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ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Monday, February 18, 2019

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Bounceback

Wolverines recover from worst loss of the season at Penn State with suffocating 65-52 win over Maryland on Saturday» Page 1B

CAMPUS LIFE

Hosting of Winterfest generates contention Panhel changes decision on participation after worries regarding policy violation DESIGN BY CASEY TIN

Nomination process for police oversight board sparks controversy Changes to commission membership elicit discussion among City Councilmembers LEAH GRAHAM & CATHERINE NOUHAN

Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

City Councilmembers and community activists are divided over two agenda items slated to appear before the City Council Tuesday night regarding

the formation of an independent police oversight commission. One calls for changes to the guidelines for commission membership while the other seeks to prohibit undue influence over the nomination process. Councilmember Elizabeth Nelson, D-Ward 5, is sponsoring the resolution to block what she called

CAMPUS LIFE

Ex-Obama official talks science and technology

Thomas Kalil discussed policy, former initiatives at Ford School event EMMA RUBBERG For The Daily

On Friday, the Ford School of Public Policy held the most recent of their Policy Talks @ the Ford School. The event featured Thomas Kalil, former deputy director for policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under former President Barack Obama. Kalil gave a presentation on U.S. science and technology policy and answered questions submitted by the audience. Kalil began by discussing his role in the Obama administration and described two distinct aspects of his job: science and technology for policy and policy for science and technology. When focusing on science and technology for policy, Khalil’s job was advising the president. “When making a decision that had a scientific or technological component,” Khalil said. “Then our job was to make sure he was getting the best possible advice.”

“inappropriate” involvement on behalf of officials who are not among the four liaisons designed to aid in selecting potential nominees to the commission. In December, Nelson attempted to replace Councilmember Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, as one of two City Council liaisons to the police oversight commission.

“I feel like I’m sort of in the middle of it because I am bringing this resolution and this resolution is apparently like completely opposite to the direction that everybody else going and I really tried hard to be among those four people and I sort of went down in flames,” Nelson said.

RACHEL CUNNINGHAM & CALLIE TEITELBAUM Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

Winterfest, a tournament-style annual philanthropic event where different members of fraternities and sororities play broomball for charity, will be hosted on Feb 23 by the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity (PIKE). Last year, Winterfest was hosted on the property of PIKE and sponsored by Alpha Sigma Phi, but after Alpha Sigma Phi was banned from campus, PIKE picked up the event. Fraternities who are members of the Interfraternity Council and sororities in the Panhellenic Association can participate by donating money to play in the

tournament. The money raised will be donated to the Autism Alliance of Michigan. As of Sunday evening, the general Winterfest campaign has raised over 29,000 dollars of their 60,000 dollar goal. While Alpha Sigma Phi has hosted the event in the past, the Interfraternity Council recently banned Alpha Sigma Phi from campus for five years after it was discovered several generations of its members had participated in dangerous hazing incidents, according to Dean of Students Laura Blake Jones. One alleged incident involved a ‘40-yard dash’ across new members’ backs.

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The art of journaling: A means of self-exploration for all RAHIMA JAMAL MiC Blogger

Yeah, yeah, so you’ve heard it before. Journaling is a good way to relieve stress, compartmentalize things you have to do and does great things for your mind overall. How many times have you been told to journal to relieve stress or to pick it up as a hobby? I cannot remember how many times I had been told before I actually started. I picked out a cute little journal over the summer with the intention of starting to journal when school started in August. However, I didn’t start and wasn’t planning on starting anytime soon until someone posted a “30-day Journaling Challenge” on their Instagram story. So starting the month of December, I started doing a journal every day, following

along with the challenge. I slowly started to realize that those people who had told me that journaling was a great way to de-stress were right. Every day, when I would whip out my journal to start writing, I would get this wave of calmness wash over me and it became a habit. I became proud of journaling and writing my thoughts down. It was not something that seemed cheesy or that only people in movies would do. Journaling helped me express who I am as a person. I explored my identity

through writing about different things in my life and different experiences I had every day. My journaling began with the “30-day Journaling Challenge” that challenged me to write small blurbs about questions such as “What are three words that you love?” to “What are three things that you admire about yourself ?” After this challenge, I started writing small bits every day, whether it was about a person I had met that day or what I missed about home. Slowly but surely, I started

“I became proud of journaling and writing my thoughts down.”

writing about my identity such as how it felt to be an out-of-state student in a sea of Michganders or about how I dealt with being a POC in a school that was more than 50% Caucasian. These small writing sessions every day not only helped me relax, but it helped me hash out small bits and pieces of my identity that I have been building upon since I was a toddler. And the phrase “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it” really does apply to journaling. There are so many different types of journaling. There are freewrites, where you can write anything that comes to your mind or that you want to write about. There are the journal challenges that give you pre-written prompts to write about every day. There is also something called bullet-journaling which, to

me, seems like the top tier of journaling. Bullet-journaling is a very organized way of keeping track of anything and everything that you want to write down in an orderly manner. There is no accurate way to journal. Journaling has been seen, stereotypically, as a hobby that many girls usually do. However, journaling is for EVERYONE. There is nothing extremely feminine or masculine about planning out your day or writing your thoughts down. Journaling is a great

way to start your day, have a break in the middle or end your day with a destresser. Start small. Maybe start writing down little thoughts or doodles throughout the day on small scraps or sheets of paper. Give it a try and it may lead to something bigger. You might discover that journaling is a great way to organize your busy weeks full of classes and club meetings or to keep track of your good and bad days in a year.

“There is nothing extremely feminine or masculine about planning out your day”

Opinion

4A — Monday, February 18, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ADITHYA SANJAY | COLUMN

Is 2019 the year of a fully functioning autonomous car?

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NOAH ENTE | COLUMN

Forty years of the Iranian threat

n Feb. 11, the Islamic Republic of Iran celebrated the 40-year anniversary of the 1979 revolution. In 1979, groups from across Iranian society — from religious extremists to secular non-communist leftwing activists — violently seized control of the Iranian government through a coup, exiling Iran’s previous leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been given premiership in a 1953 plan by American and British intelligence. The Shah was replaced with antiWestern and fundamentalist cleric Ruhollah Khomeini as the Ayotollah, who instituted repressive policies and took hostile actions that would alter the status of Iran domestically and around the globe. The results of the revolution forever changed history and have had an immense impact on the relationship between Iran and the United States. The Islamic regime still holds power today, and on its 40th anniversary — while Iran’s leadership celebrates — it is a worthy time to commemorate and acknowledge the past and present threats that Iran has posed to the United States and the world. In February 1979, as Ayatollah Khomeini became Supreme Leader, the streets of Tehran were filled with millions of people burning American flags, chanting and holding signs with threats against the U.S. and its allies. Just a few months later, the Americanbacked Shah was deposed as Iran’s premier, and college students in Tehran raided the United States Embassy and held 52 American diplomats hostage, citing the U.S.’s grant of asylum for the Shah as justification. With the revolutionary coup and the ensuing 444-day hostage crisis, the United States and Iran became locked in a bitter conflict and rivalry that has spanned all four decades of the Islamic Republic’s reign. This tension has come to a head over the past few years, as President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), often referred to as the Iran Nuclear Deal. This agreement — made between the U.S., China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union and Iran — was crafted in order to assure that ongoing developments to Iran’s nuclear program would not threaten other countries. Terms included an imposed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites, and as a result, the lifting of “nuclear-related” United States sanctions on Iran. The agreement was adopted by the Obama administration, under the auspices of former Secretary of State John Kerry, in January 2016. Proponents argued it would allow Iran to begin to moderate its foreign and domestic policies without many of the crippling sanctions placed on it by the United States and other Western powers, and would stop the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Before and after the Iran

Deal was adopted by the United States, domestic and foreign critics identified the severe flaws in the JCPOA. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed out in his address to the United States Congress in July 2015, the deal would “... leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, providing it with a short breakout time to the bomb...” when the deal would expire in 10 years. Vivian Bercovici, former Canadian Ambassador to Israel, noted that among its other issues, the JCPOA “... did not address Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile program.” There were also those such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who argued that Iran was not complying with the terms of the deal, and thus the U.S. would be well served to leave the agreement and reimpose sanctions. Last week, Iran made its true intentions clear – if they weren’t already obvious – when President Hassan Rouhani, elected in 2013 to supposedly bring the change former President Barack Obama had bet on, said that Iran has “not asked and will not ask for permission to develop various types of missiles.” It is clear that Iran’s hatred for the United States, and its underlying desire to continue to build their nuclear power, have never wavered.So much for moderation in Tehran. This past May, President Trump acknowledged the JCPOA’s many weaknesses and withdrew the United States from the Iran Deal, drawing both praise and ire from the international political community. Trump’s decision marked an informed pivot in U.S. policy on Iran, away from ungrounded idealism and towards a more realistic and truly comprehensive plan. In November, the Trump administration re-imposed all sanctions lifted under the terms of the JCPOA, putting economic pressure on Iran and those who do business with its regime, and incentivizing Iran to give up its enrichment of uranium and development of nuclear missiles. These actions, though not entirely sufficient in ending the Iranian threat, are steps in the right direction in preventing Iran from using a nuclear arsenal to threaten the U.S. and other countries to whom it is hostile. The decision to withdraw from the deal is also crucial to showing Iran that the United States will not be deceived by non-credible promises from a long-time adversary. However, Iran’s development of its nuclear program is not the only threat the country poses towards the U.S., its allies and global stability. Throughout the Middle East and worldwide, Iran has been involved in proxyconflicts, often against U.S. allies and interests. In a combination of funding and arms, Iran has ignited the civil war in Yemen through its support of the Houthi rebels. The war and its resulting humanitarian crisis have caused the deaths of thousands of innocents in Yemen. Iran has supported the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and

