U-M losing top scorer Phelia to portal; Khayat heads to Bowling Green
A well-traveled former Michigan basketball player will soon add another stop to his list.
Youssef Khayat, a 6-foot-9 wing, announced his decision to transfer to Bowling Green on social media on Tuesday.
Khayat played in 26 games in his Michigan career, averaging 5.9 minutes per contest. The small forward came with high pedigree after he became a standout for the Limoges CSP U21 team in France, however he was never quite able to catch on in Ann Arbor.
As a freshman, he averaged 1.4 points per game and 1.1 rebounds across 17 games, and didn’t make a sophomore step some of the coaching staff expected this past season. He played in nine games, never scored more than four points and never played more than 12 minutes.
Khayat played 98 minutes this season as he scored 24 points and grabbed 18 rebounds.
“Fresh start,” Khayat posted on social media announcing his transfer.
Khayat is the second player under former coach Juwan Howard to have announced their decision to transfer; Dug McDaniel made his decision to head to Kansas State last week while players like Tarris Reed Jr., George Washington III and Terrance Williams II all remain in the portal.
The lone holdover from Howard’s program, to this point, is junior forward Will Tschetter, which is not a surprise. He’s an early candidate to be a captain for next year’s team.
Bowling Green went 20-14 overall and 10-8 in the Mid-American Conference a season ago under first-year coach Todd Simon.
U-M women’s basketball’s leading scorer among others in portal
The men’s basketball program lost its leading scorer from last season and now the women’s program appears poised to do the same.
Laila Phelia, who led the Wolverines as she averaged a career-high 16.8 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game, has entered the transfer portal, a program spokesman confirmed to the Free Press.
A first-team All-Big Ten selection by both coaches and media, the 6-foot guard from Cincinnati led U-M (20-14) to the NCAA tournament. She scored a career-high 30 points against Indiana in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals to all but secure Kim BarnesArico’s team an invite to March Madness.
Phelia notched the first double-double of her career with 16 points, 10 rebounds and a career-best seven assists at Northwestern in late February and became the 31st Wolverine to reach the 1,000 point mark (she currently has 1,243 points) for a career.
Phelia, who played in 88 games and made 71 starts, made the tournament all three years she was in Ann Arbor, which includes an Elite Eight appearance as a freshman.
She was the fourth former U-M player to enter the transfer portal, joining four-year players Cameron Williams and Elise Stuck, as well as Taylor Williams, who spent just one season in the program last year after coming in from Western Michigan.
On Wednesday, Chyra Evans, another starter, became the fifth player to enter the portal, a program spokesman also confirmed.
Evans played 33 games with 23 starts, and the 6-foot-2 forward from Australia averaged 6.2 points and 4.3 rebounds in just more than 22 minutes per game.
The silver lining for Barnes-Arico’s team is it leaves more playing time for the No. 7 ranked incoming freshman class per ESPN rankings.