Michigan basketball top five for key transfer guard Zyon Pullin
Earlier today, we reported that UC Riverside guard Zyon Pullin was working on setting up a visit to Michigan. Today, he released his top five — as expected, the Wolverines made the cut.
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Michigan desperately needs a big guard after Caleb Love wasn’t admitted (ending up at Arizona), and Pullin might be the best one remaining. The 6-4 standout averaged 18.3 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game as a senior, shooting 48.6 percent from the floor and 39.4 percent from three-point range.
Michigan only has four scholarship guards on the roster as of now — point guards Dug McDaniel and Jaelin Llewellyn and shooting guards George Washington III (freshman) and Alabama transfer Nimari Burnett — and has been searching for another. Pullin would fit the bill as both a ball handler and a scorer.
Llewellyn isn’t assured to be 100 percent after suffering a season ending ACL injury early last year in a Michigan loss to North Carolina.
“I definitely think I am on my way to getting back out there,” Llewellyn said on the the Michigan basketball Defend the Block podcast a few weeks ago. “I’ve just started to get back out on the court the past couple of weeks, doing stuff … more athletic things. Leg raises and stuff I’ve been doing for the past couple of months since the surgery, and it feels good to be moving more. It’s not that fast yet, but I’ll get there.”
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The tougher part was going through a second major injury, he noted. The Michigan standout tore his achilles tendon in his junior year at Princeton
“It’s hard to go through this stuff mentally as well as physically,” he said. “Going through it the first time, I was like, ‘I am not sure I can go through this again.’ When it happens again, it’s hard to deal with mentally. You get through those harder days, and you have really good ones where you see a lot of improvement.
“With our season not ending the way we wanted it to, I wanted to put myself in a position to help the team in any way and achieve the goals we set out.”
But he did receive an NCAA waiver to get another year of eligibility at Michigan.
The Wolverines aren’t just looking for guards. They’re also hosting two big men this week in Flory Bidunga and Olivier Nkamhoua, needing help there, as well.
Watch for more to Pullin and Michigan in the days to come …
