Surrounded by reporters during Michigan basketball’s media day, associate head coach Phil Martelli fielded questions that had the same general premise: Why did he, a bona fide coaching legend who spent the past 24 years as the head coach at St. Joseph’s before being fired last spring, become an assistant under first-year Michigan coach Juwan Howard?

“I'm not here to be a mascot,” he said at the time. “I'm here to help Juwan Howard coach on a Monday night in April. That's dead what I'm about. Because he's going to do that, I just want to be a part of that.” Martelli’s arrival in Ann Arbor was unexpected, even to him.