Michigan guard George Washington III re-enters NCAA transfer portal
Michigan Wolverines basketball guard George Washington III has re-entered the NCAA transfer portal, The Wolverine has learned. A team spokesman has since confirmed the move.
Washington originally entered the portal March 18 after head man Juwan Howard was fired, before withdrawing April 11, weeks after Dusty May was hired as his replacement. Now, he’s back in and looking for a new home.
Washington has three years of eligibility remaining.
Since Washington withdrew from the portal, Michigan added five new guards to its roster in transfers Rubin Jones (North Texas), Tre Donaldson (Auburn) and Roddy Gayle Jr. (Ohio State) and freshmen Justin Pippen and Lorenzo Cason.
The 6-foot-2, 170-pounder appeared in 22 games off the bench in his lone season in Ann Arbor, totaling 145 minutes. He scored 26 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field, 4-of-18 from three-point range and 12-of-14 from the foul line. He put up 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals and 1 block.
“The biggest thing any freshman learns is just consistency. Obviously, there are a lot of terms, a lot of terminology, a lot of sets that you have to shift and lock into your brain and get ready for,” the Michigan guard said when asked what he learned over his first year in college basketball. “I would say a combination of just that and just adding to my game as a whole, adding film sessions, adding extra work and just growing my game continuously from what it was in high school.”
May discussed at his introductory press conference bringing back and reeling in players that fit his vision at Michigan. He said evaluate them, and they’ll do the same to May and the staff that he’ll hire. Washington did that and felt good enough about the future at the time he withdrew his name from the portal, but he’s since reconsidered.
“Honestly, it was a lot of what he said when he was up there — that mutual fit between how he’s looking for the team to play, how I play the game, how he coaches, how I receive it,” Washington said at the time. “I already feel like that does kind of match up. Just making sure that we’re on the same page and that what we’re both looking for lines up together. I’m looking forward to talking.”
May joined former Michigan football All-American Jake Butt on a podcast presented by the Champions Circle Collective this month and discussed how he intends on building the program.
“It’s simply finding the right people and staff and personnel,” the Michigan coach stated. “It always starts with the right people, and the characteristics align with what we’re going to be about.
