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Update on health of Michigan basketball center Vladislav Goldin, who's been limited with illness but 'doing better'

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•about 13 hours•

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Michigan center Vladislav Goldin
Michigan center Vladislav Goldin (USA Today Sports)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan Wolverines basketball graduate center Vladislav Goldin gutted out 17 minutes against Penn State while under the weather with an illness. He scored 4 points on 2-of-4 shooting from the field and added 3 rebounds, 1 assist and 1 steal, but he turned the ball over 2 times and didn’t have his wind.

Goldin is progressing with his health ahead of Saturday’s game at Rutgers, however, a good sign for Michigan considering he’s the team’s leading scorer with 15.7 points per game.

“He’s better,” assistant coach Drew Williamson said Thursday morning. “He was at practice this morning. We tried to limit his reps so he can get his wind back.

“He’s eating some food now. He was struggling to eat the last couple days, so I think he’ll be ready to go by the weekend. He was running up and down the floor today.”

Williamson responded in the affirmative that Goldin was dealing with a flu-type illness.

“Yeah, it just hit him randomly,” Williamson said. “He was fine, and then he came to practice the next day and was kinda sick, so we had him sit out of shoot around. We didn’t see him at all until game time.

“He’s a warrior. He’s a guy that [will say], ‘If I could give you guys four minutes, that’s more than enough.'”

Michigan looking to finish around the rim with more power

Michigan is in a bit of a funk with its interior shooting. In Monday’s 76-72 win over Penn State, the Wolverines went 14-of-25 on layups/dunks. In the last four games, they’re shooting 48.1 percent on two-pointers, which ranks 244th in the nation during that span.

Junior forward/center Danny Wolf shot 2-of-9 from inside the arc against the Nittany Lions, having his fair share of struggles, though he wasn’t the only one who missed bunnies.

The Wolverines have pinpointed playing with more physicality as a remedy, and they’re seeing progress.

“It’s an area that we’ve been working on and have been talking about a lot, just finishing around the basket with more power and going to finish and not looking for fouls,” Williamson said. “As wild as it may sound, we were actually really, really excited about how we finished with power [against Penn State]. Now, the result was missed layups, but again, we’re very, very process-oriented.

“If we can continue to go the basket, power dribble, finish through contact, at some point we’re going to make those shots. And that’s what it looks like when you play against the better teams we hope to play in February, March, later on, that we’ll see.”

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