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Posted on Tue, Dec 29, 2009 : 4 p.m.

Michigan's women's basketball team is better than it was a year ago

By Michael Rothstein

The box score had no chance. Crumpled in the massive hands of Kevin Borseth as he left the media room Monday night, the statistics sheet didn't last long.

Borseth stopped, started to answer a question from a visitor and the box score was done, torn to shreds. Borseth was frustrated, his Michigan women’s basketball team having played so well in non-conference action and then losing at home, 63-59 to Northwestern, in Big Ten play.

KRISTA-PHILLIPS-122909.JPG

Michigan senior Krista Phillips takes a shot over Northwestern defenders during the first half on Monday night. (Photo: Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com)

The Michigan’s women’s basketball team is better than it was a year ago, when it finished 10-20, losing 14 of its last 15 games. It’s a group flush with young talent and has a couple of leaders in senior center Krista Phillips and junior guard Veronica Hicks. Even so, few expected a 9-2 record entering Monday’s game. There were too many road games and too stiff of competition.

Yet Michigan kept winning, relying on its youth and even knocking off then-No. 8 Xavier. Which is part of why Michigan’s loss to Northwestern disappointed Borseth.

“It’s all about conference play. It has nothing to do with non-conference play,” Borseth said as he was walking the hall, box score still intact in his hands. “Non-conference play means absolutely nothing. Nothing. We could have played the sisters of the poor in the non-conference and been 13-0 and it doesn’t mean anything until you get into the conference play.

“All we did was help our conference have a good RPI. That’s all we did. We helped our conference have a good RPI. Now we get into conference play, and we’re just living the dream for the coaches that picked us 11th. That’s all we’re doing.”

Borseth might be underestimating the non-conference effect. His team was good enough for ESPN women’s bracketologist Charlie Creme to place Michigan in a way-too-early NCAA bracket projection.

And Michigan showed signs of not being the last-place team in the Big Ten, as predicted in the preseason. Perhaps Borseth’s frustration and concern comes from a season ago, when Michigan got off to a similar hot start, beating then-No. 8 Notre Dame in Ann Arbor and looking like a team ready to make the next step in Borseth’s evolution as Michigan’s basketball coach.

Then came the Big Ten and a massive collapse. So maybe there’s a reason to be concerned, that Michigan, with its smaller players, can’t go up nightly against the bigger bodies in the Big Ten.

Yet there is reason to believe, at least within Michigan’s program, that a repeat of last year won’t happen.

The players understand what happened last year. Even though Michigan’s team is full of young players, including six freshmen, the older players are offering constant reminders of a season ago - when promise turned to frustration and a season crumbled in the Big Ten conference.

“We kind of let them know how we felt and how we played last year so we let those kids know that this is what it feels like so we don’t have to go through that again,” Phillips said. “Those of us who were there know how much it sucked.

“So we use it as fuel for those kids that don’t really know, so they know how important it is.”

Perhaps that is what they cling to right now, standing 1-1 in the Big Ten with games at Michigan State (Thursday, 2 p.m., Big Ten Network) and at Ohio State (Sunday, 2 p.m., Big Ten Network) - the two conference powers - within the next week. So Michigan may be 1-3 by the time it is done.

Yet there was something Borseth saw at the end of Monday’s game, something most others witnessed, too. Michigan trailed by 12 points midway through the second half.

The Wolverines could have easily gone away. They didn’t. They came back. And, as Borseth said both in his post-game press conference and after as well, having just ripped up the box score of disappointment, they made a game out of one that wasn’t even close.

“We’re not just going to give up and roll over and let other teams take wins from us,” Phillips said. “That’s really important and a big difference from last year to this year.

“We’re not going to let teams come in here and take wins from us. We’re going to fight.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.

Comments

Dan Romanchik

Wed, Dec 30, 2009 : 9:06 a.m.

This loss was kind of disappointing, but the shots just weren't falling. They had a chance to win, but just couldn't make the shots. They missed a lot of free throws, too. They really need to work on that.