Michigan basketball’s leading scorer McDaniel enters transfer portal
The Michigan basketball exodus continues, and this time, it’s the program’s biggest name remaining.
Sophomore point guard Dug McDaniel has entered the transfer portal, a Michigan spokesman told the Free Press on Monday. This comes less than 24 hours after freshman guard George Washington III announced he was in the portal, and three days after the program announced coach Juwan Howard would not be returning in 2024-25.
This move has felt like an inevitability for months, regardless of Howard’ had kept his job’s status. McDaniel led the 8-24 Wolverines with 16.3 points and 4.7 assists per game but was academically suspended for road games for much of the second half of the season.
The program announced as soon as the second semester began that McDaniel would not be eligible to travel with the team to road games while he tried to progress through his classwork.
U-M went 0-6 in those road games, and even home games were affected as the Wolverines’ rotation looked out of whack at Crisler. It also asked far too much of guard Jaelin Llewellyn, who was not ready for more than 30 minutes a game after returning from a torn ACL in barely a year. Michigan went 2-15 after McDaniel was suspended.
Although not super-efficient, McDaniel did improve his field goal percentage (41%) and 3point shooting (36.8%) on increased volume from his freshman season. The Washington product played in 60 career games with 52 starts, 26 each season.
2024 recruit Rooths decommits
Khani Rooths, a class of 2024 four-star prospect verbally committed to Michigan since mid-November, decommitted from the Wolverines on Monday afternoon, according to reports.
Rooths is a 6-foot-7, 200-pound power forward from IMG Academy who is ranked No. 31 in 247 Sports’ composite rankings. He was the highest-ranked player in U-M’s 2024 class, which ranked No. 20 prior to Rooths’ departure.
The others remaining are 2024 Mr. Michigan basketball winner Durral “Phat Phat” Brooks and Oak Hill Academy (Mouth Of Wilson, Virginia) point guard Christian Anderson; neither of whome are consensus top-100 recruits.
Rooths originally chose U-M over Florida State and Georgia while holding more than a dozen Division I offers, including Big Ten schools Indiana and Maryland.