Welcome to "Catching Up With ...," an occasional feature where we chat with someone who used to be involved with Michigan athletics. If there's someone you'd like to see AnnArbor.com catch up with, e-mail michaelrothstein@annarbor.com.

Wayman Britt has the Michigan basketball outstanding defensive player award named after him, played briefly in the NBA and scored more than 1,000 points (1,005, actually) during his time as a Wolverine.

As a senior in 1976, Britt and Michigan advanced to the national championship game before losing to Indiana. A North Carolina native who attended high school in Flint, Britt remained in Michigan after his playing days. He worked for Steelcase in Grand Rapids for more than two decades before becoming the assistant administrator for Kent County in 2004.

Q: What have you been up to the past few years?

Wayman Britt: “I’ve been working for Kent County. I’m assistant county administrator that oversees human services programs and other stuff for the country. I’ve been doing that for six years, working in the community on a lot of different boards and committees. Prior to that I worked at Steelcase for 24 years and had a small business for a minute, but that didn’t last very long. My experience in Grand Rapids has been wonderful. We had a great opportunity to help others and I see this community being a community people can come to. It’s a great life here in West Michigan. I’m very happy.”

Q: How did you end up being an administrator?

WB: “We work with and for the commissioners. There are 19 commissioners on our board. I always volunteered and got involved in serving the community on various boards and so forth. I think what happened is I got a taste of government through my serving on the Department of Human Services board. I became chair of that board in Kent County, back then it was called social services and then human services, which it is called now. I think from that experience, it likened me to that idea of working in that environment and it just seemed to be a good fit for me and my background. I think it's just by the fate. Interesting enough, I worked at the Genesee County Prosecutor’s Office when I was in Flint, cleaning the floors as a high schooler. I had no idea I was going to be working with the prosecutor and all the courts and everybody. Who knew that I would be in Grand Rapids, in Kent County, as assistant county commissioner when I was shining floors in the Genessee County building. Unbelievable. Back in ’69, ’70, ’71, somewhere around there. Unbelievable.”

Q: Do you eventually want to run for office some day then?

WB: “That is always asked of me and currently I’m just going to do my job as I see it. If opportunities do present themselves down the road, I will not back away if it makes sense to me and my family. Right now I am going to continue what I’m doing. But I have been asked many, many, many, many, many times to get into politics as an elected official. This is an appointed position.”

Q: You said the opportunity would have to be right. What would that opportunity have to be?

WB: “For me, I would have to make sure that I set myself up pretty well because that job, you’re away from home quite a bit and I don’t want to see family life go to heck. I don’t want it to be something that I regret, so when I do it, I want to have all of me in it and not have distractions. Give me a few more years and you never know, that might be my calling. For now, I’m going to do what I can to stabilize things and you never know.”

Q: One basketball question: When you see Michigan basketball now, what are your thoughts on the team and the state of the program?

WB: “You know, (John) Beilein is a good coach. He definitely has an acumen for coaching. He just has to get some dominant players and some big men down low on both sides. Either you’re going to have a real quick team or a dominant team down low, one or the other. He has a mixture of both. You need four strong spots. You can have one weak spot, but he needs four strong players on his team. And he needs a bench. They’re starting to build, hopefully. Hopefully they can stack it up a little bit more. They just have a few pieces left. Having a guard play forward ... I played forward at 6-2, but that was a little different. I was blessed that my arms were very long and I had big feet and I could jump quite well. But you can’t put little guys in that position anymore, unless they can go after it. It’s a lot of work. They need to strengthen themselves down low.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.