Michigan lists 17 against a limit of 15. Last season it listed 16.
Roddy Gayle Jr. and Kenny Noland are on Michigan's official roster, which now carries two names more than the rule allows a team to count. The rule has two exceptions that need nobody to leave, and Michigan has to file the roster that counts by November 1.
Michigan's official roster listed seventeen players on Saturday morning. Two of them, Roddy Gayle Jr. and Kenny Noland, were not there on September 26. Both went on the page sometime between that Saturday and September 29, when On3's Clayton Sayfie reported it. Michigan has not issued a release about either one, and the newest item on its men's basketball news page is still the September 24 notice about single-game tickets.
The men's basketball roster limit is fifteen. Michigan plays Eastern Michigan in an exhibition at Crisler in eight days and opens the season against Oakland on November 2, in thirty. The date that decides how seventeen fits under fifteen comes in between.
The date that counts#
The limit lives in NCAA Bylaw 17.2, which the Division I Board of Directors adopted to put the House settlement into effect on July 1, 2025. It covers every school in a defendant conference, and the Big Ten was one. The number for men's basketball is fifteen.
The page on mgoblue.com is not the roster the bylaw counts. Bylaw 17.2.1 requires a school to submit its roster in the NCAA's software system no later than the calendar day before its first contest used for championship selection, or December 1, whichever comes first. For Michigan that is Sunday, November 1. The three October exhibitions do not count toward selection. From the day after submission, a player has to be on the submitted roster to practice, lift or watch film with the staff for the rest of the year.
So a page with seventeen names on it breaks nothing in October. What it does in October is tell you what Michigan intends.
Two exceptions, and neither needs anyone to leave#
The bylaw lets two kinds of player sit on a submitted roster without counting toward fifteen.
The first is a designated student-athlete. The definition runs back to the settlement itself: a player a school attests was, or would have been, cut from its 2025-26 roster because of the new limits, who had been on its 2024-25 squad list or had been recruited for 2025-26 before April 7, 2025. Schools reported those lists by July 6, 2025, into the same compliance system. A designated player counts toward nobody's fifteen for as long as he has eligibility. The list is not public, and the roster page marks nobody as designated.
The second is a medically documented season-ending injury suffered before the submission date. That player may rehab and practice once cleared without counting toward the limit, but he may not play in games that count. The Big Ten administers the exception. Michigan announced on September 1 that Brandon McCoy Jr. tore his ACL and will miss the season, two months before the November 1 deadline. He is still on the page.
The page has been over fifteen before. Michigan's roster page for 2025-26, the season it won the national title under the same rule, lists sixteen players. The count is not published.
Who is crowded out#
A seventeen-man page invites one question, which two names come off, and nobody has answered it. The bylaw does not require that anybody come off. If Michigan claims the injury exception for McCoy, seventeen becomes sixteen counted. Add one designated player among the seventeen and it is fifteen. Michigan has not said whether it has claimed either, and the compliance filing that would show it is not public.
What can be said is narrower. The program has two guards on court orders that are still live. Justice Frank A. Sedita III granted Gayle's preliminary injunction from the bench in Niagara County on September 24, and the written order is due October 24, per the College Sports Litigation Tracker. Noland's preliminary injunction issued in Monroe Circuit Court in Indiana on September 23. The NCAA filed an emergency petition to move its appeal straight to the state's highest court. The docket in the trial court records an order of the Indiana Supreme Court denying that petition on October 1. The NCAA's motion to stay the injunction is still pending in the trial court, where Noland and his co-plaintiffs filed their response on Friday.
Noland's biography on the roster page says he is eligible under a "temporary restraining order." The Indiana record is a preliminary injunction. The difference matters because a restraining order is short by design and an injunction holds while the case goes on.
What the page changed for me#
I called in August that Gayle would not be on this page on opening day. My reasons were the courts and the professional contract he signed with Detroit. A judge has since granted his injunction, and MLive reports that the Big Ten confirmed his eligibility under its rule on professional contracts. He was on the page by September 29, five weeks before the date I picked, and I expect that call to lose. My two later calls, that Gayle is listed on October 11 and that Noland is listed on December 9, point the same way the page now does, and both stand as filed.
Gayle played 823 minutes across 39 games for last season's champion. Noland started all 28 games he played at Columbia and had 101 assists against 69 turnovers. Elliot Cadeau had 234 of Michigan's 745 assists last season, just under a third. Trey McKenney played 885 minutes and had 35. Either of the two new names gives Cadeau a second ball handler.
Eastern Michigan comes to Crisler on October 11. The roster that counts is due three weeks later.
Sources: mgoblue.com official 2026-27 men's basketball roster, its roster API and Kenny Noland's roster biography, read October 3; mgoblue.com 2025-26 and 2024-25 roster pages and men's basketball news feed, read October 3; Michigan's September 1 release on Brandon McCoy Jr.; NCAA Division I Proposals 2025-11 (roster limits) and 2025-17 (roster limitation provisions) and the October 2, 2025 amendment to Bylaw 17.2.2, NCAA Legislative Services Database; Indiana MyCase, Monroe Circuit Court 6, No. 53C06-2609-PL-002418, chronological case summary read October 3; the College Sports Litigation Tracker on Gayle v. NCAA; Clayton Sayfie, On3, September 29; Andrew Kahn, MLive, September 30; Columbia athletics 2025-26 statistics; mgoblue.com 2025-26 statistics.
