Moritz Wagner seized the national stage Saturday night and pushed his Michgian Wolverines to the brink of a national championship.
SAN ANTONIO — Moritz Wagner waits to the last minute to get his ankles taped. So he’s always the last one to take the practice floor.
And his coach is just fine with that.
« I say, ‘OK, we’ll wait for you,’ » explained John Beilein. « Then he runs through the door, and practice starts, and he’s ready… he brings energy to everything he does. »
It’s wiggle room Beilein gives happily. Bend the structure occasionally, welcome in the most irrepressible player he’s had in years. Because you never know when that force is going save the season.
Or tractor-pull a team into the national championship game. As Wagner did Saturday night in a 69-57 win at the Alamodome.
It wasn’t just that he dropped 24 points and snagged 15 rebounds. It was that, for a while, he was the only one doing either. Especially during the first half, when Loyola-Chicago locked down U-M’s perimeter scorers.
Yet there was Wagner, bullying his way to the glass, hoarding rebounds and laying them softly back into the net.
« Because (Loyola was) switching, we said, ‘Moe, you’ve just got to roll more, slip more, and get down there and clean up any rebounds you can get because they’ve got a 6-foot guy on you, » said Beilein.
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Without the 6-foot-10 junior, the Wolverines fall further behind than they did — they trailed by seven at the half. Nor do they force their way back into the lead in the second, when Wagner began making 3-pointers to stretch out the defense.
His biggest shot of the night came with less than 10 minutes to play and U-M down by three. Wagner got doubled on the block, used a retreat dribble for space, then dribbled again as he slipped back toward the corner.
Once there, he set his feet and launched a moonball to tie the game. On the next play, he set a screen that led to free throws for Jordan Poole. On the play following that, he hit a cutting Matthews for a layup.
Defensively, he jumped passing lanes, swiped loose dribbles, and, in the most memorable sequence of the night, sprinted for a ball he’d jarred free near the edge of the elevated court.
As his momentum carried toward off the edge, he hopped over television announcers Grant Hill and Jim Nantz, landing on the walkway that separates the rows of media hugging the court.
He gathered himself, smiled at the crowd, paused, then slapped hands with Hill before he climbed back onto the court.
It was a small moment of theater on the biggest stage in college basketball. The kind of moment for which Wagner is made.
Though when asked about whether he relishes so grand a platform, he hesitated.
« If I say yes now and mess up in the national championship game… I jinx myself, » he said.
Ah, superstition. Or rather deflection, a practice in which he’s fluent. For even as he’s unequivocally the team’s brightest star, he’d much rather refract all that light to his teammates.
And so after arguably the best performance of his career, he’s more comfortable offering up this:
« (I’m) just trying to do my job, » he said.
And if he’s told that his teammates echoed the assessment that he’d never been better, he answers:
« They’re lying. »
Then smiles. And winks.
Because he knows. But doesn’t want to say. At least not to us. Not in the postgame locker room, as he stands in the middle of a three-deep scrum. And not on the dais in the formal press conference pit before the national media.
It was there that he was told he had become the third player in NCAA history to record at least 20 points and 15 rebounds in a semifinal game.
The others?
Hakeem Olajuwon and Larry Bird.
To which he laughed. Then thought for a second and said:
« Relax. »
Before adding: « If you put it like that it’s obviously pretty cool. »
I’ll say.
But he won’t.
Unless he’s on the court. And then he’ll say plenty. In plenty of different ways.
When he’s on, and on a stage like here in San Antonio, he will howl, too.
Sometimes to the heavens. Sometimes to his opponents. Sometimes to raging fans peppering him with whatever insults they can summon.
Like he did back in January in East Lansing, the last time he played like he did Saturday night. There, in the Breslin Center, against the backdrop of those who detest him the most, he’d hit a fallaway jumper and stare. Or hold his finger to his mouth to shush them.
That combination of bravura and energy is why Beilein allows his German unicorn a few allowances, both in the way he rips open his soul on the court and in his daily mannerisms.
Yeah, he needs a little extra time to hit the practice floor. And, yeah, he tortures himself so thoroughly before big games that he has to bolt the pre-game locker room alone.
As he did Saturday evening. To catch his breath. To release all that bottled anxiety.
« I was a little restless, » he admitted. « I mean, you prepare for a week for a game… I hate that. I wanted to play. I’m a basketball player. »
A player like few Beilein’s ever coached. Because of his size and skill. Because of his unending on-court facial expressions. Because of his personality. Because of his growth.
« That’s what we all forget when we’re recruiting, » said Beilein.
It’s not always about the ranking or the rating or even the expectation. It’s about how much a player works, and how much room he’s got to get better.
« His freshman year we had to get him off the court over and over again, » said Beilein. « He’d have a flash and then we’d say, ‘What’s going on?’ Gradually he (grew).
