The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/575020
COMMITMENT PROFILE Basketball recruiting seems to get stranger every year, but the 2016 sea- son might be Michigan head coach John Beilein's most unique yet. Just when it seemed the Wolverines were in good position for one outstand- ing point guard in Detroit U-D Je- suit's Cassius Win- ston (6-0, Rivals. com's No. 28 over- all player nation- ally), they grabbed another instead in Lima, Ohio, product Xavier Simpson. Simpson (5-11, 165, No. 87 over- all prospect in the country) gave a list of Wisconsin, Il- linois, Miami and Iowa State as late as the morning of his Sept. 9 press conference. And while the Michigan coaches were aware of him and had watched him, he wasn't even firmly on the radar given that the Wolverines had been prioritizing Winston and seemed to be in good shape to land him. However, Simpson's dad and coach, Quincey Simpson, reached out to the U-M coaches at the beginning of August just to gauge the interest. He'd heard through the grapevine that Simpson might be No. 2 on both U-M and Michigan State's lists. "I wanted to get a feel for it," the elder Simpson said. "Basically, what we were told was what- ever school Cassius doesn't go to, the other school would recruit us pretty hard. We wanted to get it done. "We knew Cas- sius was setting vis- its up, so I reached out to Michigan to see where things were, if that was e v e n t r u e . We started some dia- logue from that point on, built a little rapport. I was curious … but I never told 'X.' I knew he would not want me to; that he'd say, 'If they haven't contacted me by now …' "But I looked at it from a father's perspective. I could see it from Michi- gan's point of view, too, so I did it." And he was smart, too. Most of U-M's other point guard targets had committed elsewhere, and rather than rest all their hopes on Winston, they set up a Sept. 7 visit with Simpson following the point guard's trip to Wisconsin. U-M Gets Its 2016 Point Guard With Xavier Simpson's Pledge Simpson was named the Associated Press Division I Player of the Year in Ohio after averaging 19.8 points per game during his junior campaign at Lima Senior. PHOTO COURTESY RIVALS.COM