has funded and armed Hezbollah terrorists on the Lebanese border with Israel. Outside the region, the Islamic Republic has even attempted to radicalize Muslims in South America, and is wanted for the assassination of an investigator who uncovered Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 attack on the Jewish Community Center of Buenos Aires. Iran’s tactics and choices, if left unchecked, will cause more innocent Yemeni and Syrian citizens to die, risk Israel’s security, create further difficulty in defeating the Assad regime and continue to create violence and instability in the Near East and worldwide. These effects would be disastrous for the United States and those seeking peace in the Middle East. Should the tension between Iranian proxies and Israel continue to escalate, it is quite possible that what is now the Syrian Civil War could quickly turn into a complete regional conflict, which despite President Trump’s announcement last December of a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, may necessitate a heavier American military presence in the area. Yemeni civilians would continue to starve and be killed. As it currently stands, Iranianbacked Hezbollah fighters are already bribing Syrian rebel groups to stop their fight against Assad and join Hezbollah efforts against Israel. If Iran continues to foster this chaos, the Near East could light up like a tinderbox. It is vital that the U.S. take notice of this impending threat, and take action to prevent these harmful results. To start, we must work with our allies to bring food and relief to those dying in Yemen, and continue to enforce the sanctions that will cut the revenue source for Iran’s malicious actions around the world. Despite all the history that has unfolded over the past few decades, we must recognize that the dangers Iran has posed to the United States and its allies have their foundations in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It was then that a country – once a staunch supporter of America in the Cold War – became frustrated with the West, and positioned itself as one of the chief U.S. foes on the world stage for the foreseeable future. Former President George W. Bush classified Iran as a member of an “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address, and though many of the threats to America have changed in the ensuing 17 years, Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terror in the Middle East and worldwide. While President Rouhani, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of Iran’s citizens celebrate the world-changing events of 1979, America must mark those days with sadness and pursue a course for the future that will finally bring the Iranian regime’s production of global instability to an end. Noah Ente can be reached at noahente@umich.edu

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

he hype has been real. For the past decade or so, we have seen a sudden race between automakers and software development companies to build the first driverless car. What started out as simple driver assistance software has grown to fully functional autopilots that claim “full self-driving hardware.” And arguably so, as there is a market for such technology with reports showing that human error is involved in over 90 percent of all car crashes. 2019 is already set to be a big year in the automotive industry with both Uber and Lyft expressing intention to take their companies public. Not to mention Uber’s potential $120 billion valuation (that’s more than the worth of the big three automakers combined) that has investors frothing at the mouth, eagerly awaiting what has been touted as the “most hotly anticipated IPO.” But amid all of this, will this be the year we finally see the launch of a fully functional autonomous car? Google’s Waymo is believed to be the industry leader by far. The company was reported by California’s Department of Motorvehicles to have a disengagement once every 11,154 miles, more than double the amount of miles of the next closest competitor. Even still, there seemingly appears to be quite a few imperfections that need to be fixed in the company’s technology before it can launch commercially. Waymo made many strides in 2018, hitting a total of 8 million miles logged, and was building enthusiasm for a December launch of Waymo One, a fully driverless taxi service in the suburbs of Phoenix. However, the program ended up being abandoned with the company citing “concerns about safety” as the prime factor in their decision. Nevertheless, there are recent reports of a fullservice 2019 launch, with Waymo consolidating their

f leet and working toward a driverless ride-hailing service in “multiple US cities.” That being said, other autonomous programs have arguably seen a lot more obstacles the past year. Uber’s fatal crash in March that killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg brought the program to a grinding halt for much of the year, as the city of Phoenix swiftly revoked Uber’s permission to operate in their city. Tesla has been there twice before: once in January where a user crashed into a stopped firetruck, and again in March, when a driver died after his Tesla crashed into a concrete highway divider. While Uber’s failure did result in a huge reduction in its program, these obstacles have otherwise posed surprisingly low resistance to the tide of autonomy that has overtaken the minds of the entire automotive industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview that he expects not only the “carmaker will achieve full self-driving in 2019” but also that “(he) would be very surprised if any of the (other) car companies exceeded Tesla in selfdriving.” One of those “other” car companies is General Motors Corp., a company that recently announced massive cutbacks with intentions to double down and focus on the autonomous technology. GM has taken quite a hushed approach to building its inventory, acquiring the technology startup Cruise back in 2016, and have been testing a line of nearly 200 cars over the past year or so. And many are touting GM as a force as formidable as Waymo in the automotive industry, with market research professionals saying, “GM’s technology is as good as Waymo’s and [that] they have the capability to develop and service those vehicles.” Also of interest is the number of software firms

that have sprouted up as a reaction to this market trend. Of particular note is the autonomous driving startup Aurora which has managed to raise $530 million in its second round of funding. The company was started by the chief technical officer of Google’s self-driving program and has since recruited the directors of autonomy at Tesla and Uber. This hotbed of talent has been a strong selling point for the group, having managed to already ink deals with Volkswagen and Hyundai. What’s more fascinating is the move made by Amazon into the autonomous car space. The company announced an investment in Aurora earlier this month, betting on an industry that could help reduce its own costs. Amazon has actually been working on a robotic delivery system itself that could help automate some of the back-end delivery processes that the company must otherwise pay for. A partnership with Aurora may just be the key to doing that. I think we can say with certainty at this point that autonomous cars will take over the industry in the foreseeable future. Smaller localized examples of this are stretching all the way to college campuses where things like the KiwiBot exist, a food delivery robot that patrols University of California-Berkeley. Autonomous technology is poised to make a substantial impact on our daily lives. How foreseeable that future is, however, is the main point of contention. Some even argue that we are only 30 years away from the singularity — where AI can create machines smarter than humans. If that’s going to be the case though, I fully expect the commercial launch of an autonomous car by the end of the year.

Adithya Sanjay can be reached at asanjay@umich.edu

AMBIKA SINHA | COLUMN

What is the direction of abortion in America?

ast week, the Supreme Court blocked a Louisiana abortion law that mimicked a Texas law forcing abortion providers to uphold “admitting privileges,” which allows providers to go to hospitals and perform the procedure there (a move that is more burdensome than is helpful). This was subsequently struck down in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Since this decision, I think we all need to ask ourselves: Why do states continue to manufacture laws that are blatantly unconstitutional when it comes to abortion? Let’s look at the recent track record. Iowa, Ohio and Mississippi have all passed laws that make abortion illegal if a fetal heartbeat is detected (which can occur as early as six weeks). South Dakota, North Dakota, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi are predicted to completely ban abortion in the absence of Roe should it eventually be overturned in a majority conservative Supreme Court. However, with Roe v. Wade reinforced by cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, precedent has made it virtually impossible for all of these policies to ever be upheld. The crux of this issue lies in the fact that though landmark cases — such as Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — have set clear precedent that protects women’s right to privacy and their right to receive abortions, Supreme Court justices are finding ways to interpret these laws as constitutional despite the precedent of these cases. In the case June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote his dissent not in opposition to the precedent set by Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, but instead argues that though the law is identical to Texas’ abortion law, it does not

put undue burden onto women. In Gonzales v. Carhart, the partial birth abortion ban was upheld, as the court argued that the law only banned one type of abortion method, and therefore does not inflict an undue burden onto women seeking abortions due to the variety of options still available to them. This method of abortion is, however, one of the only types of abortion women can safely receive in their second trimester, a time frame that is before the point of viability and should not be regulated as heavily. This brings us to a second issue. Has the court gone too far in specifying the way in which abortion law can be interpreted? The loopholes that the courts present in justifying cases that seem to be contrary to protecting women’s reproductive rights coexist with policy that explicitly prohibits it. Perhaps the intent of the states that continue to produce laws that are clearly unconstitutional is to force the court to become judicially active instead of continuing to produce rulings that are consistent with precedent but have an opposing de facto impact to the intent of previous rulings. With the new Supreme Court lineup, the chance that this bench breaks precedent on a matter that has gone relatively back and forth for over 45 years is probable. While Chief Justice John Roberts voted down the Louisiana law with the liberal wing, the court’s opinion will be revisited to administer a final ruling; his vote is not permanent. The intent of preceding rulings are lost in the technicalities of these cases themselves. As time goes on, the court must render a final decision to abortion that is not ridden with a whole list of regulations that states try to find a way around. This process of slowly breaking down a precedent until an essentially new one is created has been seen before,

specifically with the NAACP test cases that eventually led to the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. The case with abortion however may be a little more complex. Since the existence of the rights of a fetus change as the pregnancy approaches the point of viability, there is clearly more debate to be held on who is afforded which rights. We still have a long way to go before the court can render a decision in finality. I’m honestly a little scared. To know the fate of my reproductive rights lies in such variability and uncertainty is no easy thing. While states should not impose such arbitrary laws that essentially take away a woman’s right to her own body, I am hoping that these cases will one day render a ruling that will uniformly protect the rights of women. Considering that according to an anti-abortion website over 2 million collegeaged students get pregnant every year, this issue may matter more to your community than you think it does. Abortion for college students can be the difference between getting a degree and dropping out for both men and women. I am grateful that women on the Supreme Court such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are actively involved in this decision. However, I know that the politics surrounding this issue have historically been dictated by men. And while they heavily influence this issue, I fear that the importance of the rights of women may not be understood fully by them. Perhaps more men are involved in this decision than women are. Despite this uncertainty, as a woman, I am encouraged by the words of abolitionist Sarah Grimke: “I ask no favor for my sex; all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Ambika Sinha can be reached at ambikavs@umich.edu

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

FILM REVIEW

20TH CENTURY FOX

‘Alita: Battle Angel’ works despite a few CGI issues MAX MICHALSKY Daily Arts Writer

In December of 2017, the first trailer for “Alita: Battle Angel” hit the internet. Adapted from the iconic Japanese manga/ anime series “Battle Angel Alita,” a live-action “Alita” movie was the decades-in-themaking dream of James Cameron’s (“Avatar”), and had the hype and mystique of a legitimate passion project from the acclaimed director. The film would tell the story of a discarded cyborg named Alita who is resurrected with no memories of her past and must embark on a journey to discover who — and what — she is. Then, the trailers dropped, and we were introduced to Alita’s giant CGI eyes that were met with unanimous distaste and generally made everyone uncomfortable, evoking the “uncanny valley” effect

describing the uneasy feeling one gets when something is almost human-looking, but not quite. At this point, I had written off the film as an ambitious if misguided product of a visionary director with nobody around to tell him “no.”

