Michigan basketball team visits smiling patients at Mott Children's Hospital
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Fifth-year head coach Juwan Howard and the 2023-24 Michigan Wolverines basketball team visited patients at University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Wednesday afternoon. The two-hour-long visit was held in the Michigan Game Day Experience center on the eighth floor, an indoor playground for patients and families.
The team’s visit has been in the works since before the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced a delay. While U-M athletic department members, including Howard, have been to the hospital since then, this marked the first full team visit by any Michigan sports squad to Mott since the pandemic, which began in spring 2020.
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Michigan players, several of whom stand well over 6-foot, were asked to squat down to greet the smiling children, and they happily obliged. The Wolverines shot baskets on Little Tykes hoops and played other games during the action-packed visit. They also signed autographs and posed for photos for the patients, many of them wearing Michigan gear.
Highlights included Howard rebounding for and coaching up a little girl on her jump shot and sophomore forward Youssef Khayat, a Beirut, Lebanon, native, meeting and spending time with a patient and their family from the same country.
“Light-hearted” visits like these allow the patients to “escape” from their health situations, according to hospital staff. Similarly, Michigan From The Heart hosts groups of U-M student-athletes each Thursday evening.
The trips “offer a welcome distraction by spending time with patients and families,” according to the organization’s website. “Patients are then given the opportunity to watch the athletes in action by attending University of Michigan sporting events as special guests of the team.”
Michigan From The Heart possesses 12 season tickets to Michigan men’s basketball games and regularly brings patients to Crisler Center to cheer on the Wolverines.
On the floor, the Wolverines will have a new look this season, with four incoming players, including three transfers. They lost two starters to the NBA in guards Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard, along with center Hunter Dickinson to transfer (Kansas). Michigan is searching for its first Big Ten title since 2021, Howard’s second season on the job, and to get back to the NCAA Tournament after missing it last season for the first time since 2015.
