Michigan
Michigan basketball keeps perspective as historically bad season nears end
Nobody in or around the Michigan basketball program has experienced anything like this.
The losing streaks. The disappointment. The frustration; it all continued Sunday, a day meant for celebration.
Michigan fell to Nebraska on senior day at Crisler Center, 85-70, to wrap up its regular season. At 8-23 overall, no team in 107 years of history has lost more games in a single season. Michigan hadn’t had a five-game losing streak in more than a decade, then had three separate such stretches in the past three months.
The Wolverines dropped 18 of the final 20 games; their KenPom defensive efficiency rating (107.1) wasn’t just the program’s worst since the stat started in 1999, but is the league’s worst mark since 2018 Iowa (108.2).
Or perhaps the most damning, U-M never had consecutive wins over high major teams all year long.
While head coach Juwan Howard insisted after the game that the season isn’t over and said his team will now turn its attention to the Big Ten Tournament — U-M will be the No. 14 seed for the first time in its history after finishing in last place in the league for the first time since 1966-67 — senior Terrance Williams II was willing to reflect on what’s transpired.
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Technically he has a year of eligibility left, but he didn’t sound like someone with plans to return.
“That 8-23, it won’t ever sit right with me,” Williams said, reflecting on what might be his last year in maize and blue. “I didn’t have that vision my senior season. But it happens. Adversity … we’re all going through adversity. It’s making us the young men that we are.
“l can’t be mad at it. I can be mad at that record, but what we’re going through, I feel like we’ll get through it. I made brothers this year, I’m happy about that. I’m playing basketball, can’t be mad about that. So you know, my 10-year-old self would be happy with where I’m at right now.”
‘That’s false information’
During the preseason it was captain Oliver Nkamhoua who downplayed a media poll which pegged the Wolverines to finish No. 11 in the conference.
“Those teams are going to have to prove on the court they’re better than us,” he said at the time.
The Wolverines had a shorthanded roster from the start, and went the entire summer without their head coach. The team practiced without Howard for months, before and after he underwent open heart surgery in September, and now with the benefit of hindsight, those in the program appeared to underestimate just how much that would throw a wrench in the season.
“It’s been a strange year in a very strange season,” Howard said Sunday. “I didn’t get an opportunity to be myself and on the floor, teaching (in the summer). Each and every day, thinking about when you have an aneurysm, what day is it going to burst? … Then you have surgery, go through that … learning how to walk again.
“I’m going to keep forging ahead because I know my team and my staff needs me. I’m not going to quit on them because that’s not how I operate. I’ve never quit anything in life. We have a season to play, so I’m going to give everything I can to this university, this team and this staff, because these are the people I love.”
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Things started well: Michigan was 3-0 at one point, then later 6-5, when the year went sideways just before league play began.
Howard got in a verbal altercation with former strength & conditioning coach Jon Sanderson, point guard Dug McDaniel got suspended, the flu ripped through the locker room, and Nkamhoua (broken wrist), Tray Jackson (concussion, broken nose) and Jaelin Llewellyn (ACL rehab) all battled through varying ailments.
As the roster got thinner, the losses mounted; but even though U-M has lost 18 of 20 games for the first time in more than 40 years, the players say they appreciate the way it’s been handled.
“Coach Howard, he’s trying to share the message that we have to get 1% better every day,” Williams said. “He’s not pounding the losses on us or any of that. We watch film, we try to learn from these mistakes that we keep doing and apply it. I appreciate coach Howard for that. A lot of coaches could be yelling at us, putting us down.
“Coach Howard just wants us to be better on and off the court. … I appreciate him for that.”
There’s a chance the comment could be misconstrued as apathy. Maybe it comes off as the coach not demanding more of players. Maybe it comes off as the new generation being satisfied with a participation trophy.
Williams shut down any conspiracy theories of that sort immediately.
“I mean, nah, we’re definitely being pushed every day in practice,” he said. “We’re trying to fix the mistakes. We’re not just going into practice like we will wipe away the game that happens. We’re gonna watch film, drill, Coach Howard’s going to drill us to help us in the next game.
“We’re not satisfied with the record, just to be transparent … that’s a fan perspective. I just feel like that’s false information, because we’re being pushed every day. We’re pushing each other every day.”
The bigger picture
Fans don’t want to hear about the moments they don’t get to see.
Barbecues at Howard’s house won’t end what looks like it will assuredly be the program’s first two-year NCAA tournament drought since it missed 10 straight (1999-2008). Neither will bowling nights, though those happened, too, as did a watch party for the Super Bowl.
But for the players — whose years of dedication and hours of work per week are rewarded with losses and scrutiny — that’s what this year will be about.