looks like a bonafide science fiction blockbuster, but with something that’s just not quite right. James Cameron has worked with director Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City: A Dame to Kill For”) to faithfully adapt a unique and vividly imagined world to the screen, but something about the presentation of it gives the film a sort of cheap, made-for-TV look. The film is absolutely gorgeous when it wants to be, and some of the action sequences are truly spectacular, but it’s the expository, low-action shots that often look like cheap sci-fi camp. “Alita” as a series has long marketed itself as the classic cyberpunk story, but its f lash-in-the-pan visual theatrics feel one-note when compared to a film like 2017’s “Blade Runner: 2049,” a sci-fi

‘Alita: Battle Angel’ 20th Century Fox Goodrich Quality 16

Having now seen the film, I was only sort of right. Make no mistake, “Alita: Battle Angel” is f lawed, and those infamous CGI eyes might be a good explanation as to why. This is because the film seems to fall victim to the same plight; it

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FOR RENT Release Date: Monday, February 18, 2019

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Class-conscious gp. 4 Big name in underwear 9 Near-sighted Mr. 14 __-de-sac 15 Conical home 16 Do penance 17 Extreme-weather restriction, perhaps 19 Dwindled 20 Krispy __ doughnuts 21 Chat room chuckle 23 Japanese computer giant 24 18-wheeler 25 Title bear of ’60s TV 28 A flirt may bat one 31 Mount McKinley, now 32 ’60s “acid” 33 Like baggy pants 36 Bewilder 37 Brit’s trash can 39 Paris’ river 43 Boxing’s “Iron Mike” 44 Yahoo! rival 47 Obtain through intimidation, as money 49 Attached, as hotel rooms 51 Classic French song whose title means “It’s so good” 54 Unexpected thing to hit 55 Cornfield sound 56 Suffix with isoor poly57 Footnote abbr. 59 Sci-fi author Verne 61 Frank holder 64 Leaning 65 Battery post 66 Absorbed, as a loss 67 Fishing line holders 68 What a rooster rules 69 Like seven U.S. flag stripes

DOWN 1 Cut for an agt. 2 Thanksgiving birds 3 Fearful 4 Flower part 5 Brazilian soccer legend 6 Msg. for a cop car 7 “Their Eyes Were Watching God” novelist Zora __ Hurston 8 Arc lamp gas 9 Animal’s gullet 10 Finished 11 (Having) spoiled 12 Like amoebas 13 Wordsmith’s ref. 18 Wedding wear 22 Inc., in Toronto 24 French salt 25 White-sheet wearer, on Halloween 26 Singer Rimes and soaps actress Hunley 27 Never, in Neuss 29 Birch family trees 30 Not worth a __ 34 Hog’s home 35 “Barnaby Jones” star Buddy

38 + or - particle 39 “Just a __!” 40 Carry out, as a task 41 “Don’t believe that!” 42 Ailing 44 Hotel room amenity 45 It’s a law 46 Opposite of pos. 48 Comic Conway

50 Maritime safety gp. 52 Joy of “The View” 53 Maine college town 57 Sports betting numbers 58 Browning or Burns 59 Pickle container 60 Ave. crossers 62 As well 63 Beatty of “Deliverance”

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epic with similar themes that was one of the most visually enthralling films of the modern era. The most disappointing element of the film, however, is its script. The dialogue is often painfully cheesy; at one point, mid-skirmish, we hear Alita think to herself (in voiceover) “I do not standby in the presence of evil!” Then, Alita lands another punch and yells the exact same sentence, again, not a second after we heard it in voiceover. Beyond the dialogue, it’s conceptually illconceived to boot. The film refuses to engage with its cyberpunk roots in any meaningful way, instead using the sub-genre as an aesthetic preference. This is because Alita’s cybernetic nature is never truly addressed. In media like “Blade Runner,” “Westworld” and “Ex Machina,” the cerebral core of the film lies in a struggle to define humanity. The Replicants of “Blade Runner” and the Hosts of “Westworld” all struggle with who and what they are, trying to make sense of their own

existence as a synthesized intelligence. Cameron never asks Alita to wrestle with these questions, and the film feels neutered as a result. So what, then, makes “Alita” worth seeing? For lack of a

of the heart-on-its-sleeve sincerity of anime such as “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.” For better or worse, “Alita” is more concerned with impassioned declarations of love in the heat of battle than it is with cerebral questions regarding human nature. Luckily, this works most of the time, and the film is frequently heartfelt as a result. Rosa Salazar (“Birdbox”) is the best part of the film as the titular Alita. She plays the character with just the right blend of intensity and wide-eyed (no pun intended) enthusiasm for the world she’s rediscovering. Speaking of the giant eyes, despite all the misguided decisions that went into their existence, they do actually lend the character an extra layer of expressiveness that genuinely works. It’s in this way that those CGI peepers serve as a solid analogy for the film as a whole; rough around the edges and uncomfortable at times, but once you get used to it there’s something undeniably infectious about its soul.

For better or worse, “Alita” is more concerned with impassioned declarations of love in the heat of battle than it is with cerebral questions regarding human nature. Luckily, this works most of the time, and the film is frequently heartfelt as a result.

better word, its heart. What it lacks in brains, the film makes up for with pure, unabashed earnestness. Watching the film, I was often reminded

MUSIC REVIEW

ISLAND RECORDS

‘Hello Happiness’ is a missed mark for Khan EMILY YANG

Daily Arts Writer

It’s hard to see Chaka Khan release an album in 2019 without appreciating the panoramic sweep of her career — she’s best known for her defining role in funk and R&B of the ’70s and ’80s, which means she lived and worked through at least one drastic transition in American musical history. She made her defining career moves before the internet changed everything, sure, but she also lived in a time before drum machines were the norm, before hip hop coalesced as a genre. She has collaborated with Ray Charles and Mary J. Blige, separated by two decades. There’s a street in Chicago named after her. She isn’t a relic, though, despite her last few albums seeming to signal a career coming to a gliding stop. 2004’s ClassiKhan was a collection of velvetcurtained standards that could have been a fitting culminating statement — the album feels like a victory lap of sorts, a record highlighting the voice of an artist who has proven that she can use it in a wide variety of contexts. 2007’s Funk This did something similar with ’70s funk — both albums worked more as nostalgic tributes by an acknowledged master than any new, definitive statement. The production credits on the recently-released Hello Happiness signal that this has changed. The standout is the British house DJ Switch, who has production credit on every song. He is perhaps best represented in his work with M.I.A., for whom he backs with a twitchy digital pyrotechnics. Given his EDM roots, it’s a strange choice for

him to be producing Khan’s record. The combination has the vague potential to be interesting, but the result is an album in which it feels like every component is at odds with every other component, a confused muddle that never really gets off the ground. It seems as though Switch tried a sort of updated 1970s, tossing in a smorgasbord of vaguely funky sounds — the Hammond organ on “Too Hot,” the reedy guitar on “Ladylike,” the wah pedal on “Isn’t That Enough.” Sampling is, at this point, a canonical practice in dance music, but this is sampling at its most facile, its most Potemkin. Maybe it’s because we have Khan’s older music to compare Switch to, but it seems like the music doesn’t

‘Hello Happiness’ Chaka Khan Island Records

get anywhere close to the open-ended, vocal riffs and delicate interplay of funk music or the propulsiveness of disco. Phrases that could have been convincing are crammed into four-and-twobar loops, a production choice that sticks out next to Khan’s musicianship — her voice hasn’t lost any of its power, and she readily bends pitch and crosses barlines as the rest of the backing track proceeds in computerized lockstep. Overall, the production feels like someone who likes listening to himself talk too much, like someone fascinated by his own cleverness even as he talks over the more interesting conversational partner. There are moments where I wanted the twitchy

percussion and the irritating synths to melt away and simply let Khan’s voice through — the title track, in particular, has the most potential to rival Khan’s work from the 1970s and 1980s, but it’s just so overburdened. There are also more than a few embarrassing debacles. It’s advisable for anyone reading this to just skip “Don’t Cha Know” unless they want an unpleasant reminder that dubstep ever happened, shortly followed by the horrifying thought that somewhere, probably in Britain, it might still be happening. As I was listening to Hello Happiness, I couldn’t help but think of the nowinfamous interview that one of Khan’s past collaborators, Quincy Jones, gave in 2018. Over and over, he emphasized that the popular music landscape of the US is missing real, thorough appreciation for the past; musicians are forgetting that all possibility for progression comes from taking seriously what has come before. “Producers now are ignoring all the musical principles of the previous generations . . . You’re supposed to use everything from the past. If you know where you come from, it’s easier to get where you’re going.” Given that Khan’s discography is one possible way to survey almost a half-century of musical history, it’s frustrating that this album feels trapped in the particularities of the present moment — a lazy, appropriative production style and lack of real substance dressed up with f lashy instrumentals. It feels like Khan doesn’t deserve this, this late in her career — I hope that there is another album after this one, and that it is better.

Arts

6A — Monday, February 19, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN

TV REVIEW

The dangers of idolatry in books and Netflix’s new original series ‘You’ LAURA DZUBAY

Daily Literature Columnist TBS

‘Miracle Workers’: divine cast, needs intervention MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN Daily Arts Wrtier

There’s an episode of “Mad Men” where Don Draper and his colleagues are tasked with writing a TV commercial for a brand of a diet soda. The clients make it easy — they’re looking for a frame-for-frame remake of Ann-Margret’s opening performance in “Bye Bye Birdie.” But when the agency delivers on that request, complete with a coquettish Ann-Margret look-alike, the soda reps recoil and reject the ad. “I don’t think there’s any ambiguity about this being exactly — and I mean exactly — what you asked for,” Don says in disbelief. Yes, it is what they asked for, the clients concede, but something about it isn’t right. It’s Don’s boss Roger who finally identifies the problem: “It’s not Ann-Margret.” I wanted so badly to like “Miracle Workers,” TBS’s new limited-series comedy about the inner workings of Heaven. It promised to be a high-concept “The Office” meets “The Good Place.” It stars Steve Buscemi (“Boardwalk Empire”) as a slovenly, addled God, an offkilter Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter”) and the wonderful “Blockers” breakout Geraldine Viswanathan. This is exactly — and I mean exactly — what I asked for. Still, it’s not Ann-Margret.

