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New Michigan Wolverines basketballhead coach Mike Boynton Jr. hired Brown Bears head man Mike Martin as an assistant, but there’s still some shuffling to come on his staff.
While assistant coach Drew Williamson left with former head coach Dusty May, Boynton has retained the majority of Michigan’s staff members. Assistants Kyle Church, also the general manager, and Akeem Miskdeen will remain with the Wolverines, Boynton revealed on an interview with Brian Boesch on the ‘Defend The Block’ podcast. Additionally, strength and conditioning coach Matt Aldred and director of analytics Jacob Kohn are staying in Ann Arbor, along with special assistant to the head coach Brandon Gilbert.
“First and foremost, our strength and conditioning coach, Matt Aldred, I’ll start with that,” Boynton said. “He was as responsible as much as anybody for the growth and development of our players from a physical standpoint. Obviously, the players have to put the work in, but somebody’s got to put a plan together for them, because they really don’t know that part. In fact, they know the basketball part a lot more than even how to develop their bodies, injury prevention, stretching, recovery.
“Matt Aldred’s elite — I think one of the best in the country by far. He’s innovative, he’s very thoughtful, he’s thorough, he’s always thinking of ways to challenge these guys. So, him being back was a major win, because he’s a highly sought-after person in the market.
“Akeem Miskdeen, who’s been with us, a high-level basketball thinker, really good talent developer, great recruiter, an all-around good person. He’ll stick around.
“Kyle Church, who’s been an assistant and GM with us, obviously plays a critical role being that he handles responsibilities on both sides, both internally and externally. Him sticking around is going to be big for us.
“Jacob Kohn, our analytics director, having him here to be another brains of some of our operation, I think his success rate on challenges last year was pretty doggone good. You talk about games that are going to be played in the conference, which are the most important games we play, the number of possessions that he saved us didn’t go unnoticed by our staff, that’s for sure.
“And then Brandon Gilbert is kind of a jack of all trades, does a little bit of everything, he’ll stick around as well.”
KT Harrell is likely to receive a promotion from director of basketball operations to assistant coach, Boynton added.
“KT Harrell, who we’re likely going to move into an assistant-coaching role from our director of operations,” the Michigan coach said. “He’s been around the game, was the leading scorer in the SEC. It’ll get him a chance to get on the court with our guys, being able to teach and coach them and challenge them. He’s still younger, so he can get out there with them, and he can still hoop.”
Boynton is in charge of it all, and is transitioning back into a head-coaching role, which he had from 2017-24 at Oklahoma State.
The most challenging was literally just keeping the group together,” the Michigan coach revealed. “That was the biggest mission that I had when I first started.
“The easiest part would be just the basketball is still normal. The workouts are still the workouts. Guys need to get better at things that they needed to get better at, that we knew.
“The advantage I had was we helped recruit this team. We recruited them to play a way. A lot of those things are still the same. The way we want to play, the way we need to get these guys competing together, playing unselfish basketball, competing as hard as we can defensively. Those things have been fairly normal.
“The other stuff outside, the getting the staff together, finding a couple people that can complement the skill set that we have currently within our program to continue to elevate our ability to be successful.”
