Jordan Morgan sat on the bench last year, knowing he was going to redshirt and fighting to recover from knee and shoulder injuries.

How far he has come. When the Michigan basketball team opened its exhibition season Friday night, the 6-foot-8 redshirt freshman center was in the starting lineup.

“It’s a good feeling, yeah,” Morgan said. “Everybody wants to start. But especially coming from what I was going through, it was an emotional experience.”

The way he played, Morgan might not be displaced for a while, either. He had nine points and 15 rebounds, many of them pulled down in traffic and with opponents converging on him.

He played 20 minutes, just half the game. But that was plenty more than when he was sidelined after hurting his knee prior to his freshman year and then separating his shoulder in a mid-season practice.

He wasn’t even fully cleared to play until August.

“We like the fact that he’s getting traffic rebounds, not just the ones that came to him,” coach John Beilein said. “He went up and got some balls that looked like DeShawn Sims rebounds at times.”

Rotation, rotation
Michigan ended up using 10 players in its 68-59 exhibition win over Saginaw Valley State and all except freshman center Jon Horford played 10 or more minutes.

Don’t expect that to continue throughout the season.

“Matt (Vogrich) gave us a good job off the bench and Colton (Christian) came in and really makes an impact,” Beilein said. “We’ll see what happens, but 7, 8, 9, I don’t know how deep we’ll go.”

Michigan started Darius Morris and Zack Novak at guard, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Evan Smotrycz at forward and Morgan at center.

Junior guard Stu Douglass was the Wolverines’ first player off the bench.

This and that
Beilein said he wanted to try to get walk-on sophomore Eso Akunne in the game in the first half but didn’t get the opportunity. Akunne is an Ann Arbor native. … Hardaway Jr. played but was sick and running a fever. … Both Beilein and assistant coach LaVall Jordan will participate in Shots From the Heart, a 64-coach free throw shooting tournament throughout the season.

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.