Despite everything it has going for it, “Miracle Workers” is not nearly as good as it should be. And it isn’t immediately clear why that’s true. It’s some combination of half-baked humor, murky exposition, contrived stakes and the fact that the eschatological absurdism genre has been done before to much better success. “The Good Place” comparisons are probably unfair, but they can’t be helped. Eliza (Viswanathan), a young, dutiful employee of Heaven,

‘Miracle Workers’ Pilot TBS Tuesday, 10:30 p.m.

Inc., is granted a reassignment from the Department of Dirt to the understaffed Department of Answered Prayers, where the manic, lonely Craig (Radcliffe) deals with the billions of prayers sent upstairs from Earth. Given the metaphysical limitations of Heaven’s prayergranting abilities (employees can only alter the world through “discrete natural phenomena”), the three or

four prayers Craig chooses to answer each day are low-stakes — like finding lost gloves and car keys. The rest of the prayers are stamped “Impossible” and vaulted up to God (Buscemi), who has absolutely no interest in handling any of them. Buscemi’s God is juvenile, moody and makes everyone around him miserable. He longs for the days when people on Earth sacrificed rams in his honor and laments that the world is now too complex, too broken for him to handle. It’s a bit of a shift from “The Good Place,” where the immortal universe operates like clockwork, with bright pastels and breezy sound effects. Sufficiently disgruntled, God decides to absolve himself of his responsibilities by blowing up Earth, a plan he’ll execute in two weeks … until Eliza steps in. Eliza is the real heart of “Miracle Workers,” and it seems like she’s the best chance the show has to stay compelling and worth investing in moving forward. Viswanathan is surrounded by exceptionally talented actors — Buscemi’s bit can get old fast but he’s still a joy to watch, Radcliffe boasts an impressive range and the kooky side characters who color in the rest of the world are all plenty endearing. It’s in rough shape now, but it won’t take any miracles to save this show — only some faith that this cast can turn it into something more worthwhile.

BOOK REVIEW

‘The Night Tiger’ moves with tribute to Malaysia SOPHIE WASLOWSKI Daily Arts Writer

Dr. Macfarlane is missing a finger. At the beginning of Yangsze Choo’s second novel, “The Night Tiger,” that’s essentially all readers know. We’re not sure how the doctor lost it or where it is now, let alone why he so desperately wants his houseboy, Ren, to get it back for him. With hardly any explanation, Dr. Macfarlane begs Ren from his deathbed to find the finger and return it to his grave within 49 days of his death. Ren agrees to do his bidding, and soon finds there is much more to the mystery surrounding Dr. Macfarlane and his missing finger than there had first appeared. The story, which is set in Malya (an older name for what is now modern-day Malaysia), alternates between Ren’s point of view and that of the novel’s other protagonist, Ji Lin. Ji Lin is a strong-minded and independent girl who has sacrificed her dream of continuing her education and becoming a nurse in order to help keep her family afloat. She has a day job as a seamstress and works at a dancing hall on the side to earn enough money to pay off her mother’s Mahjong gambling debts. Ji Lin is a refreshingly determined and strong-willed female protagonist who frequently outsmarts the men around her. Her clever and humorous demeanor makes it easy for readers to root for her and makes the novel more entertaining as a whole.

There’s also Ji Lin’s stepbrother, Shin, who she grew up with but hasn’t seen in months. Shin, who has a somewhat guarded and stoic personality from living in fear of becoming like his abusive father, is training in Singapore to become a doctor. All of Ji Lin’s friends find him utterly irresistible, but Ji Lin has definitely, most certainly never been interested in him (until now, maybe). Despite Ji Lin’s worries of her stepfather discovering her mother’s debts and her job in the

‘The Night Tiger’ Yangze Choo Flatiron Books Feb. 12, 2019

dance hall, everything appears to be normal. But then, the deaths begin. A salesman is discovered dead on the side of the road. Dogs disappear without any explanation, never to be seen again. A woman is found half-eaten on a plantation, by what locals suspect was a weretiger, a mythical creature that shapeshifts between human and tiger. And when Ji Lin pickpockets a vial with a single finger in it from a customer at the dance hall, it’s clear that she and Ren are destined

to come together to unravel the mystery surrounding the deaths and weretigers side-by-side. Choo (whose debut novel “The Ghost Bride” is being adapted into a TV show by Netflix) was born in Malaysia and has imparted much of her Malaysian and Chinese culture into the story, a visual highlight of the novel. From the food the characters eat to the clothes they wear and the places they live, readers are exposed to a part of the world and way of life they may not be familiar with. The idea of weretigers, which is at the heart of the novel, also stems from traditional tales and beliefs that originated in Malaysia and other parts of Asia, as Choo details in a “notes” section in the back of the novel. The motif of chinese homonyms (words that sound or are spelled alike but have different meanings) is also heavily present in “The Night Tiger,” as well as themes of colonialism and tensions between foreigners and locals in villages. The resulting novel is a blend of culture, history and mythical tales. Choo has crafted an exciting and enjoyable story that bridges the genres of mystery and fantasy and has just the right amount of thriller to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Choo’s characters are well-developed and intriguing, and she unites them through a complex plot she has expertly weaved together. Even without such strong characterization and plot, the cultural road trip the novel provides is reason enough to read “The Night Tiger.”

I recently got hooked on “You,” Netflix’s late-2018 thriller drama about a bookstore manager named Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley, “Gossip Girl”) and his girlfriend, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail, “Once Upon a Time”). Joe seems like the perfect boyfriend, but is actually an obsessive stalker who murders those close to Beck in an effort to “protect” her from the chaos of her own life. Joe’s micromanaging and fake feminism are carefully realized by Badgley and the show’s creators, and delightfully infuriating to watch — but strangely, the character who often annoyed me the most in the moment was Beck herself. Beck is a student in NYU’s MFA program, the avid reader and aspiring writer to Joe’s bookstore manager. Their shared versedness in literature is the pedestal from which they constantly judge other people, whether explicitly or inadvertently, starting from the very first scene when they meet. Beck approaches Joe, and he wonders via voice-over whether the book she’s looking for will essentially deem her worthy of further attention; when she asks after the Paula Fox novel “Desperate Characters,” he is impressed, and the viewer registers an early victory for Beck in the eyes of Joe. Maybe this is the problem: Beck’s character is introduced largely through Joe’s eyes. No wonder a misogynist would see her as ideal: She reads “obscure” old literature, secretly hates her vapid friends and can’t concentrate on her own writing worth anything unless Joe is around. The thing that annoyed me about Beck’s portrayal in “You” is her approach to the world of writing. I am an aspiring writer myself, and I know a lot of other people in those same shoes, many of whom have wildly different approaches to creating and consuming literature. I have never met anyone in real life whose approach is like Beck’s. That’s not a compliment. Beck skates by in her MFA program in a way that artists of any type are often conditioned early against doing; she’s the type of writer who sits around waiting for inspiration to strike. Any writer who is good enough to get into NYU’s MFA program ought to also be serious enough to be able to crank out a story for a workshop, inspiration or no, and yet when Beck is told to write one, she acts as if she’s never done this before and simply decides not to do it. The professor accepts this and says they can reschedule Beck’s workshop for a different day. Moreover, historical writers and works are romanticized, while modern writers are brushed off. For instance, Beck’s classmate Blythe

(Hari Nef, “Assassination Nation”), perhaps one of the best characters in the show, is praised constantly, but her impressiveness seems tied more to the strange concepts behind her stories and her superficially interesting, “worldly” background (in contrast to Beck’s own New England childhood), than to the depth of her thought. This ties into a problem that “You”

The fetishization of reading is dangerous because, at the risk of sounding extreme, it makes reading mean nothing; it strips the things that make reading what it is — its precision and sensitivity, its union of the past and the future and its feeling of a continue tradition.

has with the image of “writers” and “readers,” exemplified in a different moment when Joe texts Beck to asks what she’s currently reading. She sends back a picture of a book resting on her bare legs, post-shower. “You”’s approach seems to me like, and hopefully is, a commentary upon this way of looking at reading and writing, holding Joe and Beck alike under criticism. Yet it is still offputting, because the portrayal of the literary world in “You” is so instantly recognizable as the dreamy world of reading and writing that many people often incorrectly picture. The classicist view of literature is so often confined to the sorts of masterpieces Joe and Beck so often reference, like

“Wuthering Heights.” When many people picture curling up with a book for fun, they picture the same leatherbound, beautiful, carefully maintained hardbacks that Joe keeps stored up in the glass prison below his bookstore. These — Joe preaches repeatedly to Beck and to the audience — are classics; they are works by the masters, some of the best pieces of art humanity has ever produced. There’s a reason the image of the Mooney’s bookstore resonates with us: We’ve seen it before, time and time again. But the show skims past some of the problems with this romantic view of literature. The “classics” don’t include everybody; in fact, they have traditionally been extremely exclusive. I would argue that some of the most exciting, dynamic and interesting things that have ever happened in the world of literature are happening right now. We’re so lucky to live in an era when so many literary boundaries are being pushed in terms of subject matter, genre and style. We’re lucky to live in a time when the exclusive past of the literary canon is finally being recognized with, and the voices of queer writers, writers of color, female writers, indigenous writers and more writers from traditionally marginalized communities are starting to be amplified. “You”’s treatment of the literary community — via, again, the purposefully distasteful characters of Joe and Beck — makes no mention of this, choosing instead to elevate the names of long-dead writers whose voices have been glorified plenty enough anyway. The fetishization of reading is dangerous because, at the risk of sounding extreme, it makes reading mean nothing; it strips the things that make reading what it is — its precision and sensitivity, its union of the past and the future and its feeling of a continued tradition, its overwhelming capacity for empathy-building— of their weight, swapping them out in favor of nostalgic and flowery images. The hot guy in a New York City bookstore who’s impressed that you’ve heard of Hemingway. The hot girl in a huge city apartment who calls herself a writer, but can’t seem to work past her own lack of ideas. I realize a single person like me hardly has the right to personally measure the perimeter of the literary world and proclaim my own vision of it the correct one. I only wish that in a world where, on the whole, reading is only superficially fashionable (if I had more time here, I might delve into the whole Rupi Kaur conversation), representations of the literary world were less often romanticized and idealized, and more often reflective of the real vibrancy that characterizes that community from the inside out. NETFLIX

