Five takeaways from Big Ten Media Day: Rotation clues, health updates and shooting bigs

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Mike Boynton Jr., Trey McKenney, and Elliot Cadeau represented Michigan at Big Ten Media Day in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, sharing updates on early practices and what to expect as Michigan tips off its preseason on Sunday against Eastern Michigan.

The trio shared plenty of news, tidbits, and notes across multiple interviews on different platforms, including key injury updates and clues about how the rotation might look. Here are Five Takeaways from the day’s quotes.

1. ‘We don’t think we’re defending the national championship’

One thing that always impressed me about Dusty May was his ability to craft a succinct message that wasn’t a gimmicky catchphrase but a representation of where the program wanted to go.

Mike Boynton Jr. did something similar today. In seemingly every interview, he came back to the importance of this team finding its own identity.

“One of the things that we got to be mindful of internally is that we don’t think we’re defending the national championship,” Boynton said. “You know, Elliot and Trey won a national championship. But JP Estrella and Moustapha Thiam did not.”

Rather than trying to be what last year’s team was, Michigan’s staff is pushing them to find what this team is and can become.

“How does this team create its own legacy?” he asked. “I don’t want Moustapha and JP to think that they have to be like Morez and Aday. I want them to think that they want to do what Morez and Aday did, which was to get people to stop talking about Danny and Vlad.”

McKenney echoed a similar sentiment in his breakout session.

“It’s a totally different team, and we’re gonna have to attack the season totally differently than we did last year. It’s a whole new roster. So, I mean, I feel like we’re going to have the same team goal, but it’s just that we have to get used to being around different people every day.”