Ekpe Udoh to Baylor
It’s official. Best of luck to Ekpe. Ekpe (or Mitch Malone) chose Baylor over Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Arkansas. I’ll just stick to a no comment on Ekpe’s choice.
Ekpe Udoh Officially Leaving Michigan Basketball Team
Ekpe Udoh is officially leaving the Michigan basketball team. There has been talk about it for a long time now and he made it official today. Now the only question is where he goes next. Here are the quotes from Beilein and Ekpe:
“Ekpe is a fine young man and we thought he made tremendous improvements throughout the season,” said Beilein. “I will miss Ekpe as a person and as a player and we hope success will follow him in his future endeavors.”
“This was a very difficult decision for me,” said Udoh. “I just feel I need to explore other options right now. I had a wonderful experience at Michigan and I want to thank everyone for helping me the last two years. I wish them nothing but success in the future.”
I’ll have more later with what this does to recruiting, next year, post rotation, and other reactions.
Bye Bye Ekpe?
Lacy has the latest on Ekpe, nothing is official but Lacy caught up with Udoh’s AAU coach and it doesn’t sound good:
Udoh’s former AAU coach in Texas, and he might have given me a clue. When reached on his cell phone and asked to comment about the situation, Malone said, “I don’t care to comment until Monday.” What that means is anyone’s guess. I have somewhat of an idea, but as we know, in the strange world of collegiate athletics, it’s hard to speculate until something is official or at least on the record.
Lacy updated his blog and just sent me an email to tell me that Ekpe is in Ann Arbor according to his high school coach. I would think that this could mean one of two things: Ekpe is staying with the team or Ekpe is going to get his transfer papers signed and cleared away and make everything official. At this point I’d still guess the later. Although Ekpes coach explains it like this:
“He told me he’s in Michigan, but he didn’t want to tell me anything,” Hardaker said. “I asked him if he’s there looking to get a release (for a transfer) and he just said, ‘I’m just here chillin,’ just hanging out.”
One thing to note, Miles Plumlee might asked for his release ($) from Stanford and is back on the open market. He would probably play a lot immediately if Michigan were to land him. Beilein is familiar with the Plumlees from recruiting Miles’ little brother Mason.
Latest on Ekpe Udoh
Don’t expect to hear anything tonight. Which is good news. Internet rumors are nothing more than that but help pass the time. I haven’t heard anything that concrete, but it’s probably a good thing that nothing happened tonight. You would think if Ekpe were sold on transferring he would have made it official today.
More on Ekpe Udoh Transfer Situation
Eric Lacy chimes in with his opinion on the Ekpe Udoh situation:
Hard to tell what’s going to happen from this point forward as there’s been Udoh rumors for months. Udoh’s former AAU coach, Mitch Malone, might have some say in this matter. Malone was able to get Udoh, a Edmond, Oklahoma native, to join his Texas based AAU team following his junior year, said Guy Hardaker, Udoh’s former high school coach.
Hardaker told me that Udoh has never had a problem with coach John Beilein and told him that he always thought highly of Beilein. I truly believe that, too. Udoh, to me, always seemed to be a real nice guy that appreciated how Beilein and his staff made him a better player. If Udoh does leave, and that’s a big IF, my guess is he would do it to simply find a better opportunity to boost his skills. A goal of his is to play in the NBA, Hardaker said.
Here is what I have gathered on the situation:
- Ekpe is seriously considering transferring for the 2nd summer he’s been in Ann Arbor.
- The reasons seem a little different this time around. The popular reasons before were due to the coaching hire and the process in general. Now the public reason seems to be “NBA preparation” although lots of that could be hypothesized. I think there is another secondary reason which is being closer to home but thats also just a guess at this point.
- I hear that players close to the team think Ekpe is staying. This is both good and bad. I think that he may be concealing more this year compared to last year when he was much more open with his teammates about almost transferring. Does this mean he’s more serious about leaving?
- Ekpe was still participating in team activities as recently as Monday.
- This should wrap up soon. Lacy agrees that a decision should come sooner than later with the banquet coming up. Transfer situations aren’t usually ones that drag out.
- Next few days (or hours) should be real interesting.
- NBA Ekpe? DraftExpress ranking and profile.
