The Michigan women’s basketball team had just made all kinds of history. The Wolverines had won their first- and second-round games of the NCAA Tournament while hosting (for the first time in program history), and in the Round of 32, they had taken down Villanova, advancing to the Sweet 16 (for the second time in program history). Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico had barely put on the headset for her postgame interview when the M-V-P chants raining down on Naz Hillmon hit her in a different way. She tried to answer the questions, but through most of the interview she held back tears (to varying degrees of success), espousing how proud she was of the senior class for what they had built and continued to build.
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A few different times, she peaked over her shoulder to glimpse Hillmon, the player who had almost singlehandedly brought Michigan to this point. In her answers and tears, the joy and sadness all wrapped together for Barnes Arico. At some point, she had to reconcile the fact that it was both her last game in Ann Arbor with Hillmon and the best team this program had ever seen.
Why not cry while on national television?
So, it must have been strange that by the time Barnes Arico got to the locker room she was greeted with something unexpected: Silence. No celebrating, no ceremonial Gatorade shower for the 10th-year coach, no music blasting from some player’s speakers. Instead, everyone was sitting in front of their lockers, eyes steadied on their coach.
Laila Phelia recalls: “She came in and was like, why are you guys not excited? … What the heck is going on?’”
Phelia admits that the team was excited, but they had also spent so much of the season reminding one another to never get too high, never to reflect too much. Much had been made of this team and what they could do with Hillmon in her final go around. Through the unprecedented levels of success, the undefeated home season, and watching Hillmon rack up award after award, they wanted to keep their eyes steadied on what came next; not what was behind them.
And while Barnes Arico was on board with that plan and leading that charge, she had always emphasized the importance of staying in the moment. And, when the moment necessitated it, the permission to celebrate in the moment.
And in this moment, Barnes Arico knew there was much to celebrate. So her post-game talk went a bit differently than she had probably planned.
“We were looking ahead, like, who are we playing next? And she really preached about how we need to be able to enjoy times like this,” Phelia says. “Her biggest thing was that we needed to be able to live in the moment. Yes, tomorrow is a new day and we’re going to move forward but we need to appreciate what we just did, what we accomplished.”
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Michigan would make it two more rounds, advancing to the Elite Eight — the deepest the program had ever played in March — before losing to Louisville and heading back to Ann Arbor. That time, her trip back to the locker room was different. There was no next team to anticipate playing and celebrating was always more difficult when it came with a heavy dose of nostalgia and reflection.
Barnes Arico would get to that point of celebration and reflection. But in that moment, the loss came with a pretty clear reality check. It was time to think about the future. It was time for her to really start to answer the question that had followed this team and its unprecedented success all season: Who is Michigan without Naz Hillmon? (And those less optimistic asked: Is there a Michigan without Hillmon?)
Barnes Arico had, of course, planned for a Naz-less future. That’s the job of a coach, and there was the recruiting and the ever-present thoughts, at the back of her mind, about what future matchups would look like without their All-American in the middle. But the full effect of it didn’t hit her until that bus ride.
Who are we now?
At its core, it was an existential question, one that strikes those fortunate enough to coach once-in-a-program players. And Hillmon had been just that. She arrived in Ann Arbor to a Michigan program that had only been to the NCAA Tournament three times and never past the second round. She left as the most decorated player in Michigan women’s basketball, doubling the Wolverines’ NCAA Tournament appearances, helping Michigan reach the Elite Eight and becoming the first All-American in program history.
But it was also a schematic question for Barnes Arico. With Hillmon, the Wolverines had been a pound-in-it-the-paint team with post-entry passes on almost every possession. Nearly two-thirds of their shot attempts had come at the rim, with Hillmon creating many of those opportunities. Though other bigs remained on the roster, there was no plug-and-play option at Michigan’s disposal. If the Wolverines were going to win at the same level, they would need to do so differently.
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As Barnes Arico pondered this question, so too did those outside of the program, where the assumption appeared near consensus: A Naz-less future was less bright in Ann Arbor. As Way-Too-Early Top 25’s were published, the Wolverines were left off many (or in the case of The Athletic’s, included near the bottom). When the AP’s preseason poll came out, Michigan was listed at No. 25 behind South Dakota State and Princeton.
“I think a lot of us have been underdogs — in high school being underrecruited or even my first couple years here, with seeding in the NCAA Tournament,” fifth-year senior Leigha Brown says. “In the offseason when people were counting us out … and we heard people saying that without Naz we weren’t going to be very good, that definitely got under some of our skins and made us want to prove everyone wrong.”
In May, as players returned to campus for summer workouts, each filtered through Barnes Arico’s office for player development meetings. The meetings took a micro- and macro-level look at the team.