SPORTSMONDAY

The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | February 18, 2019

MICHIGAN TOPS TERRAPINS, 65-52

TURTLE

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Design by Jack Silberman Alexandria Pompei and Max Kuang / Daily

INSIDE SPORTSMONDAY DECLAN MITCHELL AND THE JOY HE BRINGS See Page 2B

SportsMonday

2B — February 18, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SportsMonday Column: Declan Mitchell and the joy he brings MIKE PERSAK

Daily Sports Writer

Each Friday, Declan Mitchell goes to Riley’s Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. If you went there looking for him, he would be the one dressed head-to-toe in sports attire, as he always is: jersey, socks, the whole works. Sometimes it’s Michigan gear. Sometimes it’s a LeBron James day. Sometimes it’s the Indiana Pacers. Declan’s mother, Sarah, says he likes to show off his uniform to the nurses. And then Declan, just 11 years old, sits in a chair for four hours and gets a blood infusion. Once a week. Every week. Declan has Hunter Syndrome. It’s a rare, genetic disease that only affects males, and it means that he is missing a particular enzyme that is crucial to cellular repair. Fewer than 500 boys in the country are affected by the condition. Hunter Syndrome is degenerative, and there is no cure. Declan can still walk and run and climb stairs, but eventually, that will change. He is cognitively impaired — Sarah estimates he has the intellectual ability of a three-year-old — so his speaking ability is limited, though he is able to communicate what he wants or needs. That, too, will cease eventually. The life expectancy for Hunter Syndrome used to be just 15 years. Thanks to these blood infusions, which replace the enzyme Declan is missing, that number could be doubled. “Honestly, he really loves going (to the hospital) so much, because it’s a part of his life,” Sarah told me over the phone two weeks ago. “He doesn’t think anything different, and on Fridays, we go there.” So every Friday, Declan sits. He eats snacks and watches movies to pass the time. He loves Michigan football, since his grandma graduated from the University and his mom attended for a year,

so his favorite thing to watch is a Michigan football DVD. “We actually have to keep replacing (it). Thank God it’s on Amazon,” Sarah joked. “It’s like one of his favorite movies, and it’s so worn out because we watch it all the time.” But that’s Declan. A neighbor described him as a creature of habit. He watches sports habitually. He plays basketball habitually. He wears jerseys habitually. These things make him tick. More importantly, they allow him to live as normally as he can. Declan was born a healthy baby. It wasn’t until he turned three that Declan was diagnosed with Hunter Syndrome, and even then it wasn’t a simple thing to diagnose. Declan’s pediatrician didn’t suspect anything. His occupational therapist thought his breathing was off, but Sarah says she wrote it off as allergies and asthma. He had some ear infections and respiratory issues, but again, on its own, those traits didn’t immediately jump out as a sign that something was wrong, especially for something as rare as Hunter Syndrome to be suspected. It took an occupational therapist and a speech therapist who recognized some warning signs to push Sarah and her husband, Tim, to bring Declan to a specialist. It was that genetic doctor who finally connected the dots. “When we got the diagnosis, we thought, this cannot be,” Sarah said. “There is no way this could be this severe. Because he was talking, and he was happy. Granted, he was a little bit sore and some things, but we didn’t know.” Sarah and Tim started googling Hunter Syndrome, and they saw pictures of other boys with the condition. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, they all look like him,’ ” Sarah said. From there, the Mitchells went the only way they could: onward.

Sarah stumbled onto some blogs made by mothers of other boys with Hunter Syndrome, and she reached out to them, joining a supportive community of people going through the same thing. Sarah says new families often have a lot of questions early on, and it’s clear she knows from experience. The Mitchells enrolled Declan in their local public school in Westfield, Ind., where he has learned in a modified classroom since he was in preschool. He has an aide, Andrew, who spends each day with Declan and helps facilitate his day. The goal, in the end, is to make Declan’s life as normal as possible, both in school and out. For someone like him, that means keeping most things in his life consistent and familiar while integrating any new things — like curriculum or new relationships — slowly around him. So when Declan moved to middle school, where he takes classes now, he spent the prior summer getting familiar with his new teacher, Maureen Craver. “We just did a lot of really fun stuff just to get him excited to be in the new classroom with me and in a new school,” Craver said. “He loves basketball, so we played a lot of basketball and a lot of fun games. So I got to kind of know him that way and know what he liked and what he didn’t like.” Craver had never heard of Hunter Syndrome before meeting Declan. Beyond the summer spent with Declan, she met with Tim, Sarah and Declan’s last teacher, to get familiar with the intricacies of Declan and Hunter Syndrome. But optimizing Declan’s experience is a group effort. The principal, assistant principals, secretaries, teachers and even the other students play a part in making Declan feel as comfortable as possible. And, believe it or not, sports come in here too. “I think he uses it as a way to connect with other people,” Craver said. “So he wears some sort of

— usually an NBA team — shirt or jersey every day. You know, he’ll, if he’s maybe a little shy around someone or if we have new peer students come in, he’ll kind of look down at his shirt all coy and use it as a talking point. “… All the administration and teachers and staff here know that about Declan, and so if our gym teacher sees him in the hallway, she’ll say, ‘Oh, Declan, I love your Heat shirt today!’ to start a conversation. Or sometimes it’s other boys in the hallway with different sports shirts on, and he’ll go up to them and say, ‘Oh, Pacers shirt.’ So he uses it as definitely a way to connect with people.” At home, things have changed since Declan was diagnosed. Sarah used to work on the wealth management team at Merrill Lynch. Declan began to have some struggles in daycare, though. He was sick a lot, and because of a lack of awareness that accompanies Hunter Syndrome, he would push kids over and become irritated. So Sarah and Tim decided Sarah should become a stay-athome mom. “It wasn’t a decision I would have normally made, but it was an automatic decision, like, I would just stay home with him,” Sarah said. “So for a few years, we just lived on Tim’s salary, and that was very unplanned, so things were a little tight. “But that was just what had to be done.” Sarah has since picked up a part-time retail job, while Tim works as a vertical sales manager for a global electrics company. In a way, though, taking care of Declan is a full-time job, and Sarah would be the first person to tell you that she can’t do it alone. Her parents have moved closer to home to help out, and the community around her helps too. None of this is to say that anybody is complaining, because whatever Declan requires in attention he gives back in happiness. Declan likes to take walks to

COURTESY OF SARAH MITCHELL

Declan Mitchell was diagnosed with Hunter Syndrome at age three.

neighbors’ houses to play basketball. Oakley says everyone is just happy Declan can play. He has made friends with the other children in the neighborhood, including Oakley’s son, Dylan, who passes down basketball jerseys for Declan to wear. “I know that, like, he’s kind of a handful,” Sarah said. “He’s just kind of a busy kid with a short attention span, and like a low vocabulary. So he can be kind of a handful, but I know the people who know us, like, he’s so happy. And he brings a lot of people so much joy. The worst part of Hunter Syndrome is the degenerative part. Declan has some problems climbing stairs. At some point, the Mitchells will need to move into a one-level home. Special education students are allowed to attend school until they are 22. For most students, Craver says the goal is to move students into a “supported home environment,” and even get them a job. For Declan, though, that may not be possible, depending on how healthy he can stay. “I know people who have already been through that because I have friends in the community,” Sarah said. “So I kind of know what that journey looks like, because of other kids that are the same age that are more severe, a little further ahead and a couple years older. But it’s just, kind of, nothing prepares you for it, even if you know what’s coming. It’s just

kind of crappy.” What is here now, though, is something that Declan, Sarah, Tim and everyone who knows them is thankful for. He can still talk — things like ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ and ‘I want that movie.’ That is not a small thing. “It sounds weird, but we’re very grateful for that,” Sarah said. And more importantly, Declan still makes an impact on those around him. When the Mitchells take a trip to the grocery store, Sarah says they always run into people who know Declan. Declan can still watch Michigan football and the NBA. He is still active, still shooting hoops at neighboring houses. Something about Hunter Syndrome is that Declan isn’t capable of understanding that he is any different than other kids. The people around him see to it that his life is improved as much as possible. The kicker is that, along the way, Declan has done the same in return. Money is being raised to fund research for gene therapy, which is thought to be a potential cure for Hunter Syndrome, at projectalive. org. There is also a gofundme page at www.gofundme.com/projectalive. As of the writing of this article, the page has raised $2,268,810 with a goal of reaching $2.5 million.

