"Think about me as a winner and someone who really helped change and turn this program around," Michigan basketball star Trey Burke said.
Former Michigan basketball coach John Beilein nearly sent Trey Burke packing.
It was the first month of his freshman year and Burke had more freedom than he'd ever had. Sometimes, that meant missing a class. Other times, it meant seeing a team meeting as optional. It was clear he wasn't fully invested.
Burke's parents ended up coming up from Columbus, Ohio, and the four sat down together in Beilein's office in Ann Arbor.
"This man right here, he held me accountable," Burke said on Friday, Jan. 23, in the Crisler Center media room. "It wasn't always just roses off the court. I had a lot of PDP's I had to runs. I tripped a lot my freshman year. He threatened to send me home my freshman year. My mom came up – you remember that coach?
"I seen her cry in that meeting and I snapped out of it. ... I put too much work in to be at such a prestigious opportunity to blow this opportunity. From that day forward, I tried to be the best I could be and I built a family."
Burke, indeed, did not blow that opportunity. He led Michigan to a Big Ten championship. He shared Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. In his sophomore year, he won the Wooden Award as the national player of the year.
With him, the Wolverines returned to the national championship game for the first time in two decades. On Friday, a dozen years later, he was back on campus, flanked by his family and more than a dozen former teammates as he became the sixth player in program history to have his jersey raised to the Crisler rafters.
"There were times he looked like a pro," Beilein said moments after Burke finished addressing the media. "My playbook shrunk quite a bit during that time. Just give a high ball screen and get out of the way."
The second pivotal moment came in the summer after his freshman season. Burke was showing up as a late first-rounder in mock drafts, and as he admitted Friday, had one foot out the door. But after a bit of convincing from everybody in his circle, he came back for a sophomore season.
That's when Burke became the player worthy of being feted against the squad from hometown – Ohio State.
"I knew I had to go to another level," Burke said. "I really wanted to go to the NBA and I hid it from Coach B for a long time. ... It's just hard to explain when you're 18-19 and you see your name on that board it's just like, 'It's right there.'
"But once I sat back, had that conversation and made the decision to come back, I can't be the same Trey Burke next year. ... Coach Beilein, kudos to him, said, 'What would you want to come back?' I said national championship, I want to be in that game, win the national championship. Those words, you can't just say those words."
Burke scored in double figures in every regular-season game that year as U-M rose to No. 1 in the polls by mid-January. Everything was grounded in the March prior, when, as Burke recalled Friday, an NCAA tournament loss to Ohio left a "sour taste" in his mouth. He knew he had to grow as a leader - four-year vets Stu Douglass and Zack Novak were gone.
The led to the Sweet 16 triumph over Kansas, in which the Wolverines rallied from 10 down with 2:40 to play.
"A lot people left, a lot of people turned the TV off," Burke said. "We never stopped believing."
Just more than 150 seconds later, Burke drilled a 30-foot 3-pointer from the left wing to force overtime. From there, players were crying in the huddle – because they all knew they were about to win, Burke said.
From there, the Wolverines won two more for their first title game appearance since 1993. Michigan didn't win that one, but the best season in 20 years had lifted the program from the ashes.
Since then, U-M has returned to the title game, had a stretch with five straight Sweet 16 appearances and are considered the favorites to cut down the nets this April under current coach Dusty May.
It's hard to imagine that success without the man whose jersey was raised in Crisler on Friday.
Burke said multiple times that the moment was hard to put into words. He thought back to when he was 5 and the vision he had. The days he was counting down the imaginary buzzer in his head from 5 seconds.
The days he was shooting in his driveway into a literal bucket with childhood friend (and future OSU star) Jared Sullinger. Friday's celebration was exactly what he pictured – "I don't think you can do anything you don't imagine," Burke said.
Burke is now a father and a husband. Growing a family, as a man of faith, has long been one of his greatest goals. So too was becoming a Michigan legend. Those are now two dreams which are very much Burke's reality.
"I want [the fans] to think about not only the basketball player, but the person," Burke said. "I want them to think about me as a winner and someone who really helped change and turn this program around back to relevance."
Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trey Burke on Michigan basketball honor: Just as he imagined
Category: General Sports
