The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1532537
68 THE WOLVERINE ❱ MARCH 2025 BY CHRIS BALAS M ichigan men's basketball head coach Dusty May suggested he wasn't interested in a long rebuild af- ter coming to Ann Arbor from Florida Atlantic, even before building a roster, even when some surmised it might take a while to right the ship after last year's 8-24 season under Juwan Howard. He wanted to win immediately, and he made it possible by assembling an out- standing roster from the transfer portal that had the Wolverines in first place at 12-2 in the conference — a game ahead of MSU and two ahead of Purdue and Wisconsin — with only six regular-sea- son games to play as of Feb. 17. It wasn't easy getting there, but it rarely is in the rugged Big Ten. U-M began to struggle with a loss at previ- ously winless Minnesota Jan. 16, then squeaked by Northwestern and Penn State at home (the latter requiring a fu- rious rally from down five points in the last two minutes) with a blowout loss at Purdue in between before starting to get it together. A win at Rutgers, a home win against Oregon, and a road victory at Indiana set the stage for a huge opportunity and a chance at redemption against Purdue Feb. 11. The Wolverines overcame a 7-0 deficit and two double-digit disadvan- tages to pull out a 75-73 revenge win to split the season series in front of a rau- cous, sellout crowd. "When you get knocked down like we did [in a 91-64 loss at Purdue Jan. 24] … it was a big game, nationally televised," May said. "A lot of eyeballs were on that watching Michigan basketball. We're proud of what we've created and what we're doing, so for us to perform like that … we weren't happy. "When things like that happen, you usually go one of two different direc- tions. Even after that, we didn't play our best, but we weren't discouraged. We weren't blaming each other. I thought we had great personal accountability, and we just kept fighting and battling." The Wolverines won the next four games by a combined 14 points before Purdue came back to town. They out- scored the No. 7 Boilermakers 32-21 over the last 10 minutes, making 7 of their last 9 field goal attempts, and got 15 points and 12 points from forward Danny Wolf in the win. Wolf was second on the team in scor- ing through 25 games, averaging 12.9 points while leading the Wolverines with 10.0 rebounds per game. Grad center Vlad Goldin led the team with 15.7 points per game, while junior guard Tre Donaldson averaged 12.7 and guard Roddy Gayle 10.8. Grad wing Nimari Burnett was leading the three-point shooters at a 42.7 percent clip. A key, though, was moving grad Ru- bin Jones to the starting lineup before the Purdue game. The veteran made huge plays down the stretch against the Boilermakers, including a steal and coast-to-coast finish and a putback dunk, and was all over on defense to fuel the win. ❱ MICHIGAN BASKETBALL Going From Worst To First In The Big Ten Is Firmly In Sight Five Wolverines had double-digit scoring averages through games of Feb. 16, including point guard Tre Donaldson (12.7 points), who was also contributing with 4.0 assists, 3.4 rebounds and 1.0 steals per game. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL