Michigan

Michigan basketball enters ‘self work’ week between marquee matchups

Published

1 year ago

December 16, 2024

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Michigan basketball enters ‘self work’ week between marquee matchups

There’s nothing wrong with self-improvement and that’s exactly what this week is all about for Michigan basketball.

The No. 14 Wolverines (8-2, 2-0 Big Ten) have gotten off to a largely impressive start in the Dusty May era, but their seven-game winning streak was snapped on Tuesday in the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.

U-M held a 15-point first half lead before it got bludgeoned by 33 points in the middle of the game. It then chipped away at its 18-point deficit in the final nine minutes and had multiple looks in the final 60 seconds to tie or take the lead, but none fell and Michigan lost to Arkansas, 89-87.

It was U-M’s second neutral site loss to a potential tournament team from a Power Four conference by a single bucket (U-M lost 72-70 to Wake Forest last month). While neither loss in a vacuum is anything to freak out about, the common themes causing Michigan problems throughout the contests are becoming perfectly plain.

“I think you know the answer to that,” May laughed Friday morning when asked about his points of emphasis. “Two things are keeping you from being your absolute best, so we’re trying to be creative fixing those things.

“Attacking them in film, attacking them in individual work, attacking them in team concepts. Full speed ahead, everything we have in the tank to fix these things.”

Michigan’s next opponent is No. 17 Oklahoma (9-0) next Wednesday at the Jordan Invitational in Charlotte.

Get more shots, limit more shots

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but U-M is trying to cut down its turnovers.

If it sounds repetitive, it’s only because it is, because when Michigan shoots the ball, it’s simply elite.

May’s group is No. 7 in the country in 2-point shooting (61.0%) and No. 84 in the country from behind the arc (35.9%) according to KenPom. The problem is it’s only shooting the ball on just more than 78% of its possessions because it ranks No. 334 out of 355 times, turning the the ball over on 21. 4% of its possessions.

The other glaring issue, U-M is still winning on the boards. The Wolverines are rated No. 34 in the country in offensive rebounding rate (36.2% of missed shots) but are giving up too many second chances on the other end, allowing opponents to grab 32.6% of their misses, good for No. 276 in the nation.

“Those are exactly the two things,” forward Will Tschetter said. “We looked at KenPom, we’re an elite team in almost every facet. … We watched every single turnover we had in that game and how we can fix it, watched every single board we didn’t grab defensively and how we could have fixed that. Then emphasize that to a ‘T’ during practice.”

Tschetter and Nimari Burnett, the Wolverines two main holdovers from the previous regime, say that the current staff puts a greater emphasis on analytics than the previous one.

Its why May and company can live with some of the aggressive turnovers on outlets up court, or when someone is trying to make the extra pass. But when there’s a sloppy live ball turnover that results in a pick-six?

Well that needs to stop immediately.

“This gives us a few days to spend on us,” May said of U-M’s eight day break between games, the longest stretch of the season. “We needed this week of practice, even though our guys are busy outside of this (with finals) we needed this to be able to really put a lot of teeth into fixing the things that need to be fixed.”

‘Same level of urgency’

Michigan has held double-digit leads at some point in just about every game.

It did against Wisconsin, Iowa and Arkansas, yet in all three of those games Michigan allowed the opponent to get back within one possession or take the lead. Twice, U-M lived to tell the tale. The third time was not the charm.

“We have to stay focused longer, we have to continue to fight when we have the lead,” May said. “With the same level of urgency.”

The good news is all the individual pieces appear to be there. Danny Wolf comes off a near triple-double and is looking like a Big Ten Player of the Year candidate. After a slow start, Vlad Goldin is averaging 20 points and 7.5 rebounds over the past four games. Roddy Gayle Jr. and Tre Donaldson are both averaging 12 points per game and U-M’s bench whether it’s Will Tschetter or Sam Walters has shooters and energy to spare.

However, even with that, Michigan has allowed more 10-0 run than any other team in the country. Much of that happens because of giveaways and not securing boards.

“I know at home the magic formula is the timeout,” May said. “We have to play basketball, can’t turn it over, cant throw the pick-sixes that lead to easy baskets, those are energizer plays. So yeah, the pace we play at, the style we play, we’re succeptible to runs but we’re also capable of stretching leads.

“There’s a give and take with every style of play.”

