Preparation for the 2025-26 college basketball season begins for many teams, including Michigan, today.<\/p>\n
Monday marks the start of fall practices for teams that play on opening day, Nov. 3. Michigan opens at home against Oakland that night. The NCAA allows teams to practice for a total of 30 times starting 42 days before their first game.<\/p>\n
This will be the second season under head coach Dusty May, who engineered the biggest turnaround in Big Ten men\u2019s basketball history last year. Michigan finished 27-10, won the Big Ten Tournament and reached the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
Because of various departures, May had to rebuild the roster for a second straight offseason. Michigan added four transfers and five freshmen to go along with four returners. The group will likely be a top-10 team in the preseason polls released next month.<\/p>\n
May\u2019s practices feature a lot of full-court, five-on-five action with minimal breaks. He prefers to offer detailed feedback during film study.<\/p>\n
He let the media watch a practice in July<\/a> and it was evident these Wolverines have plenty of size, experience and talent. The Blue Ribbon Yearbook named Yaxel Lendeborg, a transfer from UAB, a preseason All-American. The versatile forward is joined by fellow transfers Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina\u2019s starting point guard the past two years), Illinois forward Morez Johnson Jr. (who won a gold medal at a FIBA event this summer) and 7-foot-3 center Aday Mara from UCLA.<\/p>\n Nimari Burnett, Roddy Gayle Jr. and Will Tschetter were all key players on last year\u2019s squad. Trey McKenney, a five-star recruit, and Winters Grady are among the freshmen with a chance to crack the rotation. May\u2019s entire staff is back from last season.<\/p>\n The schedule gets much tougher<\/a> after the opener. Highlights include a trip to Las Vegas for three games, a date with Duke in D.C. and a 20-game Big Ten slate.<\/p>\n Success in those games and beyond will have a lot to do with the work the Wolverines put in starting on Monday. Check back later for photos and\/or video from the first practice.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preparation for the 2025-26 college basketball season begins for many teams, including Michigan, today. Monday marks the start…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":246327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-246326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115248024233420861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}