northwestern
– Iowa