Checking in on some former Michigan Basketball fan favorites

Spike Albrecht made a name for himself in the first-half of the National Championship Game against Louisville (redacted team). But what’s he up to now? We check in on him and some other former Michigan Basketball fan favorites:

Whether you like him or not, former Michigan Wolverines basketball star Hunter Dickinson recently created a unique partnership with LinkedIn after graduating from Kansas. While it was a comical NIL opportunity, it highlighted the fact that not every student athlete makes it to the next level, and some don’t even have a long career overseas. Still, it’s fun to check in on what some former notable college players are up to. A few weeks ago, we took a look into some former football players and today, we’ll check in on what some former basketball players are up to now that their playing careers are over.

C Jon Teske (2016-20)

In John Beilein’s final season at Michigan, Teske made a name for himself by leading the conference in blocks and finishing in the top-10 in rebounds. He and point guard Zavier Simpson created a nasty pick and roll combo.

After not being drafted in the 2020 NBA Draft , Teske got a training camp invite from the Orlando Magic and was later reassigned to their G League team, the Lakeland Magic. Lakeland actually won the G League title in 2020-21, and he averaged 6.7 points and 3.4 rebounds off the bench. He’d eventually get the call-up to the big leagues, signing a 10-day contract with the Memphis Grizzlies in Jan. 2022. But that was the only time he was rostered at the NBA level.

Teske came back to Grand Rapids and took a job with Gordon Food Service, headquartered in Wyoming, Michigan. He now serves as a Chain Account Representative for the company, which has 180 stores, 25 distribution centers in North America, and makes more than $23 billion annually.

PG Spike Albrecht (2012-16)

Albrecht averaged a little more than seven minutes per game as a true freshman on the best Michigan team of the 2000s. Improbably, he absolutely exploded to 17 first-half points in the 2012-13 National Championship.

While he finished his career at Purdue, Albrecht will always be remembered as a Wolverine.

Albrecht went into sales after earning his graduate degree from Purdue, but then he pursued coaching, which included a brief stint as a graduate assistant coach in West LaFeyette. He was there for about a year before working in sales again for Salesforce. In 2023, he became the Director of Franchise Development at REP’M Group, which helps companies in every stage of launching and sustaining a franchise brand.

G Zack Novak (2008-12)

Until 2009, there were only two sophomores who had ever been captains of the Michigan basketball team, Novack and Robert Traylor. Novak helped the Wolverines make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 12 years that year. Then in 2012, Michigan won a share of the regular season Big Ten title, its first in 26 years.

Novak played in 134 games, tied for the third-most in program history, shooting more than 40 percent from three and averaging nine points per game as a senior.

After a couple years in Ann Arbor, Novak played a single season for the Landstede Hammers, a Dutch basketball team located in Zwolle. Then, he hung up the shoe strings and spent a year as a business analyst at McKinsey and Company, a Chicago-based consulting firm. From there, he moved into corporate development at Uptake, a SaaS (software as a service) company that provides actionable insights meant to predict asset failure, mitigate catastrophic risk, optimize maintenance strategy and protect operator safety in the concrete, construction and trucking industries. After four years, Novak became the Senior Vice President of Global Sales. In 2023, he became the Senior Vice President of GM Managed Solutions at Quantix, the world’s largest chemical companies with end-to-end support through a nationwide network for transportation and supply chain logistics.

G Stu Douglass (2008-12)

Novak’s counterpart, Douglass played quite a bit longer of a professional career, spanning nine seasons in the Israeli League and Leb Oro, Spain’s second division. His final season was in 2021.

At Michigan, Douglass played in a program-record 136 consecutive games and was a captain his junior and senior seasons. He averaged around seven points per game in his career.

In 2020, Douglass started the Go Blue with Stu podcast, which he released until 2022. Now, he’s an Insurance Advisor for Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance, a provider of insurance and financial products and services in the communities they serve.