Former Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh is not quite done purging the staff of his alma mater.
Late Monday evening, Christina DeRuyter, previously the director of football operations at U-M who also held an integral role in the recruiting department, announced she is heading to join Harbaugh as the next director of football logistics in Los Angeles.
Or, as DeRuyter put it on her social media post, “Michigan West.”
“Forever grateful for the last 3 life changing years @UMichFootball,” her post began. “3x BIG10 Champs, 3 Wins vs OSU, Natty Champs, countless relationships & memories made. I’m thrilled to join Coach Harbaugh at the Chargers (Michigan West) as the Director of Football Logistics. BOLT UP⚡️& GO BLUE〽️”
Current wide receiver I’Marion Stewart responded to the tweet saying “I was looking for you today” before she replied it “hurt my heart” not to be in Ann Arbor any longer.
The move continues what has been a mass exodus from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles for those affiliated with last year’s team.
When Harbaugh left just weeks after helping lead the Wolverines to their first 15-0 season in program history and its first out-right national championship since 1949, he took with him nearly the entire defensive coaching staff.
Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, his father Rick Minter (who served as an analyst much of the past two years before finishing last year as interim linebackers coach), defensive line coach Mike Elston, and defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale, despite the wide-held belief he would stay on staff at Michigan.
That is without mentioning edge specialist Dylan Roney or strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert, who Harbaugh called the “x-factor for years” and whose name he was shouting to come join him when confetti rained down at NRG Stadium in Houston.
“People have choices to make, man,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel told the Freep in a sit down earlier this spring. “Jim knows what he wants to do at the Chargers, he made the offers and people had decisions to make. The mark of great success of people is when they come to a program or organization and leave it better than they found it. Jim did that. Those coaches did that. Whomever from the staff wants to go with Jim, I’m not going to have any animosity toward them.
MANUEL 1 ON 1 INTERVIEW: Michigan AD Warde Manuel exclusive interview: The hardest thing he has done in career
“As I told Sherrone (Moore) as we were dealing with it, on the flip side, ‘Look, now you can make it the way you want to make it, whatever that is,’ and he’s done that and I believe has a great staff he’s put together across the board.”
Manuel said the department was instead focused on adding new, young talent to the mix, which seems to have happened this past week. Over the past few days, the Wolverines announced the addition of a handful of new analysts and recruiting staffers.
Two of the new analysts, Reid Kuhn and Richard Perry, recently studied at Michigan, while the other faces come from some of the top football programs in the country like Preston Sagan (Clemson), Aidan Young (Oregon), Jacob Weber (Indiana) Jack Turner (Wake Forest), and Jacob Sakk (Pittsburgh).
Also as part of the staff movement, Albert Karschnia has taken over as Director of Player Personnel, while Sam Popper, previously the assistant, will fill Karschnia’s previous role as Director of Recruiting. It comes in the same time frame as Michigan nabbed a Michigan State graduate, Kayli Johnson, the older sister of All-American DB Will Johnson, to take over DeRuyter’s role, according to her social media profile.
Johnson was Rutgers’ assistant director of recruiting operations under Greg Schiano last year and an operations intern with the Detroit Lions the year before that, which comes after a standout track career at Michigan State (undergrad) and Texas Tech (grad school).
There’s hope around the program the influx of young talent can help kick start a month of June that is going to be incredibly important in terms of creating the foundation of U-M’s 2025 high school recruiting class.
Currently, Michigan has just five verbal commits, three of whom were pledged to the previous regime. As a group, Michigan ranks No. 41 in the nation, per 247Sports composite rankings.
There was no bigger storyline going into Auburn’s Sweet 16 game against Michigan than the frontcourt battle.
Both teams like to play with two traditional centers, something rarely seen in modern college basketball. Michigan’s frontcourt of Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin was slightly bigger than Auburn’s pairing of Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell.
Despite that, Auburn dominated the glass, grabbing 19 offensive rebounds, which helped the Tigers pull out a 78-65 win.
Those rebounds were especially important as Auburn’s offense struggled to find any flow or efficiency early in the game. The Tigers shot 32.4% from the field in the first half and turned the ball over 10 times.
However, Auburn outrebounded Michigan 29-17 and went into the break with nine second chance points compared to Michigan’s two. It continued in the second half has Auburn finished the game with 21 second chance points.
When Cardwell, Auburn’s starting center, was asked in the locker room after the game how Auburn gained such an advantage on the glass, his answer was as candid as it gets.
“I have no idea,” Cardwell said. “The grace of God? I don’t know.”
Cardwell said it was mentioned briefly on Auburn’s scouting report that Michigan might not be a great defensive rebounding team, but its size would still make it hard for Auburn to dominate on the glass the way it did.
Michigan came into the game ranking near the middle of Division I in defensive rebound percentage, but Auburn did a good job most of the game of keeping the Wolverines off the offensive glass too.
Michigan rebounded 26% of its misses Friday night, seven points lower than its season average.
“We have the best frontline in the country,” Broome said after the game. “We take pride in each matchup that we go against and we’re gonna bring it every night.”
Cardwell and Broome both suggested that the advantage on the glass came from Auburn’s will and effort more than anything schematic or overcomplicated.
“I would say that we wanted it more. This team, overall, we’re in the last year of college. The biggest thing we say in the team room and the locker room is we want to leave the court with no regrets,” Cardwell said. “Now, we can’t control our shots. We can’t control our free throws. We can’t control our layups. We can’t control a lot of things. But we can control our effort and energy.”
The rebounding advantage helped guarantee Auburn’s seniors at least one more game together, and the next one will be with a Final Four berth on the line.
Auburn’s Elite Eight game against Michigan State is scheduled to tip off at 4:05 p.m. Sunday. The game will be televised on CBS.
Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at prauterkus@al.com
In this previously submitted photo, Consumers Energy employees work on power lines that supply Caberfae Peaks ski resort near Cadillac in Northern Michigan. The energy company was preparing to deploy hundreds of crews to restore power amid any outages during this weekend’s rough weather. Provided by Caberfae Peaks
ATLANTA — For a period of time this season, Michigan basketball was in contention to win the Big Ten regular season championship. And they hoisted a trophy after winning the Big Ten Tournament.
But head coach Dusty May says this team, for many reasons, has become a team with a chip on its shoulder.
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