Schematically, Michigan didn’t have the pieces to be the team it was a year ago. But, Barnes Arico emphasized, that wasn’t a bad thing. They would continue getting into the paint, but it wouldn’t just be on entry passes to a single post player. The offense would evolve into something more free-flowing with more slashing and cutting, more ball movement. Looking at it from a glass-half-full perspective, the benefit of losing a player who contributed so much was that other players would now have the opportunity to step up and fill the voids.
“There was a reality check in a sense of the opportunities that were going to be opened up,” Brown says. “We knew our team was going to look completely different.”
Individually, Barnes Arico laid out presumptive roles for players. Brown, Kiser and Phelia would need to step up their scoring loads. Michelle Sidor would need to slide into the point guard role. Maddie Nolan would need to continue progressing as the Wolverines’ best outside shooting threat. Cameron Williams would need to embrace her role on the inside after playing behind Hillmon the previous two seasons. And so on.
Each player received a binder with workouts, players to watch and analytical deep dives. But the main page that Barnes Arico pointed out was each player’s progress chart. Barnes Arico’s staff had drawn out graphs that represented each player’s time at Michigan, the leaps and lumps they took as freshmen, other dips that ensued. The graph accounted for injuries, increased playing time and shooting slumps. By contrast, she would talk about how players want progress to look — linear.
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“It’s not a great graph,” Barnes Arico admits. “It doesn’t look like you want it to look. There’s not improvement every day. There are going to be plateaus.”
Finally, Barnes Arico also laid out the question to each player: How do you want to define this team? With what you can do and how you can improve, and the players that are on the roster, who can this team be?
When the full group reconvened in the fall, they gathered for an aspirational meeting to focus on that question. They decided they wanted to concentrate on defense with a goal to be one of the best in the country.
But as players shuffled into the gym together, they also had another realization: This offense could take a big step forward, too. Practice by practice, it seemed as though almost everyone had become a more consistent shooter in the offseason.
The progress graphs, it appeared, were beginning to avoid the plateaus and dips.
“Sometimes the outside world thinks there’s a secret, and inside our program, we believe it’s work,” Barnes Arico says. “That’s where the individual development plan comes into play. If you put in the work, you will see the results.”
Eighteen games into the season, each of Michigan’s three leading scorers — Emily Kiser, Phelia and Brown — has improved her shooting percentage by at least seven percentage points while Kiser and Phelia have nearly doubled their scoring averages. Brown, who moved to point guard following an injury to Sidor, has become Michigan’s leading distributor while also improving her scoring and rebounding per game. Phelia, whose player development plan was heavily focused on becoming a three-level scorer, is hitting 3s at a 40 percent clip (compared to 28 percent last season).
Though the Wolverines aren’t the best defensive team in the country, areas of their game have improved even without Hillmon securing the center. They’ve held opponents to fewer rebounds and fewer assists per game this season while forcing four more turnovers per game. At 5-2, they’re in the thick of the Big Ten race, and after wins over Purdue and Michigan State last week, they’ve risen to No. 14 in the AP poll.
Bringing the energy@j_hobbss x @leigha32brown x @emilykiser_ x @ari_wiggins #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/9zqnVM36O0
— Michigan Women’s Basketball (@umichwbball) January 15, 2023
Barnes Arico, meanwhile, continues to help her team look ahead, while still balancing enjoying the moment and an appreciation of the past … without getting stuck in either spot for too long. In mid-November Hillmon, who finished her rookie season with the Atlanta Dream, along with former players Amy Dilk and Danielle Rauch, returned to Ann Arbor as the Wolverines raised their Elite Eight banner at Crisler Arena.
GO DEEPER
Michigan's Naz Hillmon embodies the progress in women's basketball
For Barnes Arico, it was the perfect example of what last season’s team had accomplished. Hillmon was in the building to support the program, but this season’s team — one that is arguably more well-rounded and potentially more equipped to make a deep March run than last season’s — stood on its own laurels. On that night, Michigan routed St. Francis by 55 points, but it wasn’t just about that game or that banner.
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It was about how this team, one that doesn’t have its All-American center to fall back on, has retained a level of play many didn’t think possible. It was that when the Elite Eight banner was hung, many Michigan fans and women’s basketball fans didn’t see the feat as a one off, and that most importantly, Michigan players believe that Elite Eight banner won’t hang by itself forever.
Michigan has already proven that it’s not just what Naz built. As the Wolverines look ahead — and celebrate their wins — they know they can build even more.
“We always talk about that it’s about building a program and not a team,” Barnes Arico says. “There are certain universities that have awesome teams in different years … and really building a team for that year and having success in that year. But what we always talk about at Michigan is building a program.”
(Illustration: Samuel Richardson / The Athletic; Photos: Courtesy of Michigan Athletics)
