Michigan basketball's Phil Martelli: Talk of playing hard is nonsense: 'It’s a skill game'

It doesn't take more than perhaps 30 seconds with Phil Martelli to know he's old-school Philly.

While that can mean a number of things, chief among them is brutal honesty at all times, like it or not.

"Want me to lie or tell you the truth?" Martelli, Michigan's assistant basketball coach, joked when asked how he's doing on a recent episode of Inside Michigan Basketball. "I’ve been better, I’ve been worse. Can’t remember exactly when I’ve been worse, but I’ve been worse."

Martelli, like every single member of the Michigan basketball program, is suffering through a 2023-24 season that started on a bad note − when it was clear head coach Juwan Howard would need serious heart surgery and be away from the team for months − and somehow has only gone downhill since.

First, it was weeks, now it's been months, that the Wolverines (8-18, 3-12 Big Ten) have done their best to explain how game after game has escaped them. Initially, it was a matter of close losses; by four vs. Memphis, three vs. Oregon, three vs. Indiana, five in double overtime vs. Florida, and then by two at home vs. Minnesota.

Interspersed in there, a pair of gut-wrenching losses in "buy games," first to Long Beach State, as the Wolverines had a 97% chance to win the game per ESPN metrics when Dug McDaniel hit a long ball to make it 23-7, only for LBSU to come all the way back and win, 94-86.

The other, when Will Wade's McNeese State team came to town and won easily, 87-76, as it led for the final 34 minutes of the game to send U-M to 6-7 overall. Not only was it the team's seventh loss in 10 games, but marked perhaps one of the first times players started to question one another's heart.

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“We didn't come out with no toughness," said senior Terrance Williams that night. "Didn't come out with no grit."

As the season has progressed, Martelli has seen enough to know it's not simply a matter of desire. Perhaps that day it was a problem when Howard said McNeese State out-worked his group, however, since mid-December, even as the season has gone sideways, the staff has seen the Wolverines put in the work.

The problem is the results haven't changed.

Michigan blew double-digit leads vs. Penn State and Maryland and also did so against Ohio State, though the Wolverines came back to win that one. They then lost by double-digits vs. consecutive ranked foes in Illinois and Purdue, which turned into three more consecutive double-digit losses in a row to the league's middle teams in Iowa, Michigan State, and Rutgers, as U-M led by nine or more in every game yet couldn't hold on.

Though Michigan beat Wisconsin, it lost by 20 to Nebraska, 29 to Illinois, and then by 10 against Michigan State.

Martelli almost laughed when he explained how the locker room is desperate to win a basketball game.

"All that 'playing hard', that’s all nonsense," Martelli said. "It’s about playing skilled, it’s a skill game.

"We have a generation of players who’ve not played enough basketball. They’ve done a lot of drills, they all have trainers, all have these ways to post their workout, but if 15 guys — and I'm going to pick our 15 guys — if our 15 guys showed up tomorrow in an empty gym, could they figure out how to pick sides, figure out how to play winners? I don't know. ... part of the fundamental part is there’s a generation of players who’ve not played enough pickup basketball."

What does pickup basketball have to do with high-level Big Ten hoops? Well, in the current climate when players are moving around frequently, there are not always multiple years to get familiar with each other's style of game. That can create problems.

"We do have experience, but also guys who are new and have just been playing with each other for some months," Howard said after the most recent loss.

"We have to continue to keep grinding."

As the staff has pointed out, the team isn't "young" in terms of its experience.

The Wolverines' top eight rotational players all average more than 15 minutes per game (nobody else is at 10 per contest) and prior to this year, those eight players had a total of 23 collegiate seasons (2.9 years of average experience), however just eight years combined were in Ann Arbor.

Now, it certainly didn't help matters that U-M started the season without Howard. Or that there was an alleged altercation with former strength and conditioning coach Jon Sanderson which led to turnover in the middle of the season. Or that McDaniel, the team's leading scorer, has been out for away games for more than six weeks as part of an academic suspension.

However, in Martelli's mind, nothing has affected this season quite like the lack of continuity and man-hours on a pickup basketball court.

"To me, the vision," Martelli said of what he looks for. "Do you see the game? Do you really see the game? Certainly, there are guys, I would say more guys we play against, I would say 'That guy, he gets that badge of honor, he knows how to play.'"

"We’re gonna see one on Thursday, Boo Buie knows how to play basketball."

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Michigan is 2-13 overall going back more than two months and is on pace to finish alone in the basement of the Big Ten for the first time in more than 50 years (1966-67) unless some things change. The Wolverines are the second-worst defensive team in the Big Ten, ranked No. 163 KenPom (ahead of only Iowa), but that's not the only place the team could use more chemistry.

The Wolverines average 12.8 assists per game (No. 208 nationally), which doesn't quite keep pace with their scoring rate at 75.2 points per game (No. 141). Michigan's been held to 68 points or fewer in five of its last six − the lone time it passed that number was its win over Wisconsin − and in six of its past eight games.

That's where Martelli wants to see his team get back to what it was doing earlier in the season. While he added it's ironic considering "we got waxed at Illinois and Nebraska" he thought U-M had some of its best transition offense of the season in those games. Against MSU, there were some solid baseline cuts, he said.

But they have to keep building.

"If I was to put my thumb on one thing, I would say we have to become consistent offensively," he said. "I think you have to score the ball to take some pressure off the individual and collective defense and we just haven't done that."

If only there were a pickup game nearby.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan's Phil Martelli says this is why the team isn't succeeding