'Get Excited!': Former Michigan Stars Give Advice To New Signees
Michigan basketball signed an elite 2020 recruiting class, head coach Juwan Howard's first. The Wolverines welcome in a group of four incoming freshmen in Hunter Dickinson, Jace Howard, Zeb Jackson and Terrance Williams to U-M.
We asked former U-M stars Glenn Robinson III and Derrick Walton Jr. what advice they would give to the newcomers.
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"I would say just get excited!" Robinson said. "You’re going to college. You’ll be on your own and your own experience. But, it's also a tremendous opportunity.
"All of these guys seem like they’re going to have successful careers."
"Be ready to compete," Walton said. “That’s all I can say, be ready to compete. Be ready to win a lot of games and be ready to be coached hard because nothing comes to good teams that don’t have a guy that’s going to hold everybody responsible and accountable.
"And, I would say stay in the gym, as cliché as it sounds, because when all else fails, you only can trust the work that you put in. And, that’s what I learned during my time there — keep working at everything, and when it comes down to it and the moments are the biggest, all you can rely on is your repetition and your habits."
Both spoke about the close bonds they formed with their teammates while playing for the Wolverines, many of which they still keep in close touch with.
"Man, get ready to be around a bunch of dudes that really care about you," Walton said. "It’s not fake.
"Still to this day, I talk to Caris [LeVert] daily. I talk to Zak [Irvin]. I talk to Kam [Chatman]. All those guys, I’m super close with. Those type of bonds just made us closer until our adult years and in our careers. It’s still like we got the best connection."
Some of the fondest memories were looking back at the long hours spent together.
"We would bring our video games to the locker room, so we would literally just camp out in there all night," Robinson recalled. "Either we were on the court, we were playing video games or ordering Pizza Hut."
When the former U-M players in the NBA — whether they played together in Ann Arbor or not — face each other throughout the seasons, they take time to catch up and spend time with one another. The connections are real.
"Of course, when I play Moe [Wagner], we kick it before the game," Walton said. "When I see Duncan [Robinson] or when Nik [Stauskas] was still playing, I’d kick it with Nik. When I see Caris or Duncan or the younger guys — Jordan Poole, Iggy [Brazdeikis] — it goes on and on. It’s not like fake, either. We’re excited to see each other because we know what each of us had to deal with to get here, so it’s always refreshing, it’s dope. And then when we play each other, we talk shit of course."
The connections go beyond just former athletes. U-M has the platform and the alumni base to bring together all sorts of people that love the Maize and Blue.
"I’ve kept in touch with a lot of people who just support Michigan and love Michigan. Like, our fans and our alumni are everywhere. I try to do Michigan Alumni Club meetings, and just speaking in cities that I’m at, and they’re everywhere.
"I talked to Spike [Albrecht] the other day, and just him keeping connections, he has a lot of different options open, whether he wants to go into coaching or whatever. Just being around Michigan, it really changes it a lot."
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