“Even though this season hasn’t gone how we all wanted it to be, how we all envisioned, we can never question the group of players, the group of teammates, the group of people we had,” Nimari Burnett said. “With that being said, it definitely sucks. It weighs on us in our own individual ways.
“But us as a group, these guys are people I’ll talk to the rest of my life. Ultimately, I’m grateful for that.”
There are many questions about what the future of the program looks like. The coach, the roster construction, the NIL investment, the recruiting, the transfer portal; all of which are valid for a program that’s gone from Elite Eight to Sweet 16 to bubble team to bottom of the Big Ten.
But from where Howard sits, there’s no question about what needs to happen. And no place he’d rather do it.
“We’re going to grind like no other this summer,” Howard said. “Getting back to what we’re used to … and that’s winning. But this year right here alone, we have learned a lot and I feel we have won in a lot of ways.
“I could have sat this season out but that’s not how I’m wired. I felt this team and this staff needs me and I need them, too.”
Contact Tony Garcia: apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him at @realtonygarcia.
Lansing — Jocelyn Benson, the front runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, said she believes her work in eight years as secretary of state will help convince voters to promote her this fall.
On Sunday, during a convention in Detroit, Democrats will pick a new secretary of state nominee. And on Thursday, Benson’s campaign for governor submitted about 30,000 petition signatures to get her name on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.
Amid those key moments in the 2026 election cycle, Benson, a former law school dean, sat down Thursday afternoon for an interview with The Detroit News about her time as secretary of state.
“I think that’s what people are looking for: A government that saves them time, saves them money and makes their life easier,” Benson contended. “I’ve done that as secretary of state, and I’ll do that as governor.”
The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
Question: You just dropped off your signatures this weekend. The Democrats are going to be gathering to nominate a new person for secretary of state. I was just looking over your campaign promises from 2017, do you feel like you hit them?
Benson: I had two goals when I came into office: wait times down and voter turnout up. And we did both, and I’m really proud of that.
When I started, we did a strategic planning session every January, and during our first strategic planning session in 2019, we filled the whiteboard on every wall in the office. And in our most recent one, the final one, we had just sort of one, just one little to-do list item left, which was really gratifying. Because we have not just increased turnout, but we’ve transformed our elections, eliminated gerrymandering, implemented the state’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission, which was no easy task, and then also implemented a number of new election procedures and options, educated voters about them and took Michigan’s elections from being ranked 31st in the country to No. 2.
We also did that while reducing those wait times (in Secretary of State offices), transforming our customer service experience. … Wait times are consistently 20 minutes or less, which was my No. 1 campaign goal.
Q: What were some of the strategies you used to get the wait times down for people?
A: No. 1, we listened to our employees, and No. 2, we collected data about what wasn’t working. You can’t fix what you can’t measure. And No. 3, we actually went around the country and looked at what states that actually had low wait times were doing. There weren’t many, but there were a few. Indiana and Illinois, had some interesting things that they did, and we took best practices that were working in other states and replicated them here.
But that first piece was key, listening to our employees. Early on in the process, we brought everyone in, all the branch office directors. I was expecting a daylong retreat where we would be discussing ideas, and I sat down with the director of branch office services. He had a whole PowerPoint presentation that went through everything we needed to do, from filling 900 vacant positions that were just vacant and not filled, to creating internally this opportunity for people to schedule the visit ahead of time.
We didn’t pay someone else to build that. That was built by our employees.
Q: When you ran in 2018, one of the big things you were talking about was election security. Do you feel like you’ve achieved that: improving election security? And what do you think about more people probably having faith in the results of elections then than they do now?
A: I am really proud of the fact that in this era of misinformation, we were able to protect our elections and ensure they remained secure.
While withstanding this unprecedented scrutiny and an unprecedented level of frivolous lawsuits, sham legislative hearings and falsehoods spread about our elections in the eye of the storm, we not only met the moment, but we built a better election system through it. That’s evidenced by the fact that we now have choices on how to vote in our state, we’ve modernized how you can register to vote and have increased the registration numbers we have.
Q: If one of these current candidates for secretary of state came to you and said, “I believe that the election is secure and everything is fine, but obviously there’s a lot of voters who don’t. How do we improve that?” What would you say to them?
A: Transparency is our friend.
Q: Just continue to open the process up as much as possible?
A: Well, the facts are on our side. The process is secure. So one of the most important things we need to do first is just continue to give people the tools that they need to get their questions answered and work with folks across the aisle, like we worked with Sen. Ed McBroom in 2021 to invite them into the process as well as answer questions that they have, while also, of course, maintaining any necessary confidence or security about the information that we’re providing.
