Michigan basketball frosh 'don't look or play like freshmen'

Michigan head coach Dusty May signed a five-man class including Michigan Mr. Basketball and McDonald’s All-American Trey McKenney, outstanding wing Winters Grady, top 100 big man Oscar Goodman, 7-foot German Malick Kordel, and under-the-radar wing Patrick Liburd. All but Kordel are on campus and impressing in various ways, led by McKenney and Grady in the early going.

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All summer, folks close to it have been telling us, “McKenney doesn’t look like a freshman. At all.” One close to it said there are days he’s been the best player on the floor, high praise given the talent level. May confirmed McKenney and Grady have been all that and more in the early going.

“The role for the freshmen is really going to be up to them,” he said. “We don’t go into the season with guys sharpening into starting spots or positions or roles. Each guy brings something different to the table … traits, maturity, and physicality.

“But I have a few coaching friends that we share practice film and share ideas, talk about it on each other’s teams. I was sitting with him yesterday on the road recruiting and he said, ‘who’s number one? Is Trey number one?’ I’m bad at numbers. He said, ‘who’s number one?’ I said, ‘I don’t know all of our guys’ numbers. They switch and this and that … describe him.’ He actually pulled out his laptop and said, ‘this ‘kid.’ And I said, ‘oh, that’s Trey McKinney. He’s a freshman from Michigan.’ And he said, ‘he’s a freshman? Man, I would have thought he’s a fifth-year grad transfer that you guys found from somewhere in the back.'”

The maturity, physicality, pace, and poise he plays with have been great, May added, and his work ethic “might be as good as anyone that I’ve ever been around.

“He just, he loves to work. Winters Grady is the same way. He loves to be in the gym. It’s almost as if we’re anticipating having to kick those guys out of the gym, out of the weight room,” the Michigan coach said.

“I was in Switzerland. I checked in on both of them, and Trey was running hills with a sled when I checked in on him on the Fourth. Winters, they said, finished like his fourth workout of the day, where the coaches said he was in the weight room and he was running on the football field, and he’d already shot that morning. Then, he was on the gun that night. Those are the guys we love having in the program. They love ball. They love to work.”

One of the reasons they’ll be successful in anything they do, he added. The “raw gap sacrifice and depth is going to be a real weapon for this team,” he noted, but it’s the shooting that could determine the ceiling. It was very good during Sunday’s practice, but so was the rebounding and physicality, two traits that weren’t top notch a year ago.

“When you just go back and look at the Final Four teams, the Houstons, the Floridas, their first shot offense, obviously, it’s good,” May said. “But what makes them unique is that they go get it when they miss. I think we have the ability that if we don’t shoot it well this year, then we’ve got to figure out another way to win.

“I’d love to put together the perfect roster every year and this all click on all cylinders. But that’s not realistic. That is a question mark. We’re all aware, but we’re not sitting here saying, ‘man, I don’t think we’re going to play this year. We don’t have it. We didn’t sign enough shooters.’ Trey McKinney, Winters Grady … those guys are good shooters. They haven’t done it before [in college], but we signed them because we believe that they will and they can.”

Time will tell, but if early indications are to be believed, they should help May’s second Michigan team immensely in 2025-26.