There's a famous Lincoln commercial where Matthew McConaughey is calmly driving down a road at night in a SUV.
"Sometimes you've got to go back, to actually move forward," McConaughey says to open the ad.
Michigan basketball may be considering exactly that with Roddy Gayle Jr.
There's now a chance for a reunion between the national champion and his former team after it appeared his college career was over. Late last week, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Denver granted a preliminary injunction that allows NCAA athletes in the high school class of 2022 to extend their eligibility.
This would change the NCAA's plan to have its "five-for-five" rule − a new eligibility model for Division I athletes that will allow five seasons of competition
over a five-year span − that was supposed to begin with athletes who enroll in college in fall 2027.
While the NCAA filed plans to appeal the ruling over the weekend, if it holds, Gayle could be an obvious fit to bring back. Last month, U-M coach Mike Boynton Jr. discussed his team that still has two scholarship spots available and cited ball-handlers as one area the Wolverines would look to bolster.
"We do think that there's some things we can probably be a little bit more comfortable with, depth wise," he said. "Experience in the backcourt is not, you know, as much as it has been. So we're evaluating every aspect of what we could do to add to our roster.
"We do feel though we have a really good roster that's going to be really competitive and have a chance to win. But if we can add somebody, we're certainly open to it."
Tim McCormick, a former U-M player from 1980-84 and host of the "Go Blue Hoops with Tim McCormick" podcast recently said he attended a practice where Gayle was on hand. According to McCormick, Gayle was back in town after playing in the summer league with the Detroit Pistons and getting treatment from trainer Chris Williams.
He said he caught up with Gayle at one point in practice and asked him about a potential return to which Gayle resonded, "it would be great to come back to Ann Arbor and finish as a Michigan Wolverine one more year."
Gayle spent the past two seasons of his college career in Ann Arbor after beginning at Ohio State. He played in 146 career games, with 72 starts, coming off the bench as a sixth-man the majority of his Wolverines career.
While he's not a traditional ball-handler, Gayle moved into more of a facilitator role late in the season last year after L.J. Cason went down and would provide experience on the wing, something the Wolverines don't have a ton of.
He averaged 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.3 assists in 21.1 minutes per game in his final season and scored in double figures 11 times. He became known as "March Roddy" inside the team after he struggled in January and February of his first campaign with U-M, then exploded in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, averaging 14.7 points per game which included scoring 26 points with four 3-pointers in a comeback victory over Texas A&M to advance to the Sweet 16.
The legend of March Roddy grew this past year. Having scored nine or more points in just two of his final 17 regular season games, he did so in three of U-M's six March Madness games and averaged nine per game through the postseason, highlighted by his 16 point outing against Alabama in the Sweet 16 as he was named to the NCAA All-Midwest Regional Team.
McCormick also says he spoke with Boynton at the aforementioned practice, who made it clear where he stands about the potential of reuniting.
"Roddy Gayle is a national champion," Boynton told McCormick. "Strong defense, team oriented, great leader. If the court rules in favor of the players, then I want Roddy Gayle on my team and in my lineup."
Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Michigan basketball reunion with Roddy Gayle Jr. makes sense
