Eli Brooks, DeVante' Jones react to loss to Seton Hall
Michigan basketball let one slip away on Tuesday night in a 67-65 loss to Seton Hall at Crisler Center. Too many defensive lapses and struggles from the perimeter did in the Wolverines, who fell to 2-1 on the season.
Grad senior guard DeVante’ Jones was part of a late-game buckling, fouling out and drawing whistles in a few key moments. He is a gambler on the defensive end of the floor and lost a handful of battles on Tuesday night.
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“Would like to do better defensively,” Jones said after the game. “Can’t make those types of fouls. The refs made some calls that could go either way, but we can’t let anybody but ourselves…we should not have been that close in the first place. We have to go back to the film and see what we can do better.”
The Pirates brought an experienced group filled with long and athletic players into Ann Arbor on Monday night. Jones knew the type of team Michigan was up against and shouldered the burden of having to be better.
“It was different going up against all that length,” he said. “We talked about it earlier knowing that it was going to be a specialty of theirs on defense. I blame myself because I watched a lot of film and knew what I was supposed to do. I’m going to watch film and get better.”
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Michigan fifth-year senior guard Eli Brooks saw similar mistakes made but also stressed ball security. The Wolverines turned the ball over 11 times on Tuesday night.
“Just taking care of the ball, making sure we get a shot every time down the floor, that’s crucial,” Brooks said. “Also, guarding without fouling. Not sending them to the free-throw line in crunch time. Those two things will go a long way.”
What also did Michigan basketball in was its inability to get much of a perimeter game going. The Wolverines were 3-for-15 from three-point range and started the game 0-for-11. Many of those struggles fell on freshman wing Caleb Houstan, who had four points on 1-of-9 shooting.
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He and his teammates are being encouraged to keep putting shots up and not lose confidence.
“My dad always said if you’re a 40-percent guy, they’re going to start falling at some point,” Brooks said. “They’re all good shots. We tell him to shoot every single time. It’s going to fall eventually.”
“We’re going to have games like that,” Jones continued. “We were just telling Caleb Houstan and all those guys who shot threes to keep shooting. Told Brandon (Johns) if you’re open, shoot the ball. It’s part of the season. We aren’t going to let this one game define us. Whatever people say, they can say it. We know who we are and we have a long way to go.
At the end of the day, Michigan will forget this one quickly if it learns from its mistakes. There is a lot of basketball to be played and nobody in that room is hitting the panic button.
“You can’t win the Big Ten championship right now,” Brooks said. “As long as we take stuff away from this, we have the chance to be a really, really good team.”
Next up for Michigan basketball is a game against UNLV on Saturday at 12:30 a.m. ET in the first game of the Roman Main Event in Las Vegas.
