Wolverines add sharpshooting wing Walters from transfer portal
For the second time on Monday and fifth time in three days, Michigan basketball landed one of its targets from the transfer portal.
Sam Walters, a 6-foot-8, 198-pound sophomore small forward from Alabama, pledged to join the Wolverines just hours after former Ohio State shooting guard Roddy Gayle Jr. made the same decision.
Those announcements come on the heels of former Auburn point guard Tre Donaldson, All-Ivy League center Danny Wolf (Yale), and North Texas point guard Rubin Jones all committing to Dusty May’s program since Saturday.
Wolf, who stands 7-feet and 255 pounds, nearly averaged a double-double with 14.7 points, 9.3 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in his sophomore campaign while Jones, a sizable lead guard at 6-5, averaged 12.1 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game as a senior. Donaldson scored 6.7 points per game and had more than twice as many assists (39) as turnovers (19) last year.
Prior to the flurry of portal commitments, the first actual verbal commit of the May era was Justin Pippen, a four-star senior from Sierra Canyon, who made his choice public on Friday evening. The son of Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen officially signed with the program Monday afternoon.
Walters, rated as a four-star transfer prospect by 247 Sports, played 37 games for the Crimson Tide as a freshman under former Romulus High School coach Nate Oats; Walters averaged 5.4 points and 2.4 rebounds per game on 42.7% shooting.
Although he’s not exclusively a 3-point specialist — 99 of his 150 field goal attempts last season were from behind the long line — Walters can knock it down with the best of them. He shot 39.4% (39-for-99) on 3-pointers last season.
Walters has three years of eligibility remaining.
From Columbus to Ann Arbor
Gayle, a sophomore guard who spent the past two seasons at Ohio State, has committed to join the Wolverines’ basketball program, as expected. The guard formally announced his decision on social media
early Monday morning.
Gayle played 36 games (35 starts) as a sophomore; he finished third on OSU in scoring at 13.5 points per game as he shot 44.9% from the floor and 28.4% on 3-pointers. The 6-foot-4, 210-pound shooting guard scored a career-high 32 points in an
OT win over West Virginia in late December and scored at least 10 points in 28 games last season.
Gayle scored 12 points on 3-for-8 shooting in a loss to U-M in Ann Arbor last January, but had 15 points on 6-for-10 shooting, with three rebounds and three assists, in the Buckeyes’ March win over the Wolverines in Columbus.
The No. 50 prospect and the thirdranked shooting guard in the country when he came out of Wasatch Academy in 2022, Gayle is now the No. 6 available shooting guard in the portal and No. 45 overall.