By James Goldstein
and Mark Snyder
Daily Sports Writers
After a summer where subtraction was the theme for the Michigan basketball team, the Wolverines finally received some good news in late August.
Michigan got much-needed help at the point guard position when Robbie Reid, a transfer from Brigham Young, made his decision to join the Wolverines.
Reid, son of fired BYU coach Roger Reid, told school officials last spring that he would not be returning to play for the Cougars after completing a two-year Mormon Church mission in Greece.
Reid returned to the United States on July 11 and immediately received calls from schools across the nation. Reid visited Ann Arbor on July 24 and 25 and spoke with Michigan coach Steve Fisher. He narrowed his choices to Utah, Virginia, Illinois and Michigan in early August. Illini coach Lon Kruger heavily recruited the 6-foot-2 point guard, but to no avail.
On August 24, Reid picked the Wolverines.
His father, Roger who coached BYU in Robbie's freshman and sophomore years, said that it wasn't just the athletic program that impressed Robbie.
"The overall package means so much," Reid said. "When you get down to the schools that Robbie had a chance to go to, all of them had a place for him and basically said that you're our guy who is going to run our ball club. When it came down to the overall situation, Robbie had a good feel about his visit to Michigan."
The 6-foot-2 point guard played the first two seasons under his father, averaging 10.1 points, 4.9 assists and 1.9 steals in the 1994-95 season. In that same year, he was also named to the All-Western Athletic Conference Defensive First Team.
But it was another sport that pulled Reid closer to Michigan - baseball. Reid is a ballplayer, who had 31 victories as a left-handed prep pitcher and who platooned in the outfield at BYU. He was also drafted by the San Diego Padres.
Michigan baseball coach Geoff Zahn spoke to Reid as well and told the junior he could play on the Michigan baseball team - a deciding factor in his choice of schools.
Reid, who was the valedictorian of his high school class with a perfect 4.0 grade point average, is interested in the business and pre-medical programs at Michigan. His father said that Ann Arbor's Latter Day Saints community, which is the religion of the Reid's Mormon faith, is very strong.
The addition of Reid on the court came at a crucial time for the already-thin Wolverines. Guard Brandun Hughes was dismissed from the team on June 13. The move left Michigan with one experienced point guard - Travis Conlan - for the upcoming season. Hughes played big minutes at the point last season and would have returned as Michigan's fourth-leading scorer (8.8 points per game last season).
Now with Reid in the picture, the situation changes. According to Reid's father, there should be a battle for the starting point guard job.
"If Robbie didn't think he had a chance to come in and start, I guarantee he wouldn't have come to Michigan," Reid said. "There are too many places he had the opportunity to do that."
But the Reid-for-Hughes swap was only one of a litany of changes which Michigan basketball coach Steve Fisher oversaw.
At the end of last season, Fisher was planning on adding four new bodies - all freshmen recruits - to last season's seven-man rotation.
Plans changed.
After a summer of depositions and departures, the quartet expected in Ann Arbor this fall has become a triplet, leaving Michigan in a familiar spot - shorthanded.
"They're thin at every position now," said Bob Gibbons, a recruiting expert from All-Star Sports. "There's just no depth."
Michigan, fresh off an NIT championship, was one of the few teams to play without a senior in its regular rotation, but the prospect of the same unit suiting up at fall practice was highly unlikely.
As expected, forward Maurice Taylor jumped to the NBA, where he will play alongside former Michigan forward Loy Vaught with the Los Angeles Clippers. Taylor's departure leaves a major hole in the Michigan front line.
Any attempts to compensate for the loss lies on the broad shoulders of freshman Josh Asselin. Unfortunately, Asselin's inexperience makes it likely that Maceo Baston and Robert Traylor's playing time will increase, instead of being spelled by Asselin.
Traylor, who contemplated leaving for the draft as well, returns as the only center with significant experience.
"There is not a replacement for Taylor in this (recruiting) group," Gibbons said.
Both Asselin and sophomore Peter Vignier are under scholarship and approach seven feet, but neither has the premier talent Taylor possessed.
Senior forwards Baston and Jerod Ward saw playing time last season on the front line, but their likely backup - freshman Brandon Smith - has yet to take the floor in a Division I contest.
Asselin and Smith are the two recruits who made it to Ann Arbor this fall.
The other two recruits - Dionte Harvey and Leon Jones - encountered roadblocks which led Fisher to rescind their scholarship offers.
Days after Harvey announced he would play for Michigan this fall, his past came back to haunt him. He was arraigned on sexual assault charges and upon discovering the news, Fisher severed Michigan's ties with Harvey.
Jones failed to qualify academically after failing the ACT. Michigan does not accept partial qualifiers.
The two players, both highly-touted guards, left Michigan with a three-guard rotation and a thin backcourt.
And losing Hughes added insult to injury.
A prepared statement from Fisher in July discussed why Hughes was no longer at the University.
"Brandun made a commitment and did what he needed to do to enter the University of Michigan," Fisher said. "However, he has failed to maintain the necessary commitments to both academics and the basketball program."
For the two months following Hughes' removal, Michigan intended to enter the season with two experienced guards (Conlan and Louis Bullock) with junior Ron Oliver contributing minor minutes off the bench.
Enter Reid. The junior, who has two more years of eligibility remaining in college, started getting back to the hardwood immediately. Right from the day he arrived home from Greece, he woke up at 6 a.m. every day, headed to the weight room and to the courts. Reid's father knows that he will put his work in.
"Robbie will do whatever it takes to win," Reid said. "He'll fight his guts out trying to compete. You're going to have to kill him. He is such a hard nosed guy."
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Michigan men's basketball coach Steve Fisher has been toiling in a hurricane of media scrutiny during the last several months, after alleged NCAA rules violations. But Fisher was still able to convince former BYU point guard Robbie Reid to transfer to Michigan.
09-03-97
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