Aday Mara is the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and a centerpiece of one of college basketball’s top defenses, but the Michigan center has had issues staying on the court lately.
The 7-foot-3 junior leads the Wolverines’ rotation in fouls committed per 40 minutes (4.0). And as a result, his minutes have been limited in some of U-M’s biggest games of the regular season — including the season-finale against Michigan State (22), the loss to Duke (22) and the crucial win at Purdue (22).
Sunday’s game against the Spartans was the latest example, as Mara picked up two early fouls and played less than six first-half minutes. He was then able to stay on the court for 13-plus minutes in the second half and was a team-high plus-15 in that span.
Still, keeping Mara out of foul trouble and available throughout Big Ten or NCAA Tournament games could be the difference between making a run and an earlier-than-expected exit. And his MSU game, which featured a flagrant and a technical foul, irked U-M coach Dusty May.
“The first one, it’s a post-up at 19 feet and he just grabs the guy’s arm for no reason,” May said on “Inside Michigan Basketball,” a Michigan Athletics podcast. “I mean, we don’t even really want to get that catch if we have to get it challenged. And then the second one is just kind of a misfortune where he’s jumping in the air, he makes contact and kind of just gives the guy a little nudge.
“He’s just got to be smarter. These teams that are very, very good at embellishing and flopping and all the other stuff. They’re hard to play against. And there’s a team in our league that we were very confident going into the game cuz we’re like, ‘Look, they’re not floppers at all. They’re physical, but they don’t flop.’ The teams that are hard to play against are the ones that hit you and then they wait on you to hit them back and then they’re ready to take a splatter. And so we’ve just gotta be smarter knowing that that’s the case in certain games.”
“We can’t have Aday sitting in the first half because of those fouls. If he’s going to block a shot and something happens, we can live with it, but we can’t live with those.”
Mara, Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr. were all named to the Big Ten’s five-member All-Defensive team, as announced Tuesday. Mara became Michigan’s first Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year since Gary Grant won the award in both 1987 and 1988.
Mara, a transfer from UCLA and the tallest player in program history, led the Big Ten and ranked fifth nationally with 2.6 blocks per game. His 80 total blocks ranks for the fifth-most in a single season in program history, and is 17 off of Roy Tarpley’s single-season record of 97 in 1985-86. Mara was also 10th in the Big Ten with 4.8 defensive rebounds per game.