Read the full story online at MichiganDaily.com

Michigan sweeps Binghamton Pitching leads ‘M’ past Bearcats KENT SCHWARTZ Daily Sports Writer

Going into the eighth inning on Saturday, the No. 17 Michigan baseball team (3-0 overall) was tied 4-4 with Binghamton (0-3). It was the second game in a threegame series, with the Wolverines notching a 10-0 victory in the first game of the series. Saturday, though, was a different story. Michigan went down 4-2 in the third inning after senior third baseman Blake Nelson’s three errors propelled Binghamton to score three runs. “We had a tough defensive day on Saturday, but that’s a fluke,” said Michigan coach Erik Bakich. “It’s just a hiccup. I don’t anticipate very many games like that, but those days happen and we just have to move on.” Clawing its way back to even the score against the Bearcats with a run in both the fourth and fifth innings, Michigan was looking to find momentum. Finding it in the bottom of the eighth, Nelson singled to left field and advanced to third on two wild pitches, allowing sophomore shortstop Jack Blomgren’s single to knock him in for the go-ahead run. With the nail-biter on Saturday done, the Wolverines came to play on Sunday. Holding the Bearcats to two runs, they broke out with a six-run eighth inning to win the game 12-2. “I and my coaching staff like the way we put the exclamation mark on the weekend with the six-run eighth inning to really extend the lead,” Bakich said. “The game was much more in question than 12-2, but it took a six-run burst there in the eighth to really separate.” All three of the weekend games were won on the back of the pitching, with junior right-hander Tommy Henry throwing seven shutout innings and redshirt right-hander freshman Isaiah Paige notching two of his own. Saturday saw junior righthander Karl Kauffmann pitch 10 strikeouts, only allowing one earned run. Freshman Willy Weiss finished the game with a

clutch save, striking out the side after allowing a leadoff single. Sunday was more of the same, as sophomore right-hander Jeff Criswell got the start, allowing only one run in five innings. A team of relievers showed the game out, headlined by sophomore left-hander Angelo Smith — who threw two innings with four strikeouts and one earned run, striking out two and getting a groundout after coming on with the bases loaded in the sixth inning. Pitching, though, wasn’t the only thing going for Michigan. Holding a batting average of .315, the offense held its own. Sunday brought two triples, by Blomgren and redshirt senior Miles Lewis, and a homerun from sophomore catcher Joe Donovan. “As a coaching staff we were really impressed with the balance of our offense with multiple threats throughout our lineup, one through nine,” Bakich said.

“A combination of both speed and power. It’s just a tough lineup to get through.” One offensive star of the weekend has to be Blomgren, who had five runs batted in — including the winning one on Saturday. “He hit a huge triple today that really separated the game and what it means is that we’re really deep,” Bakich said. “He may be in the nine-hole in our team, but he might be in the two-hole or leadoff spot on another team.” All of the Wolverines’ offensive production came without junior outfielder Dominic Clementi, who had a team high .368 batting average last year and was out with an abdominal sprain. Clementi is questionable for next weekend’s series against The Citadel. Even so, this opening series could not have gone much better for Michigan, who has come out of the gates as fast as it could have hoped.

ABBY SNYDER

Daily Sports Writer

In the top of the sixth inning on Sunday, Angelo Smith walked into the worst possible situation for a pitcher: bases loaded, nobody out. At least one run for Binghamton (0-3) seemed all but certain to everyone but the sophomore left-hander. Smith struck out his first two batters on six pitches and got his third batter to ground out on the next pitch to escape the jam. The No. 17 Michigan baseball team’s pitchers shut down the Bearcats this weekend in its season-opening series. Five of this weekend’s hurlers are still holding onto a perfect 0.00 earned run average. The Wolverines kept the Binghamton confused all weekend, holding it to six runs on the series. Michigan swept

all three games, winning 10-0 on Friday, 5-4 on Saturday and 12-2 on Sunday. “Our three starters, Tommy Henry, Karl Kauffman and Jeff Criswell all gave us very solid outings and did a really good job of minimizing free passes,” said Michigan coach Erik Bakich. “All of them did a great job of attacking the strike zone.” One particularly strong performance came from Tommy Henry, who started the Wolverines’ first game of 2019 on Friday. The junior left-hander held Binghamton to six hits and no runs over a dominant six innings of work, striking out nine in the

process. Michigan also saw strong performances in shorterinning stretches from its bullpen. Redshirt freshman right-hander Isaiah Paige allowed only a single hit and no runs over three innings of work out of the bullpen on Friday. Freshman righthander Willie Weiss earned his first career save in his first collegiate outing for the Wolverines. He struck out the side to end Saturday’s nail-biting contest and seal Michigan’s come-from-behind victory. “Striking out the side in his one inning on Saturday, Willie really showed some electric stuff,” Bakich said. “It was really great to see.” Michigan’s pitching was so dominant that many of the hurlers got little or no work over the course of the weekend. Some of them will have to pitch in a scrimmage this week to reach their target number of innings pitched and stay on pace for the seasonlong goals set for them by the coaching staff, according to Bakich. Though fewer of this year’s pitchers have in-game experience on the season so far, the Wolverines’ arms will be plenty rested for next weekend as the team heads down to Charleston, S.C. to face the Citadel. Many of the pitchers also have college experience behind them from previous seasons, so with almost a week’s rest before their next game, the pitching staff will look to put out another weekend of shutout work. “We certainly feel great about our veteran pitching staff,” Bakich said. “That they were able to give us three quality starts on the weekend – it was great to see.”

We certainly feel great about our veteran pitching staff.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Sophomore left-hander Angelo Smith escaped a bases loaded, nobody out situation in the top of the sixth inning during Michigan’s 12-2 win on Sunday.

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SportsMonday

February 18, 2019 — 3B

Early trouble

Michigan drops three straight against North Carolina and Louisville in Big Ten/ACC Challenge, falls to 4-5 on season AKUL VIJAYVARGIYA Daily Sports Writer

Though Louisville and North Carolina didn’t seem to be the caliber of the Michigan softball team’s opening weekend opponents, the 17th-ranked Wolverines knew they’d present a challenge. And, after a lackluster first tournament, it originally seemed like Michigan came ready to play in Chapel Hill, beating Louisville 6-0 in its first game of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. “We were really on task, we were sharp, we were crisp, and we had a great energy about us,” Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said. “When we got there, we were excited to get to play. I was very pleased, and I thought we had improved from week one to week two.” But what seemed like a promising weekend of improvement turned sour quickly. After the shutout win over Louisville on Friday, Michigan (4-5) mustered a measly six runs over the course of its next three games, losing the North Carolina (5-3), 8-3 and 4-2, respectively, while dropping a close one to Louisville (4-5), 2-1. “We need to start generating more offense in general, period,” Hutchins said. “We need more bases, we need better cuts. If we’re guilty of anything, there’s no question, it’s that we’re trying too hard. We’ve got some kids that have power, but we just want to hit the ball hard. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there. It’s tough.” Added senior catcher Katie Alexander: “Usually, hitting is contagious so, you know, I just got to keep trying to do what I can do for my team in any way possible to get on base. And again, mental toughness.

Like softball is a game of ups and downs. Hitting 1-for-3 is good so we just have to string it together.” The turning point of the weekend occurred during the fifth inning of game two. Tied at three, against the Tar Heels, sophomore left-hander Meghan Beaubien relieved freshman right-hander Alex Storako. The wheels couldn’t have fallen off any faster for the Wolverines. After giving up five earned runs, Beaubien was pulled within the same inning. “We didn’t stay as competitive,” Hutchins said. “I don’t want to say (we lost) our confidence, but all of a sudden, we got tentative. You can’t. You’re in the middle of a game. When you’re getting outplayed, you can’t play tentatively. We can’t play tentatively, we can’t pitch tentatively, we can’t hit tentatively and we can’t play defense tentatively.” That inning set the tone for the rest of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge for the Wolverines. After practicing how to hit with runners on base this past week, Michigan was unable to drive

in runs and leaving several runners on base each game. The Wolverines will undoubtedly drop in the rankings after losing three of four to unranked competition. But more than that, the weekend raised more questions than solved them. With the starting first base job spot still up for grabs and junior third baseman Madison Uden getting benched toward the end of the weekend, the lineup is far from set according to Hutchins. But rather than building confidence for the next two tournaments that feature four of the top eight teams in the nation, Michigan has lost itself. “We can’t really do anything about it now so we should be able to let it go and not be thinking about it next weekend,” Beaubien said. “We just need to focus on the games we have that are coming up and just really focus on all around, offensively, defensively, and in the circle. And not putting pressure on ourselves to get the results we want and just play softball like we know how.”

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Senior catcher Katie Alexander noted the offense relies on mental toughness.

DANIEL DASH

Daily Sports Writer

Rough waters have carried the No. 17 Michigan softball team into uncharted territory. Though the ship is far from wrecked, Wolverines’ coach Carol Hutchins is looking to plug any leaks sooner rather than later. After dropping three of its four games at the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, Michigan (4-5) returned to Ann Arbor with a sub-.500 record through at least five games for the first time since 2001. The losing record isn’t the only issue the Wolverines brought back from Chapel Hill — mounted frustrations have manifested, too. Right now, the vessel’s radar system is pointing to a number of different dangers. “Our pitchers have a part to do, which is (execute) their process and limit the (opposing) offense,” Hutchins said. “Our defense’s job is to pick up the pitchers and take care of the ball. The offense’s job is to hit and score some runs. Right now, we’re not doing well in any of those categories.” While Hutchins may be disappointed in the team’s overall performance, there are some positive takeaways outside of the turmoil. Michigan dominated Louisville, 6-0, Friday afternoon behind sophomore left-hander Meghan Beaubien’s one-hit shutout in its lone win of the weekend. “We were really on task, we were sharp, we were crisp, and we had a great energy about us,” Hutchins said. “When we got there, we were excited to get to play. I was very pleased, and I thought we had improved from week one to week two.” However, the Wolverines’ excitement was short lived. Later that evening, the team was deadlocked with North Carolina going into the fifth

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Michigan coach Carol Hutchins was displeased with her team’s performance.

inning. When freshman righthander Alex Storako began showing signs of fatigue, Hutchins turned to Beaubien to finish the game. Moments later, the ship sustained its first gash. Beaubien was rocked for five runs, plummeting Michigan into an insurmountable deficit. The team’s enduring problem didn’t lie in the deficit — rather, the root of the issue came in the form of its passive response. “We gave up too many free bases and five runs in an inning,” Hutchins said. “Hit batters, errors and they got ahold of a couple. We didn’t stay as competitive. “I don’t want to say (we lost) our confidence, but all of a sudden we got tentative. You can’t. You’re in the middle of a game, when you’re getting outplayed, you can’t play tentatively. We can’t play tentatively, we can’t pitch tentatively, we can’t hit tentatively and we can’t play defense tentatively.” When the Wolverines’ defense faltered, they allowed the shortcomings to adversely affect them at the plate. After

scoring six runs in the first game of the weekend, Michigan scored a combined total of six in the ensuing three losses. “We need to start generating more offense in general,” Hutchins said. “Period. We need more bases, we need better cuts. If we’re guilty of anything, there’s no question, it’s that we’re trying too hard. We’ve got some kids that have power, but we just want to hit the ball hard. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there. It’s tough.” After failing to seize two chances to capture early-season statement victories against No. 5 Florida and No. 7 Arizona at last weekend’s Wilson-DeMarini Tournament, the Wolverines find themselves limping into an early crossroads. Instead of pressing the panic button, Michigan is looking to use the experience to catalyze long-term growth. “When you go through tough times, you’re meant to get tougher,” Hutchins said. “And that’s what it’ll do to you if you make the choice basically.” For the Wolverines, the time to choose is now.

