Butch Wade spent four years with the Michigan basketball program - two as a full-time starter under coach Bill Frieder in 1984-85 and 85-86. After scoring 674 points and grabbing 678 rebounds, Wade was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1986 and spent 14 years overseas in Belgium playing basketball.

Now living in Florida, Wade is passing on his knowledge to the next generation of basketball players.

Q: What are you up to now? Butch Wade: “Currently I’m down in Sarasota, Fla., teaching high school and coaching high school basketball.”

Q: Did you always want to do that? BW: “Well, after college I took the opportunity to go overseas and I played for 14 years and retired in 2000. I came back and wanted to get into coaching and then I ended up getting an assistant’s position at Saginaw Valley State and at the same time I worked for the public school system up there. While I was there for a few years at Saginaw Valley, I developed a passion for working with high school kids. So I ended up making that transition, moving down to Florida and ended up getting a job teaching. So they happened to have a position on the basketball team as a coach as well, so it worked its way out. Riverview High School.”

Q: Why Florida? BW: “A combination of a couple things. When I played overseas I had a good friend of mine that lived in Sarasota, so I used to vacation down there with him during the off-season and I just went down there the summer of 2003 a couple times and decided ‘Hey, I like it down here.’ Time to make a change.”

Q: Of all the memories you have of playing here (at Michigan), what stands out the most? BW: “Wow. There are so many that it’s hard to put your finger on one. Probably my senior year, the last game here against Indiana for the Big Ten championship. It was a heck of a game. I still remember Crisler was rocking. They had people sitting in the aisles, a fire marshal had to come in. It was really, really a pressure game, and we ended up beating Indiana pretty good.”

Q: Does it feel like 20-plus years? BW: “No. We were just talking about that. It goes rather quick. Rather quick. Enjoy it. I’ll tell ya.”

Q: What’s it like walking back into Crisler? BW: “It’s just amazing what they’ve done to the football stadium, what they’ve done to the locker room. Just all the updates and so on and so forth. It’s just amazing.”

Q: Getting back to playing, where did you play overseas and what’s the craziest thing to happen to you overseas? BW: “I was in Belgium for all of my 14 years and played for three different teams while I was in Belgium. Probably, my fondest memory would be we won the 1992-93 Belgian Cup championship. We were probably the lowest seed in the tournament and we ended up winning it, by God. The craziest moment would be when we went to play a European Cup game in Turkey and they had, it was just a real, the fans, it was a real hostile environment. I remember they had these shields that came up over our bench, like these plastic (things) just in case we had objects thrown at us or whatever. They had riot police coming around the court. I was like ‘Wow.’”

Q: Was it at that point you wondered ‘What am I doing here?’ BW: “Yeah. I’m thinking like ‘Boy, I want to win but I’m just afraid of what will happen if we do win.’ We ended up losing. It was wild. We had to get a police escort outside with the bus. It was just the wildest thing.”

Q: Who were you playing for at that point? BW: “It was a team in Ghent, Belgium, called Bobcat Ghent. That was probably the wildest experience I had while I was over there.”

Q: Do you still watch this incarnation of Michigan often? BW: “Being down in Florida we don’t get a lot. Most of our games are regional but if it’s a nationally televised game I’ll tune in and watch it. I like what I see. I think (John) Beilein is a really good coach. He was at West Virginia as well, and I think he’s a real stand-up, do it the right way kind of guy. That says a lot and it brings a lot of credibility to your program. When it’s all set and done, I think we’ll be fine.”

Q: You said you were teaching. What are you teaching? BW: “I’m working with kids who have learning disabilities, kids that have reading deficits. I also teach P.E. and I’m also going back to school to get my master’s degree … to possibly get into administration one day. Who knows.”

Q: Did you follow last year’s team? BW: “Yeah, it was great to see and I was just thrilled. Being down in Florida you catch it from all the Gators fans and you just get tired of hearing it. So when Michigan is doing well, I’m the first one out there beating my chest and letting everybody know. I’m always outnumbered, but I’m letting everybody know.”

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.