Liburd started both exhibitions. Noland got the minutes in the close one

Michigan opens against Oakland on November 2, in 16 days, and has one exhibition left before then, Houston in Grand Rapids on October 25. Two are done. The same five men started both, and in the one that was close, the minutes went to a man who started neither.

Ricky Liburd started on October 11 against Eastern Michigan and again on Friday night against Oregon State, alongside Elliot Cadeau, Trey McKenney, J.P. Estrella and Moustapha Thiam, per Michigan's official box scores. Kenny Noland came off the bench both times. Eastern Michigan was an 87-62 game, and Liburd played 11 minutes to Noland's 14. Oregon State was a 98-93 game in which the lead changed hands 18 times, and Liburd played 15 minutes to Noland's 25.

Here is every Michigan minute from both games. Each column adds to 200.

Two exhibitions are two games, and one of them was a 25-point win. Nothing in this table is a trend. It shows something narrower. When Oregon State made Michigan play a real game, the rotation shrank to eight. Those eight took 185 of the 200 minutes. Hartman, Goodman and Brown split the other 15.

Who ran it when the lead guards sat#

Friday was a foul-trouble night. McKenney fouled out with five. Cadeau finished with four and scored one point in the first half, per Michigan's recap, before scoring 26 in the second.

With about eight minutes left in the first half, Cadeau and McKenney were both on the bench, and Noland ran the offense, as Lyra Sharma of The Michigan Daily described it. The play-by-play has him checking in for Cadeau at 8:42. Michigan's lead reached 39-26 on a Noland layup with 4:06 left in the half, per Michigan's recap. Oregon State then closed the half on a 16-6 run.

The second half is where the minutes tell you who the staff wanted. Oregon State led 76-74 with a little over seven minutes left. The play-by-play shows Noland checking in at 7:12 and not checking out again. Michigan closed it out from there, with Cadeau scoring and Thiam finishing two dunks, and Noland was on the floor for it.

His line was modest: 6 points, 3 assists, no turnovers in 25 minutes. He took two threes and missed both. "He can shoot the ball," Mike Boynton Jr. said, per The Michigan Daily. "We won't ask him to do that as much, but on a night like tonight, where we need him to, he's capable of doing it."

Michigan as a whole won the game on ball security. It committed 7 turnovers to Oregon State's 17 and scored 31 points off them to Oregon State's 9. It needed every one, because it lost the rebounding count 37-29 and shot 8 of 31 from three.

The minutes that have not been spent yet#

Roddy Gayle Jr. has played in neither exhibition. After the first one, Boynton said Gayle's court order did not address his participation in NBA Summer League and that Michigan hoped to have an amendment within a couple of days, per Andrew Kahn of MLive. Five days later Gayle sat again, and Trent Knoop of Sports Illustrated reported that Michigan still hopes to have his eligibility cleared soon.

Last season Gayle played 823 minutes in 39 games for a team that won the national championship, sixth on that team in minutes. When he is cleared, those are backcourt minutes, and the pool they come out of is in the table above. Liburd, Noland and Hartman have 90 of Michigan's 400 minutes between them so far.

That bears on two of my own open calls. I called in August that Hartman starts the November 2 opener. He has started neither exhibition and played 7 minutes on Friday, so that call is running against me. I called on October 10 that Gayle starts the opener. That one needs him eligible first, and two exhibitions have now gone by without him.

Noland's own status is still on appeal. The NCAA's emergency request to pause the Indiana injunction that makes him eligible sits in the Indiana Court of Appeals, and no ruling had been reported by Saturday.

Denver, briefly#

The Tenth Circuit heard the NCAA's appeal in Wisne v. NCAA, the Colorado class case over the five-year eligibility rule, on Tuesday, October 13, by video. The panel was Judges Paul Kelly, Carolyn McHugh and Nancy Moritz, per Courthouse News Service. Kelly was also one of the two judges who voted in August to stay the injunction. McHugh asked whether the court should hold off and let Congress settle it through the Protect College Sports Act, which passed the Senate in September. The court did not say when it would rule.

Neither Michigan guard is playing under the Colorado order. Gayle has a New York order and Noland has an Indiana one. My call that the Tenth Circuit does not decide the merits before November 2 stands, and a judge wondering aloud about waiting on Congress is not a court in a hurry.

Houston on October 25 is the last game before Oakland. If Gayle is in that box score, the table above gets a twelfth row, and somebody in it loses minutes.

Called shot: Kenny Noland plays more minutes than Ricky Liburd in Michigan's November 2 opener against Oakland, as listed on the official Michigan box score. The case for it is Friday: in the only close game Michigan has played, the staff gave the ball to the graduate guard who started 28 games at Columbia last season, and kept him on the floor at the end. The case against has two parts. An opener against Oakland at Crisler may look more like the Eastern Michigan game, where the margin was 25 and Noland played three more minutes than Liburd, not ten more. And the NCAA can still win its stay in Indiana, in which case Noland plays none.

Sources: mgoblue.com official box scores, Michigan 87, Eastern Michigan 62, October 11, 2026, and Michigan 98, Oregon State 93, October 16, 2026, including play-by-play; mgoblue.com, "Michigan Holds Off Oregon State for Exhibition Win," October 16; mgoblue.com 2026-27 schedule; Lyra Sharma, The Michigan Daily, "Kenny Noland steps up when it counts against Oregon State," October 16; Trent Knoop, Sports Illustrated, October 16; Andrew Kahn, MLive, October 11; Courthouse News Service, "NCAA pushes 10th Circuit to back age-based eligibility cutoff," October 13; mgoblue.com 2025-26 statistics; Columbia athletics 2025-26 statistics.