Behind Robbins, Wolverines beat Through the lens of Ann Arbor, a Illinois for sixth-straight victory look at the race for the Big Ten ROHAN KUMAR Daily Sports Writer

Sunday afternoon in Champaign, Ill., two teams on very different trajectories crossed paths. The Michigan women’s basketball team had won five consecutive games and was making its case for the NCAA Tournament. On the other hand, Illinois was on a downward spiral, having lost 13 of its last 15 contests. And despite flashes were it appeared the Fighting Illini (2-13 Big Ten, 10-16 overall) might get the upset they needed to change course, the Wolverines (9-6, 18-9) eventually pulled away with a 70-56 victory. After leading for the entire second quarter, Michigan’s grip on the game loosened early in the third. The Wolverines conceded two jumpers from off the left block — as well as a pair of free throws — and soon trailed, 30-29. Michigan gave up seven offensive rebounds in that third frame, and as a result the game stayed close. But then junior forward Kayla Robbins — who finished with a team-high 15 points — stepped up, grabbing two steals and scoring seven points to give her team the breathing room it needed. From then on, the Wolverines

widened the gap. “Kayla Robbins is an incredible basketball player,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico to MGoBlueTV. “She does so many things that other players on our team don’t do. She has an incredible motor to the basketball, she rebounds the ball exceptionally well, she’s becoming more and more confident on the rip-and-go to the basket. She’s a great defender. She has great length and she’s just a great kid. “She has been working incredibly hard lately and it’s so nice for her to be seeing a lot of positives and really impacting our team.” The Wolverines had a meaningful moment in the first quarter, when senior center Hallie Thome scored from the post on a routine move. That basket made her the program’s third-ever player to reach 2000 points. “Oh my goodness,” Barnes Arico said. “2000 points is incredible. That is not easy to do. 1000 is not easy to do. To have the ability to score 2000 over the course of your career is really special, and Hallie has been special to our program from the minute she stepped on campus. She’s just unstoppable.” Early in the game, the Fighting Illini excelled from beyond the arc. They hit two triples in the first

two minutes to take a 6-0 lead. By the first media timeout, they had notched a third and led 11-7. When the timeout ended, Michigan’s streak began. Freshman forward Naz Hillmon and Robbins checked in, and with them the Wolverines brought a near-full-court defensive press. For a while, Illinois had no answer. The Fighting Illini struggled to make it to half court, and by the time they did there was often limited time left on the shot clock. This led to bad shots. Michigan capitalized on the opportunity its defense provided, going on an 8-0 run to end the quarter. Robbins was crucial to that run, accounting for the latter half of those eight points to give her team a 15-11 lead. In the second-frame, the Wolverines’ run continued. It topped off at 14-points, giving Michigan a 21-11 lead early in the stanza. Illinois soon fought back though, led by forwards Alex Wittinger and Mackenzie Blazek. Wittinger converted a jumper and a triple. And then nearing the end of the half, Blazek hit back-to-back jumpers to cut the Wolverines’ lead to 29-24 by intermission. But at the end of the day, the two teams continued in opposite directions.

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Junior forward Kayla Robbins finished with a team-high 15 points in Michigan’s 70-56 win over Illinois.

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Sophomore defenseman Quinn Hughes and the Michigan hockey team must win the Big Ten Tournament.

RIAN RATNAVALE Daily Sports Writer

As the Michigan hockey team inches closer to postseason play, one thing is abundantly clear — the only way that it makes the NCAA Tournament is with an automatic. The Wolverines currently sit at 25th in the Pairwise rankings, and according to College Hockey News’ Playoff Probability Matrix they have a zero percent chance of an at-large bid, even if they win out their last four games against Ohio State and Wisconsin. But not all hope is lost. The Wolverines can still earn an automatic bid if they win the Big Ten Tournament. Besides Ohio State — which leads second-place Minnesota (33 points) by the same eight-point margin that the Golden Gophers lead last-place Wisconsin (25) — the second through seventh seeds in the tournaments are all essentially up for grabs. To guarantee home-ice for the threegame series in the first round, Michigan must finish no lower than fourth. For the second-round game to be at Yost as well, it would have to finish second. “It was disappointing you know, at Ohio State when you have the lead in the third period and played pretty well but made some bad mistakes in New York because you can’t get those points back,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson

on Jan. 31 after splitting a home and neutral site series against Penn State. “And as you look at the standings, everything’s so tight. One game and you go from third place to seventh place.” With the way the conference schedule is set up, there are likely four teams vying for the three home-ice spots in the first round: Minnesota, Notre Dame (31 points), Michigan (30) and Penn State (29). Though Michigan State is close behind with 27 points, the Spartans only have one series to make up ground, while the three teams directly above them all have two. To make matters worse for the Spartans, that series is in Columbus. As long as the Wolverines win at least one of its last four games or Michigan State loses one of its games to the Buckeyes, Michigan will finish above the Spartans. And if the Wolverines take one game against Wisconsin, that would put the Badgers at an eight-point deficit to Michigan — meaning that the Wolverines would be safe from slipping below Wisconsin if the Badgers lose at least one other game. That is, by no means, is a given. Though Michigan picked up a win in Columbus themselves and could have walked out with a sweep if not for a third-period meltdown in the second game, Ohio State is currently the only Big Ten team

in the top ten for a reason — it’s by far the most consistent team in the conference. Even Wisconsin gave Michigan all it could handle in two extra-time games at Yost. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the Wolverines lose out, so that likely leaves them jockeying for position with Penn State, Notre Dame and Minnesota. The calculus gets a little twisted from there — head to head, Michigan is tied with the Fighting Irish, up only one point to the Nittany Lions, and down one to the Golden Gophers. Notre Dame hosts Penn State and travels to Minnesota, but the Gophers play one series in the span while the other teams in the race all play two. “It’s hard to make up points because everybody’s playing the same teams,” Pearson said. “Everybody is playing each other. Someone’s gonna win, someone’s gonna lose, so it’s important if you can string a sweep together.” Still, any scenario where the Wolverines don’t get at least three points against the Buckeyes this weekend would likely spell doom for Michigan’s chances at second place. That, coupled with a Penn State sweep over Wisconsin, would drop the Wolverines to the No. 5 seed. However, a scenario where Michigan sweeps its season-ending slate would likely put it in a good position for the No. 2 seed.

SportsMonday

4B — February 18, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Back to normal

Wolverines stave off comeback attempt, top Maryland 65-52 THEO MACKIE

Daily Sports Writer

After its season reached a nadir in a lethargic loss to Penn State on Tuesday, Michigan came into Saturday’s game against No. 24 Maryland in desperate need of a cure for a month’s worth of offensive struggles. So before tip-off, Isaiah Livers and Eli Brooks sat down to discuss what needed to go differently. The two eventually concluded that, to avoid a repeat of Tuesday — when the Nittany Lions’ first basket came just five seconds into the game — the emphasis needed to be on a strong start. That basket, they realized, had set the tone for the entire first half. By the time the Wolverines righted the ship, they were down 16. On Saturday afternoon though, it took nearly three minutes for the Terrapins to score. Before they could do so for a second time, Michigan’s lead had ballooned to 12. Maryland (19-7 overall, 10-5 Big Ten) eventually reversed course, but — much like for the Wolverines on Tuesday — it was too late, as Michigan (23-3, 12-3) held on to win, 65-52. “We built too big of a hole,” said Maryland coach Mark Turgeon. “Against a great team, you can’t do that.” When Livers caught a pass in transition and slammed over Anthony Cowan with 7:11 to play in the first half, the game appeared over. Michigan had already raced out to a 23-8 lead, displaying the type of fireworks that have evaded it for much of the past two months. “Everybody was really

focused, everybody was locked in, everybody was active,” Livers said. “We had six shutouts — that’s three stops in a row — in the first half, so that’s really good for us.” The early barrage came on the back of jump shooting and transition baskets — two areas in which Michigan has struggled in recent weeks. But then, the struggles of the Wolverines’ midseason lull resurfaced. After a Livers three midway through the first half, they didn’t hit another one until four minutes after the break. The transition offense, too, dried up after that opening spell. “We created 13 turnovers in the first half,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “We stopped creating turnovers so now we had to dial up plays and get more into a half-court thing.” As Michigan stagnated, the Terrapins found their groove. Just four minutes after Livers’ dunk put the exclamation mark on a dominant opening stretch, back-to-back 3-pointers from Aaron Wiggins cut the Wolverines’ lead to a precarious nine-point advantage. For the first nine minutes of the second half, that’s where it remained, fluctuating between six and 11 — Michigan threatening to pull away and Maryland threatening to pull even, but neither coming to fruition. But when Serrel Smith Jr. buried a pull-up triple to cut the deficit to three with 10:21 to play, it seemed the latter had come to pass. The Wolverines — just an hour after their most dominant stretch in months — were en route to their most crushing loss

Everybody was locked in, everybody was active.

of the season. Then, as he so often does, sophomore guard Jordan Poole provided a much-needed spark, darting into the lane in transition and eurostepping past a helpless Maryland defender to extend Michigan’s lead back to double digits. One possession later, junior guard Zavier Simpson hit just the Wolverines’ second three of the half, sending the Crisler Center into a frenzy and re-establishing Michigan’s eightpoint advantage. “Any three that we hit in the second (half) — whether it was (Ignas Brazdeikis)’, (Jon Teske)’s, Zavier’s — they were just huge to get us back,” Beilein said. “It was going south pretty quick. We couldn’t get anything to go and they were getting really easy shots.” The Terrapins never got the deficit back within one possession, giving Michigan a win that may look easy on the stat sheet but was, in reality, anything but. After Tuesday’s episode in State College, the Wolverines will take it.

