Sitting in the corner of the Michigan locker room Sunday, Jordan Dumars leaned back in his chair and in some ways, took in the entire scene.

Moments earlier, he had watched Michigan drop a 17-point lead in a loss to Northwestern. No matter. After the game, Dumars sounded as happy as could be with his new digs.

“It was a no-brainer just to come home, obviously,” Dumars said. “If I could give kids advice, if anything, when they are coming to college, I would tell them proximity to home is a really big thing.”

This was the lesson learned by the 18-year-old in less than one semester of college. Initially, the son of former NBA All-Star and current Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars left home and went all the way to South Florida, a 6-foot-5 forward trying to make a difference on a team that has struggled in the best conference in the country, the Big East.

Soon after he got there, he longed to come back north. He missed his family, his friends. Florida became an isolated place. So he came home, chose to sit out a year and will be eligible after the first semester of the 2010-11 season.

“It was that it was too far away from home. Being a college athlete, it’s more than what people see on TV, the glitz and glam when Manny Harris comes down and gets a breakaway dunk,” Dumars said after the Wolverines’ loss to Northwestern. “They forget about the hard practices, the suicides, the study tables.

"Sometimes, on a Sunday like today, we’ve got a day off (Monday) I’d be stuck down in Florida in my room by myself, just lonely. A day like (Monday), I can see my mom, you know what I’m saying.”

Dumars said his close-knit family made his decision to come home much easier. And in Michigan, even though he said he doesn’t regret going to South Florida at first, being in Ann Arbor was “the right spot to be in the first place.”

Coming in as a recruited walk-on, it also gives Michigan coach John Beilein another in a line of guys who came from scholarships at one school to walking on at Michigan.

Former point guard C.J. Lee started his career on scholarship at Manhattan but then transferred to Michigan, walked on and eventually became a key player in last year’s NCAA tournament run.

Current walk-ons Eso Akunne and Josh Bartelstein both turned down mid-major scholarship offers to attend Michigan.

And in Dumars, Beilein sees the potential for him to potentially blossom into someone like former West Virginia forward Frank Young, who became one of the best players in the Big East during his senior year and helped lead the Mountaineers to the NIT championship in Beilein’s last season at West Virginia.

Said Beilein of his newest player: “He’s a shooter.”

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.