Patrick Hayes, MLive.com, interviewed Rich Rodriguez and John Beilein at a Flint Golf Outing for his Just Sport’s section. Here are a few of Rodriguez’s and Beilein’s takes…
On the upcoming season: “Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of optimism, I think it's probably guarded optimism because we're gonna be young at some spots, some of our positions are gonna be filled by guys who haven't played before, but we're excited. Obviously we expect to do better, and we should, but at the same time I think the fans see how recruiting's going and hear positive reports from watching the spring game and hopefully we can follow through on that.”
On coaching at Michigan: “Every coach wants to coach at a place like Michigan where you have great tradition and a great fan following. It's a privilege, as I've told the players many times, I hope it's a privilege for them to be able to player here and get their degrees from the University of Michigan. You want to be at a place where there's high expectations, that doesn't really add any more burden to the players or coaches because they want to win as much as you can imagine anyway, but I think the chance to uphold our great tradition is something we take great pride in.”
On the teams talent level: “I think we have some talent. (Ideally) you want to have talent and experience, but if you had to choose, you'd take the talent first because they're able to get experience. I think we're gonna at least have some experience offensively, up front on the line and at wide receiver and running back and that's a positive. Defensively we lost a little bit, but I think we have enough players coming back who have played that they can hold things together for us.”
On the programs direction: I sense that. More excitement, it gave credibility to what we're trying to accomplish. You know, we have some great kids and a very good staff. It was the first step of many steps to be where we want to be, continuing in the tournament, getting to the Final Four, getting to the championship game, winning a championship, this was the right step in that direction.”
On next season’s expectations: “It looks like we're really going to tackle one of the toughest schedules in Michigan history with the 18 Big Ten games and then a good six or seven other really difficult games. We're gonna have to really improve. We finished seventh last year in the Big Ten, it wasn't like we were the top two or three. We were only a couple games out of second or third place, but still I think our kids know we have a lot of work to do and next year when the season starts, 2009 won't count anymore.”
On Zack Gibson and Laval Lucas-Perry: “We're hoping for Zack Gibson to give us even more. He's in between being a forward and a center for us. As we look at this team, we'd like to get more out of him, and that's our plan. Laval Lucas-Perry we thought had a fantastic freshman year. He averaged seven or eight points per game, and two of our big road wins over Indiana and Minnesota, which basically put us into the tournament, Laval Lucas-Perry had a lot to do with those road wins.”