The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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MICHIGAN BASKETBALL all that I've been through, to be able to finally make it to Michigan, put on that jersey," Hatch said during the 30-minute segment. "It really is a dream come true. "When you're millimeters away from death, you look at life through a different lens. Let's just say, the situ- ation didn't look good. But here we are." Hatch is one of the scholarship players on a Michigan team still fighting for an NCAA Tournament berth, and while he's still not close to being the player he was before his second plane accident on June 24, 2011 — only nine days after he had committed to U-M, his mother Ju- lie's alma mater — he's as much a part of the team as anyone. His team- mates mobbed him when he scored his first point in an October exhibi- tion against Wayne State, and again when it counted in a 72-56 victory over Coppin State Dec. 23. That was the latest high point on his "journey of Biblical proportions" as ESPN would call it, and the signif- icance wasn't lost on Michigan head coach John Beilein. "What he's gone through so far is miraculous," Beilein said, holding back tears. "He said to me, 'Coach, the way I look at it I've been so blessed through life; I've really only had two bad days in my life.'" For a time, Hatch's uncle Michael said, the family wasn't sure if he'd even have much of a life. Hatch spent six weeks in a medically in- duced coma after his accident, and he's still not close to 100 percent. Schoolwork is still a struggle for the once-elite student, and while his shot is coming back to form, he knows his other skills might never be what they where before his accident. The crash had left him with two broken collar- bones, rib fractures and holes in his lungs, and fractures to his sternum and left hip along with his massive brain injury. "We heard he was in a coma, had the severe injury to his brain, and that he might never wake up," Mi- chael Hatch recalled. "Even if he did, he might never walk again or might never talk again." Watching a once incredible basket- ball player have trouble simply put- ting one foot in front of the other was "sobering," Beilein added. But when Hatch asked Rasheed Hazzard, his trainer at Pasadena (Ca- lif.) Loyola High in Hatch's last high school year before Michigan, "Do you want to be part of a miracle?" he obviously meant it. Now he's ready to continue to build on it in memory of his father, Stephen, and the others he's lost. ❏ DIGITAL BONUS: CLICK THE ICON TO PLAY OR STOP THE PODCAST Nik Stauskas talks about Michigan and the NBA