Maybe someone will write a book on this year’s University of Michigan men’s basketball team someday. It turned out to be quite the story, after all.
And if someone does write that book, they’re going to want to talk to New Hampshire native and Phillips Exeter Academy product Duncan Robinson.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a college basketball player who embodies the underdog story better than the 6-foot-8 forward.
His improbable road to Ann Arbor is just about as implausible as the Wolverines’ run through the Big 10 and NCAA tournaments this year.
Robinson and his teammates are back on campus now, having lost to Oregon, 69-68, in the Sweet 16 a little more than a week ago. The Ducks play North Carolina in the Final Four on Saturday night.
But it’ll be a long time before the memories of this season fade in Robinson’s mind.
“It really was a ton of fun, probably the best basketball experience I’ve had in my life. I just feel very fortunate to have been apart of it,” he told the Monitor in a phone interview Thursday. “Just the scale, the focus that’s put on March Madness and that tournament, really you’ve got the whole country watching college basketball for three or four weeks.”
In Robinson’s opinion, it wasn’t the plane crash at Willow Run Airport the day before the Big 10 tourney in Washington, D.C., that made this season so special for Michigan, but that certainly added some intrigue to the story.
“The plane crash has gotten a lot of attention. I mean, it was a headline-grabbing story. It’s not every day a team gets in a plane crash, but I would argue that we were playing really good basketball before that,” Robinson said. “Dating back to pretty much right after the Ohio State game (Feb. 4). We felt like we were hitting our stride at the right time and playing really well.”
The “rejected takeoff” did give the Wolverines a little perspective, though.
“On that plane, we had no idea what was going to happen, if or when it stopped,” Michigan Coach John Beilein told a Detroit radio station the day after his team won its first Big 10 title since 1998. “I have a new appreciation for that right now. I don’t want those things to happen to anybody, but maybe that’s God sending me a message. You’ve got to get life right, because there’s so much more in life. We all appreciate that right now.”
That perspective translated into six straight wins for the Wolverines, all in a one-and-done setting.
But as far as Robinson and his teammates are concerned, it’s no consolation prize that Oregon ended up knocking off top-seeded Kansas in the Elite Eight last weekend to advance to the Final Four for the first time since 1939.
“I would say it’s more so the opposite. You know, to know that we were very close to beating them, really just that one shot away, it certainly made me a little uneasy,” he said. “To think that we really could be playing this weekend is tough. It’s just tough to swallow.”
Robinson’s road to Michigan was a little different than the one his teammates took.
Coach Beilein flew to Germany to meet Moritz Wagner; point guard Derrick Walton Jr. was an All-American playing in U-Michigan’s backyard; versatile Zak Irvin was a five-star recruit rated 22nd nationally in his class by ESPN; lanky forward D.J. Wilson had seven Division I offers.
“(Duncan) didn’t have any offers but he picked Williams because he really wanted to go there,” Phillips Exeter Coach Jay Tilton told Michigan Live in 2014. “Am I surprised at the success he ended up having? No. No one has more passion for the game than Duncan.”
The native of New Castle, a small island off the coast of Portsmouth, led Williams to its fourth national title game appearance in 2013. The Ephs lost to Wisconsin White-Water, 75-73, but it was Robinson’s 30-point semifinal performance that propelled Williams to the championship game in the first place.
He was named the D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year after averaging 17.1 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, while shooting 45 percent from 3-point range and 88 percent from the foul line.
And that’s when the offers started to roll in: Tilton told Yahoo! Sports his phone was ringing off the hook throughout most of Robinson’s freshman year.
“I heard from coaches constantly. Nobody tried to pry him away from Williams but they all said, ‘Man, we missed on that one,’ ” Tilton said then.
Perhaps he was inspired to go to Williams by his AAU coach, Michael Crotty Jr. of the Middlesex Magic, who also went to the small college in Williamstown, Mass. He scored 1,402 career points there on his way to a national title in 2003. Crotty Jr. knew just as well as Tilton that Robinson was a perfect fit for the Wolverines and Coach Beilein.
“He will know how to fit in Beilein’s offensive system. That’s a system that’s made for him,” Crotty Jr. said when Robinson transferred.
Tilton added, “He has a unique skill set that’s perfect for Michigan. … He can thrive as a player there.”
Thrive is pretty much what he did out of the gate. During the season he had to sit out due to NCAA transfer rules, Robinson worked on perfecting his game and putting on weight. He was listed at 185 pounds as a freshman and is listed at 215 pounds now.
The national attention followed, just as Crotty Jr. and Tilton knew it would. Robinson was featured in a Yahoo! Sports story in August 2014 chronicling his unique situation transferring from D-III to D-I and still receiving a scholarship. A few months later, ESPN called, and then the New York Times.
The national exposure, intense expectations and added pressure didn’t faze him, though. And maybe that was because of the constant reminder from Beilein that he belonged in Division I, playing against the best college basketball has to offer.
“I just told him, ‘You can play here. You just gotta believe. We believe in you.’ And little by little, he’s embraced it all,” Beilein told ESPN in December of 2015.
The team has also embraced him as an important role player. He started 27 of the team’s 36 games last season, averaging 11.2 points per game while shooting 45 percent from 3-point range, which was ranked ninth in Division I. He only started three games this season but averaged 20.1 minutes a game for a team that finished with a 26-12 record and its 14th Sweet 16 appearance.
“I’ve tried to enjoy this whole process. It’s been a blessing to come here to Michigan and play and be a part of some really good teams,” he said. “I’m really fortunate with the situation I am in and thankful that the people around me have provided me with a lot of support.”
Now that Robinson has gotten to this point, don’t expect him to slow down on any of the things that got him here, though.
“We actually already started offseason workouts a few days ago,” he said Thursday with a bit of a laugh. But he certainly wasn’t joking around.
(Michelle Berthiaume can be reached at 369-3338, mberthiaume@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @MonitorMichelle.)