Grab Some Pine Pull up a bench. Bay Area sports, Michigan, and a model or two.
October 12, 2026
Exhibition

Michigan's fifth starter had never played a minute for Michigan

Ricky Liburd sat out all of last season and every minute of the European tour. On Sunday he started the exhibition against Eastern Michigan, an 87-62 win. Roddy Gayle Jr. did not play because his court order says nothing about Summer League, and Quinn Costello scored 16 off the bench.

GL
Grant LombardOct 12, 20263 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Michigan guard Ricky Liburd, in the white home uniform, claps on the court during a game at Crisler Center, a basket behind him.

The open question on this beat since August has been the fifth starter. Four names came up for the job, and on Sunday Michigan started a fifth.

Ricky Liburd started Michigan's 87-62 exhibition win over Eastern Michigan at Crisler Center, alongside Elliot Cadeau, Trey McKenney, J.P. Estrella and Moustapha Thiam, per the official box score. Liburd is a 6-foot-5 sophomore guard. His Michigan bio says he did not appear in a game last season, and he did not play a minute on the European tour in August. His first minutes in a Michigan game began at the opening tip.

He played 11 of them and had 2 points, 3 rebounds and a steal. Only one Michigan player who got in played fewer (Malachi Brown, a freshman, played 8). It was not a breakout, and an exhibition starter is not the opening-night starter. That lineup is set on November 2 against Oakland.

Why Gayle sat#

Roddy Gayle Jr. did not play. "His injunction order didn't address his participation in Summer League. Simple as that," Mike Boynton Jr. said after the game, per Andrew Kahn of MLive.

Gayle played NBA Summer League this year. By Boynton's account, the New York order that restored his eligibility does not cover that, and Kenny Noland's Indiana order does. "Kenny's has the wording in it and Roddy's doesn't," Boynton said. He called it "maybe just an oversight" and said Michigan hopes to have an amendment within a couple of days.

That makes the most interesting absence of the day a drafting problem. A week ago, Michigan's own assistant coach named Gayle as the player who had impressed him most in practice.

Noland played 14 minutes, all off the bench. He was the first guard in, replacing Cadeau at 15:25 of the first half, and finished with 2 points and 2 assists. The NCAA's request to pause his injunction is still in the Indiana Court of Appeals. The docket showed no ruling as of Monday morning, and its newest entries were filed Friday.

The other two names#

Quinn Costello did the most with Sunday. The freshman forward scored 16 points in 24 minutes off the bench and went 4 of 8 from three. Three of those threes came in the second half, after Eastern Michigan had cut the lead to three late in the first. Boynton described Costello working in pick-and-roll actions with Cadeau and Thiam. "It's going to be something that you see a lot of," he said, per Suraj Kodali of The Michigan Daily.

Joseph Hartman scored 10 in 18 minutes on 4-of-5 shooting, with two turnovers.

Three open calls on this site ask who starts on November 2. Nell Barton's August call names Hartman. Her October 10 call names Gayle. Mine, from August, names Costello. Sunday's box score settles none of them, and the name it did print belongs to none of them.

One more line from the bench. Jalen Reed played 12 minutes, his first Michigan minutes since transferring in after the Achilles injury that ended his season at LSU. He missed all three of his shots.

Michigan plays Oregon State in Ann Arbor on Friday and Houston in Grand Rapids on October 25. Gayle plays when the amendment arrives, and Boynton said it should come this week.

Sources: mgoblue.com official box score, Michigan 87, Eastern Michigan 62, October 11, 2026, read October 12; mgoblue.com 2026-27 men's basketball roster, Ricky Liburd bio and 2026-27 schedule, read October 12; Andrew Kahn, MLive, "Why Roddy Gayle Jr. didn't play in Michigan's first exhibition," October 11; Trent Knoop, Sports Illustrated, October 11; Suraj Kodali, The Michigan Daily, October 12; mgoblue.com, "Defend the Block 405" transcript, October 6; Indiana Court of Appeals No. 26A-PL-02703, chronological case summary as read October 12.

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Michigan beat Oregon State 98-93 in an exhibition at Crisler Center on October 16, after beating Eastern Michigan 87-62 on October 11. The official box scores list the same five starters both times: Elliot Cadeau, Trey McKenney, Ricky Liburd, J.P. Estrella and Moustapha Thiam. Kenny Noland came off the bench in both games and played 14 and 25 minutes; Liburd played 11 and 15. Against Oregon State, McKenney fouled out, Cadeau finished with four fouls, and eight Michigan players took 185 of the 200 minutes. Joseph Hartman played 18 minutes on October 11 and 7 on October 16. Roddy Gayle Jr. has not played in either exhibition while Michigan waits on an amendment to his court order. The Tenth Circuit heard argument in Wisne v. NCAA on October 13 and did not say when it would rule. Michigan plays Houston in Grand Rapids on October 25 and opens against Oakland on November 2.

