Michigan Wolverines assistant basketball coach Saddi Washington has spent the last several weeks recruiting while staying at home during the pandemic. That includes some of the kids already on the team, one in particular.

Sophomore Franz Wagner has already announced his decision to come back for his second season. Senior Isaiah Livers, however, is still weighing his before the NCAA’s Aug. 3 deadline to declare or return.

“I spoke to Zay earlier today. He’s still going through the interviewing process with some of the NBA teams, so because the timeline got extended and we’re still kind of in the space of when players are returning to campus, stuff like that, it’s still open ended,” Washington said. “But we support him in this process because it’s a fact-finding process. He has an opportunity to get more information that will help lead to a decision, whether it’s coming back to Michigan now or taking the leap of faith to go out and pursue a professional career.”

It would be exactly that. No NBA Draft board has Livers going in the two-round draft, something he said he’d need to assure to leave. He has not signed an agent, and the door to U-M remains open.

“It’s kind of the nature of our profession now. We’re constantly recruiting and re-recruiting our own rosters to keep that intact,” Washington said. “Its’ always evolving, and we’re happy and trying to be productive with the time we have with our guys this summer and building culture and teaching leadership so when we get back in the gym, we all hit the ground running in the same direction.”

Meanwhile, the Wolverines lost three to transfers in sophomore guard Cole Bajema, junior guard David DeJulius and junior big man Colin Castleton. Washington chalked it up to business as usual.

“I think it was pretty normal attrition,” he said. “I know a lot of people reacted pretty strongly like the house was burning down or something, but it’s no different really from guys just transferring because they are looking for a different situation that they feel best meets their needs. We have guys like Isaiah still going through the Draft process, and he has that opportunity.

“To me, it was normal attrition. Just the excitement of [potentially] signing some of the guys we were in the mix with and ultimately did not get, it was just a lot for Michigan fans and supporters to kind of take all in, because it kind of seemed like everything happened all at once.”

To Juwan Howard’s credit and the rest of the staff, Washington said, Howard was poised throughout it.

“Having been through this before, it’s like hey, it’s going to work out how it’s supposed to work out,” Howard said. “We’ll field a team of motivated guys who are running all in the same direction come time to play. That’s where our focus was.

"We’re just trying to build this thing the right way. Come hopefully the fall or whenever practice starts, putting the right pieces to win a Big Ten Championship and hopefully put ourselves in position for a National Championship. That’s our focus right now, making sure guys are doing their due diligence, return back to school healthy … whenever we can start getting back in the gym, put those pieces back in place.”

NOTES

Washington said it was easy to see why so many NBA teams had been courting Howard, and why it was so easy for A.D. Warde Manuel to make the decision to hire him.

“His ability to just connect with people is amazing, and to get folks to buy in,” Washington said. “Our preparation and the way we went about our business wasn’t a whole lot different than what our guys had been familiar with under Coach [John] Beilein, but obviously learning a new system, new terminology … as you could see early in the season, we had some success. I think a lot of that had to do with Coach Juwan’s leadership from day one.”

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