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WATCH: Drew Williamson, Nimari Burnett, Will Tschetter give Michigan basketball updates, preview Rutgers

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•about 15 hours•

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Drew Williamson
Michigan Wolverines basketball assistant coach Drew Williamson worked under Dusty May at Florida Atlantic before joining him in Ann Arbor. (Photo by Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan Wolverines basketball assistant coach Drew Williamson, graduate guard Nimari Burnett and redshirt junior forward Will Tschetter met with the media Thursday morning ahead of the team’s game at Rutgers Saturday. Watch video of their sessions with reporters below.

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Michigan assistant coach Drew Williamson

Redshirt junior forward Will Tschetter

Graduate guard Nimari Burnett

Michigan has done a lot well this season, but there have been some dips lately. The Wolverines have long been working to clean up turnovers and only had 9 in the last game against Penn State, while finishing stronger at the rim is a focus that’s come up lately, as teams have begun defending them more physically.

Michigan turned the ball over a season-low 9 times against Penn State Monday night, but 6 of them went for either points or a foul for the Nittany Lions. The Wolverines are looking to clean up those giveaways — and it’s on the turnovers, not transition defense, for the way opponents have taken advantage.

“It’s exactly what you said: we call them pick-sixes,” Williamson said. “In football, it’s like a pick-six, where you can’t set your defense. We have a really, really good defense when our defense is set. But those aren’t even transition, those are just throwing it away and it’s like a layup.

“So we’re trying to limit those. And again, you take those points away … the game was a lot closer … we could’ve separated a little more. You take those points away and finish around the basket a little better. That’s something we talk about in practice, is now it’s come to a point where if it happens in practice, we have to stop and figure out, ‘What’s the solution next time for you not to do that?’ Earlier in the year, we tried to let them learn through their mistakes, but now it’s like, ‘No, no, it’s time to figure out why we’re doing that.’

Here’s what the Michigan assistant had to say about finishing at the rim:

“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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