Ten games into the season, the style of play U-M is employing does not seem to be a problem. Execution at times, is lacking. But part of that is still to be expected as a group that hasn’t been together yet as a complete unit for even six months has navigated a rather difficult schedule with few blemishes.

May is pleased, but not exuberant, about where his team is. He’s said multiple times this year that he could probably plan a little bit better for today, but that it wouldn’t prepare his teams as well for the long run. It’s a fine balance between tweaking playing rotations, emphasizing points of weakness and keeping the momentum all moving forwards.

But the Wolverines have done that 10 games into 2024-25. Now, in self improvement week, they want to take another step.

“We do respond to failure pretty well,” May said of what he’s learned of this group early. “Wake Forest, we came back with the mindset of being eager to fix what needed to be fixed. It seems like after our second loss, we’re in the same mindset.”

Tony Garcia is the Michigan Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.

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Over 40,000 without power after storms push through West Michigan

Published

5 hours ago

April 15, 2026

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Over 40,000 without power after storms push through West Michigan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Over 40,000 Consumers Energy customers are currently without power after strong storms pushed through West Michigan on Tuesday.

The outages, according to a map provided by Consumers Energy, are peppered from as far east as the Lake Michigan shoreline and over to Gratiot County.

This comes as storms producing strong winds, along with severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, push through the area.

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News Channel 3 is tracking these storms and will provide updates.

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Max Bullough brings lineage and lessons for Michigan State defense

Published

17 hours ago

April 14, 2026

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Max Bullough brings lineage and lessons for Michigan State defense

East Lansing — It’s 6:30 a.m. but the energy is high inside Michigan State football’s practice facility as Max Bullough barks out orders to his group of linebackers who watch him with rapt attention. At 34 years old, the Traverse City native looks as though he could go through these drills himself. He probably wants to.

Now, the former two-time MSU captain Bullough returns to East Lansing. To the same stomping grounds where his grandfather Hank once plodded the sidelines for Duffy Daugherty. Where his father Shane once captained a team for George Perles. Where he and his brothers Riley and Byron each played for Mark Dantonio, including Max’s captaincy of the 2013 team that won a Big Ten championship and earned a ticket to the Rose Bowl.

A Rose Bowl he never got to play in.

With Bullough, it felt like a matter of when, and not if, a homecoming would occur on the sidelines. And with that reunion would come the inevitable question: Why did his career end a game early, suspended from the Rose Bowl his senior season?

“Yeah, you’ve been dying to ask that one,” Bullough said. “Here’s my answer to that one:

“That was 13 years ago, right. So my focus and my energy and my attention is on the 2026 Spartans, and my beautiful wife, Bailey, and my four boys Rocky, Teddy, Banks and Murphy. We’ll leave the past where the past is. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing moving forward, and so let’s talk about the 2026 Spartans.”

Now that that’s out of the way.

As much as Bullough doesn’t want to talk about the past, it’s what his very hire harkens back to. He’s here to help revive a storied program that means so much to him that he has “Spartans” tattooed across both arms. He gets to raise a family where his family has played and coached, and where his grandmother, Lou Ann Bullough, still gets to every Michigan State basketball game she can. What would it mean for his grandfather to know he came back to join the coaching ranks?

“I don’t know how much he would tell me or not. You never got that much out of him that way,” Bullough said. “But I think at the end of the day, I think it would mean a lot.”

The first thing you notice about Bullough is his intensity, especially for Michigan State football. At least that was the case for new head coach Pat Fitzgerald, who had Bullough wrap up the first team meeting of the year for a new group trying to rise above 4-8 mediocrity a year ago.

“I gave him 90 seconds, I think he went 15 minutes,” Fitzgerald said Feb. 4. “Getting to know Max through the evaluation process when I was putting the staff together, you could sense very quickly his pride — beyond the double bicep — for the Spartan football program, the state of Michigan, his time here, and what he wanted to bring back, and that was toughness.”

Bullough’s part in an illustrious past for this program — in four years he went 40-12 and captained the Spartans his junior and senior years, an honor that means a great deal to him — is a major cultural building block for a staff trying to reestablish principles of the era of Dantonio, who is around more often since Fitzgerald got the job. Thankfully it all worked out, Fitzgerald says.

“He’s got a bright future ahead of himself in his career, and we wanted to make sure,” Fitzgerald said, “coming here is obviously easy to say of course, he’d want to come home. But it also had to fit looking at his three-, five-, 10-year plan for his career.”