But the through line is just transparency.
Q: What do you say to some of your opponents who will say, “Yeah, you decreased wait times. But what about the campaign finance website?” It’s not functioning, as they would hope it would.
A: Well, it’s certainly better than what we’ve had in the past. I think it’s important to remember that when I first ran for office, one of the things I heard most on the trail was actually, when are you going to get rid of MERTS (the former campaign finance disclosure system)?
Q: But that’s from people who are on the back end of it?
A: Right. Yeah. So I didn’t want to leave office without taking on that behemoth, knowing that it wasn’t going to be a smooth process, but it’s a necessary one if we were actually going to have a more transparent system, which I would argue also is something that the next secretary of state really needs to lean into more: getting money out of politics. I’ll be an ally for that as governor.
But when it comes to MITN and that process, one, what it really underscores is that I’m not afraid to take on big behemoths that others, frankly, past secretaries of state, refused to do, because it was too hard. And it does invite criticism. Whenever you try to transform a massive system that’s broken, yes, there are going to be hiccups along the way.
Q: Do you think voters are interested in that message: “I’ve improved these systems. I’m in government. I’ve succeeded in government. I can make it work.” Or are they looking for someone to just change everything?
A: People see a broken system that needs fixing, and they know I have transformed and fixed a system that every single one of our residents has interacted with. The other day, I was picking up food for my son and husband, and walking out with bags of food, and this gentleman in a pickup truck pulled up next to me in the parking lot and said, “Excuse me, are you the secretary of state?”
I was like, “I am.” And he said, “You know, I’m not political or anything. But I just was driving down this road the other day and realized when I passed the secretary of state’s office that it’s been years since I’ve had to go in there. Thank you for everything you’ve done to make that possible for me.” And I said, “Yeah, now imagine if all of government worked that well.”
Q: Do you think all three of the Democratic candidates running for secretary of state would be a good secretary of state? I know you’re not endorsing.
A: I’m committed to working with whoever comes through the convention and making sure they’re prepared to build on what we’ve done and achieve even more success.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
Before-and-after images of homes on Black Lake near Onaway provide perspectives on how the community was affected by April flooding.
Snowmelt and rain have stressed dams and caused lakes to flood in northern Michigan.
The Cheboygan County Sheriff’s Office shared on social media photos and videos that the agency captured of Cheboygan County floods on Friday, April 17 from both the ground and air.
Deputies “observed a level of destruction that simply cannot be understood from ground level,” the sheriff’s office said in the post.
Google Maps images taken from two locations on Black Lake in 2024, compared with the Friday images, show how the floodwater has changed the landscape.
On North Black River Road and Taylor Road, the water has overflowed to North Black River Road.
In the 400 block of South Black River Road, water has also flooded homes and lakeside property.
“Black Lake, Black River, Cheboygan River, Burt Lake, Mullet Lake, the Sturgeon River − and nearly every waterway in the county have overflowed beyond their banks, swallowing docks, roads, yards, and in far too many cases, homes,” the sheriff’s office post said. “What should be familiar shorelines are now unrecognizable expanses of water.”
“Our hearts are with every family affected by this flooding,” Cheboygan County Sheriff Todd Ross said in the post. “We know many of you are facing significant damage to your homes and property, and the emotional toll that comes with it. Please know you are not alone. We are working around the clock with our partners to ensure safety, provide support, and begin the process of recovery. Stay strong, stay connected, and don’t hesitate to reach out for help, we will get through this together.”
Nearby, the UAW Black Lake Conference Center shared images on social media of floodwater threatening its Old Lodge.
The conference center is located at 2000 Maxon Road in Waverly Township.
The Cheboygan County Road Commission and the Cheboygan County Office of Emergency Management closed the bridge at Five Mile Point Road on Saturday, April 18 due to significant road washout in the area of South Black River Road and Red Bridge Road.
The sheriff’s office had encouraged residents in parts of the area to evacuate earlier in the week and said Saturday it had completed evacuation efforts on the west side of the lake.
TEXAS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 20-year-old Kalamazoo man is dead after crashing his vehicle into a tree Friday evening in Texas Township, according to Michigan State Police (MSP).
It happened on South 3rd Street and West PQ Avenue around 6:50 p.m., troopers said.
While he was driving in a no-passing zone, the Kalamazoo man swerved off the road to avoid an oncoming vehicle and subsequently crashed into the tree, according to MSP.
The 20-year-old died at the scene. A passenger was hurt, but police said their injuries were non-life threatening.
Troopers do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor, and the two were reportedly wearing seatbelts.
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This incident remains under investigation by MSP.
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