{"id":5939,"date":"2026-07-29T07:49:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/mike-boynton-jr-leading-few-familiar-faces-into-new-era-at-michigan\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:49:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:49:06","slug":"mike-boynton-jr-leading-few-familiar-faces-into-new-era-at-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/mike-boynton-jr-leading-few-familiar-faces-into-new-era-at-michigan\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Boynton Jr. leading few familiar faces into new era at Michigan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Summer workouts are ramping up for the Michigan men\u2019s basketball team, and like the last few seasons, there\u2019s a handful of new faces. Four scholarship players return from last season\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/michigan-wins-national-championship-69-63-knocks-off-connecticut\/\">championship<\/a>-winning squad, along with three transfers and six incoming freshmen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And although he\u2019s no stranger to the Wolverines\u2019 returners, head coach Mike Boynton Jr. is still getting his feet wet in his own new position. Following former coach Dusty May\u2019s late <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/dusty-may-leaving-michigan-for-dallas-mavericks\/\">departure<\/a>, Boynton was quickly named <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mike-boynton-announced-interim-head-coach-following-mays-departure\/\">interim<\/a> coach June 22 and later given the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/mike-boynton-jr-named-head-coach-of-michigan-mens-basketball-program\/\">official<\/a> head coach title July 10. In that time, he\u2019s notably kept Michigan\u2019s entire roster intact, with only\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/l-j-cason-enters-transfer-portal-will-not-return-to-michigan-for-third-season\/\">one<\/a> exception.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But as he faced the media for the first time in his new role Tuesday morning, Boynton wasn\u2019t looking to take any credit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t think I kept the roster together,\u201d Boynton said. \u201cI think there are a lot of things that factor into these guys wanting to be together. I think they looked around the room at each other on June 23 when we got together for the first time and realized that that was a team they thought they were going to be a part of in the beginning. So a lot of it was their belief in each other, their confidence in this program.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two returning key contributors from last year \u2014 guards senior Elliot Cadeau and sophomore Trey McKenney \u2014 led that charge, publicly affirming their commitment to the Wolverines rather soon in the process of the coaching change.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not every Michigan player has hit the court for summer workouts just yet, whether they haven\u2019t arrived or are recovering from injury, but Cadeau and McKenney already seem to be part of a \u201ctop four\u201d in Boynton\u2019s eyes along with two transfers: redshirt junior forward J.P. Estrella from Tennessee and junior center Moustapha Thiam from Cincinnati.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThose four guys give you a lot of confidence, at least that you\u2019re gonna have a really competitive top end of your roster,\u201d Boynton said. \u201cThe other guys just haven\u2019t proven it yet, we believe in them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Boynton didn\u2019t get into too many specifics about how exactly the Wolverines will play under him, or what might look different than under May. But in the same way he valued retaining the roster constructed under May, Boynton wants to maintain many of the coaching principles that found so much success a year ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ve worked for some terrific coaches, I\u2019ve played for some great people,\u201d Boynton said. \u201cHe\u2019s as good as anybody I\u2019ve been around at the whole of the job, but I also was right there helping to make some of those decisions, as well as the rest of our staff. So it\u2019ll be a lot of what we\u2019ve done, particularly as it relates to our defensive schematics.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It won\u2019t hurt that much of May\u2019s\u00a0coaching staff is sticking around along with Boynton. He hired Mike Martin from Brown to fill one of two assistant openings, and said Tuesday he wants to hire \u201ccreative\u201d offensive coaches as a defensive-focused coach himself. Between keeping his roster together and most of his coaching staff too, it\u2019s no secret that retention was a priority for Boynton across the board.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt was probably the most important thing that I did for the first three weeks, which is why I\u2019m probably a little bit behind in some of the other areas,\u201d Boynton said. \u201cPutting together a staff, scheduling, even recruiting for next year. Those things had to take a backseat to make sure that we could keep as much of this group together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a roster seemingly set and the whirlwind following May\u2019s departure winding down, Boynton should get a chance to catch up wherever he fell behind between now and the start of the season \u2014 when he, Cadeau and McKenney will be the familiar faces ushering in a new era for Michigan.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer workouts are ramping up for the Michigan men\u2019s basketball team, and like the last few seasons, there\u2019s a handful of new faces. Four scholarship players return from last season\u2019s championship-winning squad, along with three transfers and six incoming freshmen. And although he\u2019s no stranger to the Wolverines\u2019 returners, head coach Mike Boynton Jr. is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[4978,1821,4094,3554,725,222,4730],"class_list":["post-5939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-boynton","tag-era","tag-faces","tag-familiar","tag-leading","tag-michigan","tag-mike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5941,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939\/revisions\/5941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}