Latest on Udoh
Eric Lacy from the Detroit News is reporting that Ekpe is still in school. That’s nothing ground breaking, even if he was transferring he would probably finish up his exams the next couple weeks.
“Right now, he’s in school,” Alice Udoh, the player’s mother, told The Detroit News on Wednesday. “He’s still there.”
Alice Udoh spoke with her son Tuesday, but wouldn’t disclose details of their conversation.
However the quote doesn’t do much to put an end to the rumors out there. The situation hasn’t been resolved yet I would imagine but it’s clearly a pretty real issue right now. Hopefully Beilein can straighten the situation out because I still think this would be a huge blow. This might be some of the rationale for the transfer:
“I know Ekpe has lofty goals; he wants to play in the (NBA),” Hardaker said. “He always tries to figure out what’s best for him and will listen to advice, but not from everyone.”
All Big-Ten Teams Announced
The All Big Ten teams were announced tonight on the Big Ten Network and as expected there were not many Michigan names on the list. Manny Harris was named to the 2nd and freshman teams by both the coaches and media. This is a pretty reasonable spot for Manny and there is not really anyone I would swap him with on the first or third teams. The all-freshman team consists of Moore, Manny, Gordon, Hummel, and Koufos. The “snub” that we will be hearing about I am sure is Kalin Lucas from MSU. However Moore’s slightly better numbers and playing on a better team make him deserving for the honor in my opinion.
Ekpe Udoh made the all-defensive team but I think he could make a case for defensive player of the year. Ekpe averaged 2.9 blocks per game and .8 steals but again I can see giving the nod to Kramer for playing on the far better defensive team overall.
Other Michigan players honored were DeShawn Sims getting honorable mention notice from the coaches and Ron Coleman with the sportsmanship award. Congrats to all the Michigan players honored, you can check out the full teams here.
Game 25: Illinois @ Michigan: Post Game
Now that was a struggle. Painful all the way through and definetely a game you have to be glad was on Big Ten Network. But as they say, style points don’t count. Michigan shot a horrific 30% from the field for the game, luckily Illinois only managed 32%.
Players of the game have to be Grady and Ekpe. Grady played well offensively I thought for the most part and hit some big shots. One thing that pains me about Grady is how poorly he runs the fast break, this is something that the whole team really needs work on. Ekpe was a monster on defense and dominated Pruitt. Ekpe had 7 points, 7 boards, 5 blocks, and 2 steals and held Pruitt to 6 points and 5 turn overs. After the game while getting interviewed Ekpe said that he thought “he was the best defensive player in the country and loved challenges like this”. At least he has some confidence.
Ant Wright started on the wing which I think has to be done. He did a surprisingly decent job on defense especially with Illinois going small all game. Ron Coleman brings absolutely nothing and seems to regress every game. I think Wright should play about 30 minutes a game and Shepherd about 15. Ronnie needs to be the odd man out at this point.
It was great to see Jalen in the house looking sharp. A quick recap over what he said:
- Always a Michigan man and it was great to be back. First time he had been back to a basketball game since he played on the court (not because he didn’t love it but he was playing professionally).
- Mentioned Perry Watson, Bo Schembechler, and Fisher.
- RIP Bo.
- Gave a shout out to the rest of the Fab Five individually (Jimmy sat on the sidelines with him) and said he would be back the day the banners went back up.
- Said he would be around the program and it was great to be back.
- Said Go Blue! once in his speech and the band started playing and he had to cut them off and continue.
- “Every time you see the black shoes, the black socks, the baggy shorts, the Fab Five lives. I’ll be back one day when those banners get hung back up.”
- Crowd reaction was great the whole time, he got a big welcome when he walked out to half court before tip off. The starters all gave him hugs before the game.
A win is a win and Michigan has to learn how to win the tough ones like this because they aren’t all going to be easy. But man I hope we can start hitting some shots. There were ALOT of wide open shots today and very few of them went down. Good physical gutty effort. Another note, saw Jordan Morgan was there, not sure if any other recruits were in the house.
One more addition: huge props to Anthony and DeShawn. They have really started attacking the glass. DeShawn had 9 rebounds and Wright pulled down 8. Not to mention Manny pulling down 6 and Ekpe 7. All together we outrebounded Illinois 43 to 36. I think the man-to-man has really helped our defensive rebounding but DeShawn especially seems to have started to find an extra gear in terms of hustle.
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