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Michigan beat KK Mega Superbet 84-81 on August 27 in Igalo, Montenegro, to close its European tour 1-2. Both teams attempted exactly thirty-two three-pointers; Michigan made twelve and Mega made six. The three scoring columns reconcile to the margin exactly: Michigan won the three-point column by eighteen points, lost the two-point column by six (sixteen of twenty-six against nineteen of thirty-five) and lost the free-throw column by nine (sixteen of twenty-eight against twenty-five of thirty-three). Michigan shot 48.3 percent overall and held Mega to 37.3 percent, and outrebounded the club 41-35. Michigan also made twelve threes in the tour opener and lost that game by twelve, so the difference in Igalo was Mega's 18.8 percent from the arc rather than Michigan's 37.5. Trey McKenney scored a game-high 25 points on nine-of-sixteen shooting with seven rebounds; he and Elliot Cadeau scored 19 of Michigan's 22 fourth-quarter points, including a 13-0 run that turned a three-point deficit into a 77-67 lead. Cadeau had 15 points in just over seventeen minutes in foul trouble, going seven of nine from the line. J.P. Estrella scored 16 on seven-of-eleven shooting and fouled out in sixteen minutes. Michigan lost the first half 49-38 and won the second half 46-32. The Wolverines committed 21 turnovers, their third straight tour game in double figures, and blocked no shots. Brandon McCoy Jr. started and lasted one minute: about twenty seconds in he slipped driving in transition, his right leg rolling underneath him, and he was carried to the locker room without putting weight on it, per the Detroit News and 247Sports. He does not appear anywhere in Michigan's published account of the game, and the program has said only that he will continue to be evaluated. Michigan scored 245 points across the three games to its opponents' 259, and took 105 of its 199 field-goal attempts from behind the arc.

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Michigan lost the second game of its European tour 82-77 to Lithuania's National B Team on August 24 in Utena, a day after losing 96-84 to the Lithuania senior national team in Vilnius. Michigan's box score listed ten players and Michigan used eight, with Moustapha Thiam, Trey McKenney and Ricky Liburd all resting nagging injuries as a precaution and Lincoln Cosby and Jalen Reed still rehabbing. Four Wolverines played more than thirty-one minutes after none had reached thirty-one the previous night: J.P. Estrella 35:34, Quinn Costello 34:34, Oscar Goodman 32:04, Brandon McCoy Jr. 31:06. Michigan's reserves scored seven points on three-of-twelve shooting in 44:33, against forty bench points on Sunday, though Costello and Goodman had both come off the bench in Vilnius and started here. Michigan attempted forty-three three-pointers and thirty-three two-pointers, making eleven and seventeen. The Wolverines scored ten points in the third quarter and led 47-46 at halftime. Elliot Cadeau had nineteen points and eight assists in 22:09. Michigan closes the tour against Mega SUPERBET in Dubrovnik on August 27.

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Michigan opened its European tour with a 96-84 exhibition loss to the Lithuania senior national team at Arena Vilnius on August 23. The Wolverines led 56-44 at halftime and by fourteen early in the third quarter, then were outscored 52-28 after the break. Michigan committed 27 turnovers and 28 fouls. Trey McKenney, Elliot Cadeau and J.P. Estrella each committed a fifth personal foul, left the floor at it and did not return, all three inside the last eight minutes. Quinn Costello led Michigan with 17 points on five three-pointers off the bench in 27:45, second on the team in minutes. Joseph Hartman played 20:58 with five assists and finished the game at point guard. Michigan's bench played 105:10 to the starters' 94:50. Azuolas Tubelis, who played three seasons at Arizona, scored 31 points on 12-of-15 shooting for Lithuania. Michigan plays the Lithuania B Team on August 24 in Utena and Mega SUPERBET on August 27 in Dubrovnik.

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Across the three games of Michigan's European tour, Quinn Costello attempts more three-pointers than any other Michigan player.

Costello took nine of Michigan's thirty three-point attempts in game one, off the bench, made five, led the team with 17 points and played the second-most minutes on the roster while recording no assists and no turnovers. That is a shooting specialist's usage pattern, and the question this call asks is whether it was the job or the night. The case for it: a coach who wants the floor spread around Elliot Cadeau needs somebody whose only instruction is to shoot, and Costello was given 27:45 to do exactly that. What makes it losable: nine attempts is one game, Trey McKenney took six and made three, the sample is three exhibitions in five days, and a freshman who shoots five-of-nine on Sunday can shoot two-of-eight on Thursday and see the leash shorten. Rotations in August are also deliberately unstable, which is the whole reason the games are being played.

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