Bullough was brought in for the next two seasons on a contract paying him $750,000 per year. When he stepped on campus as an assistant coach was only the second time he’d stepped food on campus since he graduated. The other time was when he was an honorary captain in 2015.

“There’s a lot of new buildings, this whole place,” Bullough said. “That’s the question y’all should ask. This place looks completely different.”

In Bullough, though, there’s a connection to history that feels further and further following four straight losing seasons.

“He’s brought energy, brought enthusiasm. He brings a lineage,” defensive coordinator Joe Rossi said April 7. “He understands what it means to be a Spartan, not only him but his family. So it’s been awesome.”

As an understudy to Rossi, Bullough is listed as a co-defensive coordinator in addition to his role as linebackers coach. Not only does that free up Rossi to “roam” around practices and observe his entire defense (last season, Rossi filled that linebackers coach role), Bullough also gains experience for later in his coaching career that has been impressive through stops at Notre Dame and Alabama. He’s a riser, of whom coaches and players speak highly.

Playing for Mike Vrabel while with the Houston Texans watered the genetic coaching seed in Bullough. It was at Notre Dame that Bullough really fell in love with being a college coach.

“Once I was able to get to Notre Dame and have my own room,” Bullough said, “which is where the magic comes for me, like when you’re able to coach your own room and have your own guys. Like the connection that you’re able to build with guys that are this 18 to 22 years old, especially when we’re able to bring (our) own guys in. Watch them come in, watch them develop, and see what they turn into in terms of football players and in terms of men.”’

Men who make mistakes, like he did with whatever incident caused him to be suspended for the biggest game of his career, as perhaps the most important player to that team. That’s not an incident he uses as an example for his players who face trying times, he says, but he does use his life experience as a model for the young men following him, including linebacker Jordan Hall, who likely will be a two-year captain just like his coach this upcoming fall.

“The message to Jordan is, people are drawn to you, brother, what energy are you giving back?” Bullough said. “Because you gotta be on it all the time. There isn’t any time where you can where it’s like you can be down. You have to be on it all the time.”

Bullough said there was one incident early in spring ball that Hall was frustrated he got pulled for a teammate to play. He got frustrated, didn’t handle it well. The next time it happened, Bullough says Hall became an asset on the sidelines.

“I think that’s a testament to the kind of guy he is and the teammate he’s striving to be,” Bullough said. “… He made a mistake the one day, and he got better from it. He’s helped me a lot. And, I mean, I can admit that. I know he and Coach Rossi are very close and that he knows Coach Rossi’s defense like the back of his hand. I have no problem asking ‘Jordan, how do y’all see this? How did we do this last year?’”

“If you guys notice, any of the drills he’s like right behind us, almost mirroring everything that we do,” Hall said March 17. “Very passionate. I mean, just a great ball-knower.”

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Former Eastern Michigan football player stands outside Lions facility, asks for chance on the field

Published

1 day ago

April 14, 2026

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Former Eastern Michigan football player stands outside Lions facility, asks for chance on the field

Former Eastern Michigan football player Freddie McGee III went viral on Monday, doing anything he possibly could to get the Lions’ attention for a tryout to make the team.

“I felt I just needed to take matters into my own hands,” said McGee.

The Canton, Michigan, native, and reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the Arena Football League, says he arrived at the Lions practice facility in Allen Park at 8:45 a.m. Monday to beg for a chance to walk onto the Lions, just like how he walked onto Eastern Michigan’s football team a few years ago.

“This morning was a little nerve-racking, you know, this is definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone,” said McGee. “Just wanted to come out here, maybe catch the right scout, the right personnel person pulling in here, maybe take a look at the sign I have and get to know my story a little bit, maybe give me a shot today.”

Former Eastern Michigan University football player Freddie McGee stood outside the Lions facility in Allen in hopes of an opportunity on the field.

CBS News Detroit

McGee’s brave pitch to the Lions is that he’s not just a dreamer; he dominated the AFL last year with 14 interceptions and 25 pass breakups. And his story is one that he says exemplifies everything Dan Campbell and the Lions should be looking for: grit.

“Other than just being a local kid and growing up loving the Lions, I feel like I’m the epitome of grit, like my career hasn’t been easy, I’ve overcome a lot of adversity,” said McGee.

CBS News Detroit reached out to the Lions organization for comment and is awaiting a response.

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