Michigan basketball summer workouts: 'Everybody's so good ... everybody plays so hard'

Michigan Wolverines basketball has been holding summer workouts for just over two weeks, and the Maize and Blue have been working hard and meshing with nine new players and only three returners on the team.

The Wolverines and other college basketball teams get up to eight hours per week, for eight weeks, to practice on the court during the summer.

Graduate center Vladislav Goldin — one of the new faces after having transferred in from Florida Atlantic, where he played for new Michigan head coach Dusty May — has been impressed with what he’s seen in the early going.

“Everybody’s so good,” Goldin said on the ‘Defend The Block’ podcast with host Brian Boesch. “It’s insane. We’ve had a couple first practices, and everybody fights, everybody plays so hard.”

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Some of the keys May has pointed to are making sure his team plays together and is competitive.

“It’s amazing, because you cannot teach to play hard, you cannot teach somebody how to be competitive right away,” Goldin continued. “You have it or it’s developed for a long time. It was the first practice, and everybody was ready to play and go first speed. It’s amazing how everybody’s ready.”

Goldin has certainly been a tone-setter in those regards. Assistant coach Drew Williamson, who also came over from Florida Atlantic, said that Goldin prides himself on going first in practice drills.

“I like to compete, I like to have that type of … I don’t know, it’s a game,” Goldin said. “You want to win every single drill. It’s just fun!”

Goldin, a 7-foot-1, 240-pound big man, is fine-tuning his game this offseason, entering his fifth year of a college basketball journey that began at Texas Tech in 2020-21 and continued for three seasons at Florida Atlantic. The Nalchick, Russia, native has been fantastic around the rim, shooting 68 percent from in close last season, but only attempted 9 jump shots in 2023-24, per Synergy. He won’t be asked to stretch the floor regularly, but he’s working on his outside shot, which he’s proven capable of hitting when he’s open. He also connected on 62.7 percent of his hook shots and 65.2 percent of his runners a year ago.

“I would just say minimizing the mistakes and making it a little bit cleaner,” Goldin said of his points of emphases this summer. “I’m not trying to work on every part of my game, but most of my game comes from the paint, so just working on my floaters, hook shots, maybe expand the range a little bit, just be a more efficient player than I was before.”

Goldin will share a Michigan front court with junior Danny Wolf, a Yale transfer who stands 7-foot-0, 250 pounds. Wolf shot 34.5 percent on 84 three-point attempts a season ago, and May has said he and Goldin will play significant minutes together. The head coach also envisions Wolf playing around 14 minutes per game at the center spot when Goldin is on the bench.

Goldin actually committed to Michigan after Wolf, and the two got the chance to get to know each other during that recruiting process.

“If I say ‘familiar,’ it’s gonna be a little bit too [overstated],” Goldin said of what he knows about Wolf’s game. “I’ve obviously seen his highlights, I’ve seen so many posts about him and how great of a player he is. But when I talked to him on my official visit, that’s when I was like, ‘Leave everything behind. It doesn’t matter how good of a player you are, if you’re not that good of a person, it doesn’t mean anything.’ And when I talked to him and other guys, I was like, ‘Wow. That’s worth more than anything else.’

“I was just excited to see him as a person, because he looked like a cool dude who wants to do the same thing. We had a call a couple of times. I was really excited about that, I was like, ‘That’s someone who I’d like to play with, because he’s a great player, he’s a great person. I don’t ask [for much more].’”

May has a unique approach to setting his rotations, which typically include at least eight players. Last season, for example, only two Florida Atlantic Owls played over 30 minutes per game, and none were at more than 32.3. Goldin, despite being a dominant force on the interior, saw 24.9 minutes of action per contest.

“I feel like that’s the best thing we can do, because if only five people play, it kinda loses the fact of the team,” Goldin said. “I like the fact that we all play and everybody gets minutes, because you know that the certain amount of time you’re in the game, it means everything for you. You’re on the court and you’re ready to give everything you have. We try to leave everything on the court. Last year, we were saying, ‘Empty your tank.’

“And that’s why you believe in your teammates, because you know he’s gonna leave everything he’s got, he’s here because he wants to win. And when everybody’s about winning, it makes us excited. The next time you go and you saw how the guy before you went on the floor and is diving on the floor, running, doing every dirty type of work, get a box out, get a rebound and all that stuff, when it’s your turn to go, I can not let them down. I have to go and fight. It gives you that excitement.”

Many players would like to play as much as possible, but Michigan’s center isn’t among them, or at least it’s not his main concern.

“I don’t really have my perfect world, because my perfect world is if we win,” Goldin stated. “If we win and I play 25 minutes, I’m happy. If I play 24 minutes, I’m happy. It doesn’t matter how much I play … as long as we win. We chose to be here for some reason, and that reason is to win.”