COLUMBUS — Every time Michigan junior guard Roddy Gayle Jr. touched the ball on Sunday, he was instantly met with a deafening chorus of boos.
Returning to Value City Arena for the first time since transferring from Ohio State to the Wolverines this offseason, the Buckeyes’ home crowd wasn’t too pleased to see Gayle. He was a traitor, their own personal “Judas,” and they let him know it from the second he stepped onto the court for warmups. Whether the boos went on for an extended minute while Gayle readied himself to shoot free throws or a quick second as Gayle made a swing pass, they came each time without fail.
Despite the noise, Michigan continued to lean on him when it mattered most. Following a Wolverines timeout with 1:54 left and the game tied at 80, coach Dusty May drew up a play for Gayle.
“(Roddy) was option one,” May said postgame. “We felt like we’d been riding Danny (Wolf). … We felt like they were going to do something, whether it was trap Danny or whatever the case, they were going to do something out of a timeout to take away our bread and butter. We tried to create an advantage for Roddy getting downhill, he made a big time play.”
As junior guard Tre Donaldson brought the ball up, Gayle patiently waited in the right corner. Graduate guard Nimari Burnett cut to the top of the key, followed by Wolf, who began to switch places with Gayle. Gayle headed up to the top, where graduate center Vlad Goldin waited, setting a screen that gave Gayle just enough room to catch a pass from Donaldson, drive to the hoop, gather himself and lay it in.
Michigan never trailed again.
“It’s been everything for me,” Gayle told the Defend the Block podcast of what the win meant to him. “This was a game that I circled on my calendar. I knew the atmosphere was gonna be rough, a little rougher than I expected, for sure. But like, I said, that’s fun to me. I feel like this game was probably the most fun I ever had in college. Just how into it the crowd was, how personal it felt between the players.”
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