Two Michigan basketball starters have played through minor injuries

Michigan Wolverines basketball has two starters who have been dealing with — and playing through — minor injuries. Junior guards Tre Donaldson and Roddy Gayle Jr. have both battled lately, and it’s potentially impacted their performances.

The 6-foot-3, 195-pound Donaldson has been productive, scoring in double figures in all but one game since early December and notching 4-plus assists in his last 6 contests, but his foot has been hurting him, he revealed Thursday.

Michigan is looking to create more takeaways on the defensive end, ranking dead last in the Big Ten in conference play with a 12.7-percent turnover rate, and Donaldson believes his mobility would play a big role.

“I gotta pick it up,” Donaldson said. “My foot is still bothering me a little bit, so me being able to continue to work on it and get healthy. Bothering the ball more and playing faster — I haven’t been able to play as fast as I want to. So just need to work on getting healthy.

“But ball pressure is gonna be key. Hopefully, I feel good enough to ball pressure, bother the catches and things like that. That’s something we talk about a lot, and then being physical, knocking them off their lines, not making it easy for them to screen us. Little things like that will help us force turnovers and make them extend the catches and get late in the shot clock, make them shoot shots that they don’t shoot.”

Donaldson likes to gamble at times, leaving his defender to try to steal it away from the ball-handler. It’s partially instincts, but it also helped that his former teammate gave him some pointers.

“K.D. Johnson, my teammate last year at Auburn who’s at George Mason now, he’s really gifted defensively, and he just taught me little tricks and stuff like that about how to go, when to go and when the perfect time is to go, little things like that, that I’ve held onto and carried it over to here,” the Michigan guard said. “I just gotta pick and choose.”

Gayle, meanwhile, missed Michigan’s Jan. 7 game at UCLA with knee soreness, but has played each of the last three tilts. However, head coach Dusty May said after Sunday’s win over Northwestern that Gayle had been slowed physically.

“It was nice to see Roddy Gayle have his pop back, his athleticism back,” May said after Gayle had some key buckets late in the overtime game. “He’s been battling some minor injuries.”

Gayle’s three-point shot has been a struggle as of late, with the 6-foot-5, 205-pound Ohio State transfer going 0-for-8 from distance over his last four appearances. He hasn’t made a triple against a high-major team since Dec. 7.

“A lot of times, shooting for a guy who’s shown the ability to shoot before, it becomes a confidence thing,” Michigan assistant coach Mike Boynton Jr. said. “It kinda comes and goes, and sometimes it comes and goes with the flow of your team. You’re on a team with a lot of weapons, so now you’re not being asked to shoot your way out of a slump. Maybe you’re only getting two or three opportunities, versus 15 or 18. It’s harder to find it confidently.”

Gayle still impacts the game in different ways, and Michigan coaches are harping on him continuing to be involved in the offense despite the lack of jump shot success.

“We try to implore him to be a really good offensive rebounder, try to find his way to the basket, get to the free throw line more,” Boynton continued. “Sometimes, when you get an easy one that goes in, then it kinda triggers that belief again. 

“There’s no doubt, right now he doesn’t have a whole lot of confidence in the three-point shot, but we see him shoot it in practice. He still comes in and gets the extra work to get back to it. We just believe eventually he’ll have a night where 4 or 5 go in, and sometimes that’s all it takes.”

Gayle is shooting 12-of-47 from three-point range this season (25.5 percent), his first at Michigan. He was at 28.2 percent last year but 42.9 as a freshman for the Buckeyes in 2023.

Michigan will take on Purdue Friday night at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette (8 p.m. ET on FOX).