Isaiah Livers, Jon Teske lead the way against Terrapin bigs ARIA GERSON

Daily Sports Writer

John Beilein and Luke Yaklich had a message for Isaiah Livers. A matchup with Maryland was coming up. The sophomore forward knew he would be called upon to back up the ‘4’ and ‘5’ positions. And the Terrapins happen to have two talented big men — chief among them Bruno Fernando, a 6-foot-10 behemoth who affects both ends of the court. Livers, meanwhile, had lingering regrets about the last game the Michigan men’s basketball team faced a team with two physical bigs. On Feb. 1, the Wolverines lost in Iowa City as Livers found himself in foul trouble, playing just 14 minutes and forcing freshmen Brandon Johns and Colin Castleton to be thrown in the fire. Then, Livers couldn’t help his team nearly as much as he wanted. Facing Maryland, Beilein and Yaklich told him what had to change. “(Yaklich) and (Beilein) said I can’t outmuscle big guys with

small ball,” Livers said. “You gotta move your feet and kinda just trick them. Trick the guy passing it.” Combined, Livers and junior center Jon Teske — a more traditional big — held Fernando to zero points in the first half. Terrapins forward Jalen Smith, meanwhile, had six at the ‘4’ position, four of which came with freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis guarding him. But in the second half, the nine-point lead the Wolverines had built up started to dissipate. In the first five minutes, Fernando scored a hook shot, a dunk and a layup — then got Teske his second foul. Teske, who had just two points up until then, came out. In many games, that would have been where it unraveled — especially when Johns, Teske’s replacement, instantly picked up two fouls on the same possession.

But Beilein took the risk and put Teske back in along with Livers. After that, Fernando had six points, Smith had two and Michigan had a 65-52 win. “I wasn’t fouling,” Livers said. “And I wasn’t wrapping my arm around him, just holding him.” At Iowa, forwards Luka Garza, Tyler Cook and Ryan Kreiner combined for 41 points while Teske, Livers and Brazdeikis combined for 12 fouls. On Saturday — when Fernando and Smith had 20 points and the combination of Teske, Brazdeikis and Livers had just six fouls — the Wolverines found the right balance. “We’ve learned to play more physical,” Beilein said. “… Our losses have taught us we can play physical without fouling. At Iowa, we were in foul trouble immediately and that put us behind the eightball.” And when Teske did get in foul trouble, Livers was there. Taking what he learned on a bad night against the Hawkeyes, he sent his own message to Maryland: You won’t be able to take advantage. “When I get in there, I don’t try to outmuscle Bruno Fernando,” Livers said. “I try to move my feet around and just make him uncomfortable. I did that, it was like three times and he just threw it away because he got scared and threw it all the way out of bounds.” Coming in, the Terrapins — a top-25 team who Beilein sees as a contender in March — looked like a bad matchup. But Beilein contended that their combination of bigs was nothing Michigan hadn’t seen before. Livers and Teske proved him right.

You gotta move your feet and kinda just trick them.

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Junior center Jon Teske helped shutdown Maryland’s big men, as the Wolverines beat the Terrapins, 65-52.

DeJulius gets his shot Walk before you run: ‘M’ tries to rediscover break JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Editor

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Freshman guard David DeJulius was the first guard off the bench Saturday.

ARIA GERSON

Daily Sports Writer

David DeJulius took the court at Crisler with his first real opportunity all season. Junior guard Zavier Simpson needed a spell in the Michigan men’s basketball team’s game against Maryland on Saturday, and DeJulius was the first guard off the bench. He played just 40 seconds before subbing out, but with six-and-a-half minutes left in the first half, the freshman re-entered after Simpson got his second foul. He hit a layup and nabbed a steal two possessions later. He was in for four minutes this time, only coming out after missing a 3-pointer with 1:20 left. It seems like a mundane accomplishment. But for much of the season, DeJulius was a little-used option, spotted mostly in long-decided games against the likes of George Washington, Chattanooga and Air Force. Entering when it was still anyone’s game, against a ranked conference team, as the first guard off the bench, is a far cry from garbage time. And afterward, Michigan coach John Beilein — not usually very forthcoming about playing time — hinted there may be more where that came from. “It was a great layup,” Beilein said. “ … He’s been playing really well and we just said, you know what? We can use (sophomore guard Eli Brooks) in some ways, but it’s time for David right now to back up (Simpson).” It was simultaneously a

compliment of DeJulius and an indictment of Brooks. Halfway through the first period, Brooks had nothing but space in front of him and took what should have been an easy, uncontested jumper. It clanked off the front of the rim, the kind of shot of someone who’s lacking in confidence, who’s seemed hesitant to take a shot for the better part of the season. But Beilein doesn’t just play freshmen in games like this. As he’s reiterated throughout the season, they have to earn it. DeJulius, it seems, has finally done so. “I think Dave did a great job of coming in and relieving (Simpson) when he got in foul trouble,” said sophomore forward Isaiah Livers. “Even when he had that left-to-right crossover, it kinda mimicked Zavier Simpson’s little hook, but it was a strong finish.” This isn’t the first time Beilein has teased more playing time for freshmen. The previous times, it was only to go back to the tight seven-man rotation he’s used all year. But with more depth needed as the Wolverines approach the home stretch in Big Ten play and Brooks struggling, the time may have finally come for DeJulius to get his shot. “He played great, played great defense, knocked down a little three o’clock (layup),” Simpson said. “We just need that sense of urgency if there’s an injury off the bench. I was happy to see him come in and just be vicious and demonstrate what he can bring to this team.”

The Michigan men’s basketball team takes its time on offense. The Wolverines have finished higher than 285th in offensive tempo just twice in 12 seasons under John Beilein. Low turnover rates depress their tempo somewhat, but this has never been a team that seeks to fly past you. Instead, Michigan is more like a viper waiting to strike its unsuspecting prey. The Wolverines ranked among the top five percent of teams in transition efficiency in each of the last three seasons, per UM Hoops. This season? “Sometimes, fast break, we shouldn’t even do it,” said Michigan coach John Beilein after a 59-57 win over Minnesota on Jan. 22. “Because we’re jogging up the court. We gotta sprint. We don’t run.” The Wolverines scored 19 fast break points on Jan. 10 against Illinois, but that was heavily aided by the Fighting Illini’s pressure defense and accelerated tempo. Leading into Saturday’s game against Maryland, Michigan hadn’t scored more than 10 since. Its normally lethal fast break has been, at best, average this year, and often much worse. And Beilein’s let them know it. “They see the analytics on it, that we’re a very middling offense in transition,” Beilein said Saturday. “We showed them stats from other years, and I said, ‘We’re doing the exact same thing.’ ... We didn’t change our game plan, so this one’s not on the coaching staff right now. This is on you.” It’s not as if this game plan — Beilein’s only rules are “get wide, make sure we fill some lanes” — reinvents the wheel, either. Michigan has excelled in transition for years by taking elementary concepts and executing them at a high level. But while that has done wonders for the Wolverines in the past, that might be part of the problem this year. Simplicity

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Sophomore forward Isaiah Livers helped shutdown Maryland’s big men, as the Wolverines beat the Terrapins, 65-52.

and ease are not the same, but the difference between them is deceptive, and that difference may have deceived Beilein — who regrets that he didn’t drill his team more on core concepts during the summer. “I shouldn’t have taken that for granted that people understand how to get wide when we really didn’t,” he said. “That’s on me.” Thus, the past two weeks have been something of a crash course in transition offense, according to junior guard Zavier Simpson. On Saturday, Simpson reiterated that the keys to finding a transition groove are simple. “Finding the open lanes, just to get hit and (Beilein has) been on our wings about running,” Simpson said. “I just tell my wings just to run and I’ll find you.” If this understanding comes around, Michigan — with a premier distributor in Simpson, an ace shooter in sophomore guard Jordan Poole, and athletic mismatches in redshirt junior guard Charles Matthews, freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis and sophomore forward Isaiah Livers — has the tools to be one of Beilein’s better transition offenses. The seeds of that were on display against the Terrapins.

After a blocked shot, Brazdeikis led the break and found Poole, who circled under the rim and hit Simpson for a wide-open, catch-and-shoot 3-pointer for the game’s first points. Brazdeikis notched a transition triple of his own a minute later, and Matthews scored four points off fast break passes from Simpson and Brazdeikis in a 14-2 start for the Wolverines. Maryland’s offense has ballsecurity issues, ranking second to last in Big Ten games in turnover rate. Michigan took advantage, scoring 10 of its 27 first-half points on the fast break thanks to 13 Terrapin giveaways. Maryland threatened in the second half as the Wolverines slowed down, but a smooth transition take by Poole off Livers’ outlet, followed by a Simpson pull-up three, kept the Terrapins at bay. All told, Michigan finished with its most fast-break points (14) in over a month. “We were playing at a clip that was incredible,” Beilein said. “We were getting stops and we were running. ... (In the second half) we stopped creating turnovers, so now we had to dial up plays and get more into a halfcourt thing.” Brazdeikis and Livers, in particular, could hold the key to

Michigan’s fast-break Ferrari. Both play most of their minutes at the ‘4’ position but have the talent and athleticism to hold their own elsewhere. This includes transition, where their versatility can discombobulate a defense unsure how to match up with them. “It was sometimes where I was even leading the break and I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” Livers said. “… That’s great for us. Especially Iggy — Iggy had like two assists on transition. He loves when four-men push the ball because it’s really hard to guard because the other four-man’s not gonna guard the four in transition, so it’s kind of liking having a lot of guards out there. It felt different.” Added Beilein: “It’s very hard to guard a bust out four. Somebody’s gonna take him, it means now … the point guard is being guarded by a four in space and that’s usually good.” On Saturday, the Wolverines weren’t quite the deadly transition offense they’ve been in years past. But they looked closer than at any point this season — and with Michigan having broken 70 points only once in its last nine games, and 80 only once since Dec. 8, an improved fast break might be just what it needs to get its offense back on track.