Drake Nugent bringing 'insane motor' and work ethic to Michigan

Stanford center transfer Drake Nugent has a reputation that has followed him to Ann Arbor. Partially due to the fact that his teammate in Palo Alto, Myles Hinton, also joined him in Ann Arbor.

This kind of reputation isn't the one to be frowned upon, though. In fact, quite the opposite.

Nugent brings a reputation of being a workhorse in the weight room, bringing relentless competition to anyone he wants to go up against on any given workout session.

For Hinton, who appeared on the In the Trenches podcast this week, he has been pushed by Nugent often.

"Just a diesel, that kid can go," Hinton said. "He has the most insane motor and insane mentality that I have ever seen in a player, ever. There are days out west where we would be conditioning and I'm always next to him because I need to be pushed. I want the challenge. I was next to him and I was like, man, Nugent is going. He is going nonstop. He is always the first guy in conditioning. He's always yelling at me, getting it going Myles.

"He thrives in that red area. Whenever he's like on the very of passing out, he gets more excited. It's crazy. I've never seen it anybody. I'm so serious. It's crazy."

For Nugent, the way he works is always what he's done. He believes it comes from a sense of being doubted throughout his life.

He's certainly not afraid to push it to the limit.

"I guess it's a compliment," Nugent said. "I've kind of always been like that, since high school, really. I think it's being a shorter guy makes me think that I'm always, not think, but I guess it makes me look down up, literally. I guess I feel like I'm always undervalued even though some people may differ that argument. I guess redlining would be going all out as much as you can until you break, I guess."

Nugent did admit, however, that pushing it too far at times might've landed him with a knee injury that required surgery to fix.

As a result, he's hated the fact that he hasn't been able to participate with the U-M program as much as he'd like to.

Even looking back, he wouldn't change a thing.

"That's part of the reason why I got that injury," Nugent said. "I was always doing heavy squats and stuff, trying to do too much. I think it caught up with me these past couple of years at Stanford. I just had some bad knee pain. It wasn't anything detrimental or structurally wrong, it was just super painful stuff. Tendonitis stuff. I think, looking back on it, I think I went on it a little too much at times but, at the same time, it did get me here. I don't know how much I would regret that at the same time."

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