For nearly two decades, the jerseys of five Michigan basketball greats have been hanging in the Crisler Center rafters.
Soon it’ll be six.
Trey Burke, the consensus National Player of the Year who led the Wolverines to the 2013 national title game, will have his No. 3 honored this season when Michigan hosts Ohio State on Jan. 23, the program announced Friday.
Burke joins a select group that includes Cazzie Russell, Bill Buntin, Phil Hubbard, Glen Rice and Rudy Tomjanovich, and is the first player to receive the recognition since 2006.
Burke’s number will be the fifth to be honored, along with Buntin’s No. 22, Hubbard’s No. 35, Rice’s No. 41 and Tomjanovich’s No. 45. Russell’s No. 33 is the only one that’s retired and can’t be worn by any Michigan players.
A 6-foot guard from Columbus, Ohio, Burke played a starring role during Michigan’s return to prominence under John Beilein, the program’s winningest coach. He was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2012 after helping the Wolverines earn a share of the conference regular-season title, the program’s first in 26 years.
Burke followed that up with a sensational sophomore season where he won every National Player of the Year award (the second Wolverine to ever do so and first since Russell in 1966), was a consensus first-team All-American (the program’s sixth and first since Chris Webber in 1993) and was named the Big Ten Player of the Year (first UM player since Rice in 1989).
The impressive list of accolades, coupled with Michigan’s success and remarkable run to the NCAA Tournament final, put Burke in rarefied air and in the discussion of his jersey being raised to the rafters.
“That would mean the world,” Burke said in February 2023, when he was back on campus for a 10-year anniversary celebration of the 2013 team’s national runner-up finish. “That’s something you dream about as a kid. Growing up, I loved college basketball, I watched college basketball. I was one of those kids that was running around with a little rubber basketball, dreaming that you’ll make big shots. Just to have something to leave a legacy or something like that, as big as that, at such a great university as Michigan, that would be great. I would love that.”
While Burke was humbled just to be mentioned among the school’s elite players, former teammate Nik Stauskas didn’t mind doing some lobbying for him.
“I would just say you could probably count on one hand the amount of players that have come through this school that have had the impact that Trey had,” Stauskas said.
For his two-year career, Burke played in 73 games, with 72 starts, averaged 16.9 points and 5.7 assists, and had his share of memorable moments along the way, from his winning plays against rivals Ohio State and Michigan State to his iconic 3-pointer against Kansas in the Sweet 16.
Before he was selected with the No. 9 pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, Burke set numerous program marks. He holds Michigan’s single-season record with 260 assists, and his 727 points scored in his second season is the most ever by a Michigan sophomore.
jhawkins@detroitnews.com
@jamesbhawkins
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