Dug McDaniel reveals he was hospitalized the morning of the Michigan State game
Michigan point guard Dug McDaniel has had his ups and downs as a freshman, thrust into action as the starter when Frankie Collins bolted for Arizona State and grad student Jaelin Llewellyn went down with a season-ending knee injury. He responded with 15 points and an outstanding floor game in his first start, a blowout win at Minnesota, and has hit some clutch shots in U-M wins since.
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One of them came in a 10-point win over Penn State last week in which he hit a critical floater in the lane with 1:10 remaining to quell a PSU run. The Nittany Lions had cut a 14-point lead to 3 before McDaniel’s huge play.
McDaniel struggled with foul trouble and more the following game at Michigan State, notching 4 assists and 4 rebounds but failing to score. He looked a bit overwhelmed at times, too, though he did have a valid excuse for his poor play.
“The days leading up to that game, I came down with a sickness,” McDaniel said. “I had to go to the hospital because I didn’t have enough fluid in my body. I was very, very dehydrated.”
He’d been off for a while at that point, in fact.
“I didn’t practice for three days, so that was tough coming off three days,” McDaniel added. “[I was] getting a lot of rest, getting a lot of fluids … and [then] coming to play in that type of environment …”
Well … it was tough, especially with how physical and demanding rivalry games are.
To their credit — and as expected — his teammates had his back. Sophomore Kobe Bufkin was forced into more action with the ball with McDaniel down, and while he didn’t have his best game, he never complained.
“I thank my guys for believing me. They didn’t tell me to sit one off,” McDaniel continued. “When I told them that I was coming to the game — because I came the day of, I was in the hospital the morning of the game, and I came the same day — when I showed up in the conference room, the film room, they all clapped it up.”
The Wolverines lost a tough one, 59-53, despite playing well defensively and shooting poorly. They cut a 14-point deficit to three at the end before running out of gas.
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“That game showed our toughness and stuff like that,” McDaniel said. “The fact that we could come there, we’re not at 100 percent, and we can still compete at a very high level … we know next time we see them, we’ll have a better game than that.”
The two teams meet again Feb. 18 in Ann Arbor, and McDaniel will be back to full health.
Head coach Juwan Howard isn’t about excuses, and wasn’t after the game. He’ll continue to roll with the personnel he has.
“We’ve got to do it by committee,” he said after the MSU loss. “That’s how basketball goes sometimes. It doesn’t go always how you plan it. As coaches, we’ve got to figure it out. As players, they’ve got to figure it out on the floor.
“Belief and trust in our locker room and also on that roster … it’s real. Whoever goes in the game, we know it’s going to be next man up mentality. Unfortunately, it’s tough when you have your primary ball handlers on the bench with foul trouble. We also had one of our top scorers who’s also one of the secondary ball handlers [in foul trouble]. But we figured it out. We’re not going to make excuses. Keep rolling.”
McDaniel, meanwhile, continues to work toward a full recovery. The Wolverines will need him for tomorrow night’s game at Iowa.
“I’m getting there,” McDaniel said.
The Wolverines are currently 3-1 in Big Ten play and only a half game out of first place and will need all hands on deck to stay in the race.
