Former Kentucky Castoff Charles Matthews Is All About Now as Michigan's Main Man

SAN ANTONIO — It's Friday afternoon, two days after Charles Matthews and the Michigan Wolverines landed here to prepare for the Final Four and one day before Michigan will beat Loyola of Chicago to reach Monday night's national title game against Villanova in the 2018 NCAA men's tournament. Right now, Matthews ambles into a media session and settles into a seat behind a raised table.

Like so many others with big basketball dreams, he grew up imagining not only sinking buzzer-beaters but also recounting his heroics in interviews. But as he faces the reporters and hears the first question about Kentucky, he can't help but let out a sigh.       

"I spoke with my media department and my coaching staff," he responded politely, "and I'm not answering any more questions about the Kentucky transfer process. It's so far removed now. I've been at Michigan two years now. If it's not about Michigan or the Final Four, I don't really want to talk about it."

It's easy to understand his frustration. Yes, Matthews started his college career at Kentucky. And yes, at one point, he considered himself a potential one-and-done player. But he left Lexington after nine months, and he's been with Michigan for almost two years. One of the biggest lessons he's learned is not to worry about the past and not to obsess over the future. Instead, he focuses with laser-like precision on the present.

Working with Greg Harden—the University of Michigan associate athletic director and life coach who has helped mold the minds of Tom Brady, Desmond Howard, Michael Phelps and many others—Matthews has learned to become a man of the moment. And this is his moment with Michigan.

In the most important month on the college basketball calendar, Matthews has been the Wolverines' most consistently stellar two-way star. He was the West Regional's Most Outstanding Player, and he's averaging 16.6 points per game in his team's tournament run. "He changed his color blue," assistant coach Saddi Washington said. "He's a maize man now."

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Charles Matthews likes to introduce himself to people.

In the past two seasons, head coach John Beilein and his basketball program have endured an incredible amount of coaching turnover, which means Matthews has had plenty of new people to meet in his short time with the team. 

In the summer of 2016, two assistants, LaVall Jordan and Bacari Alexander, leapt to fill head coaching vacancies at Butler and Detroit Mercy, respectively. Last offseason, two more (Jeff Meyer and Billy Donlon) made lateral moves to assistant coaching jobs. If you talk to any of Michigan's current assistants—Washington, DeAndre Haynes and Luke Yaklich—one constant will emerge: As soon as they got their jobs, Matthews was among the first players to find them and shake their hands.

There was one other coach who mystified Matthews: Harden, an athletics counselor at Michigan since 1986. Matthews didn't know Harden was an internationally known motivational speaker and life coach. All he knew was that this man would walk into basketball practice and hug everyone, from Beilein to the team managers.

After Harden would leave the facility, Matthews would walk up to those he'd talked with and ask a simple question, "Who is that guy?" He realized Harden could help him unlock his potential.  

Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

"He initiated," Harden says. "And when a young person initiates, it's a very different story than when he's sent to you. It's a rare moment. Tom Brady. Desmond Howard. Those are my poster children. They're the kids who were on a mission and had a vision and were coachable. They had respect for authority figures and commitment to figure out, What can I do that the average person isn't doing? It's a rare bird that does that. Charles is a rare bird."

Over the past two seasons, Harden has hosted Matthews a couple of times a month in his cluttered office on Michigan's campus. His first mission was to remind Matthews he was more than just a basketball player. It wasn't easy. Matthews and his brothers, Dominique and Jordan, were named after NBA legends Charles Barkley, Dominique Wilkins and Michael Jordan, respectively. As they grew, they bonded at the basketball hoop behind their grandmother's home.

For a while, Charles was able to blend basketball with his other interests. He would watch shows starring celebrity chefs like Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse with his grandmother, and they'd cook together. Once, when he was about five, he lost control of a stovetop flame while trying a new recipe and set her cabinets on fire.

He loved skateboarding video games and the X Games, so his parents bought him a board. He rode it around for a few years, going as far as mastering a kickflip.

In middle school, his band teacher saw his long arms and scouted him as a budding trombone player. "I don't think I was that good," Matthews says, "but during performances, you wouldn't have been able to single me out, so I held my own pretty well."

He also held his own pretty well on the basketball court. Although Dominique regularly dominated his younger brother in the backyard, Charles became the bigger hoops star. When he was 11, he joined Dwyane Wade's Chicago-based AAU team, Wade Elite, and he formed a friendship with the NBA superstar.

"That's my big brother," Matthews says of Wade.

By the beginning of high school, basketball was his main focus. When he committed to Kentucky as a junior in February 2014, he was the country's No. 3 shooting guard and No. 11 player overall. He was the first member of a Kentucky recruiting class that produced three first-round NBA draft picks. By the end of high school, he had fallen to 50th in the country, according to RSCIHoops.com. He believed, however, that he'd blossom at Kentucky pairing in the backcourt with former AAU teammate Tyler Ulis.

Instead, he struggled to find his footing as a freshman, averaging 1.7 points in 10.3 minutes per game. Although more than 40 schools recruited him as a transfer—the list was so long that he and his parents created a Google Doc to keep track—he still needed to rediscover his sense of self-worth at Michigan. And on that journey, Harden served as his guide.

"Everybody was Johnny Badass in high school. Everybody on their team was that guy," Harden says. Pointing to his head and his heart, he continues: "The difference now is here and here. If you want an edge, you have to figure out how to manage anxiety, how to manage stress, how to manage negative self-talk. You've got to figure out how to settle yourself down. You have to stop thinking about things you can't control. You cannot control what's going to happen a year from now or six months from now. What you can control is today.

"When you can teach a young person to put a priority on the present moment, it works. The NBA won't come unless you master this moment. If you want the NBA, you have to stop thinking about the NBA."

That shift in mindset allowed Matthews to become the player he is today. Instead of sulking through his sit-out year, he decided to improve every aspect of his game that Michigan coaches viewed as a weakness.

He stayed after practices with Beilein to rebuild his shot from the wrist up. His offensive rating went from a dismal 95.9 as a freshman at Kentucky to a respectable 107.1 with Michigan, according to Basketball Reference. And although Beilein relentlessly labeled him "Turnover Matthews" for his frequent miscues in practice, he reversed his assist-to-turnover ratio from a negative with the Wildcats to a positive for the Wolverines.

"He's just bought in," Beilein said. "I mean, it's incredible what a calming influence he is and what a great example he is for the Jordan Pooles and Isaiah Livers and Eli Brooks, who are looking at him, saying, 'I was highly recruited too.'"

Matthews' growth is evident in the way he has thrived even at difficult times this season. In December, he lost his grandmother, Mary Thomas, but scored 20 points in his first game after the funeral. In February, in the thick of Big Ten play, he hit a wall many players do when they have heavy minutes for the first time in a major program.

But he didn't let the eight points per game he averaged that month discourage him. Instead, he finished with a pair of impressive performances in the conference tournament against Top 10 teams in Michigan State and Purdue, and he has been Michigan's leading scorer and second-leading rebounder (6.8 per game) in the NCAA tournament.

"I feel like this is all part of life," Matthews said. "It's not even just about basketball. Life will give you ups and downs. Life will give you weird turns that you were not expecting. You have to keep it moving. I think it showed my character that I was able to fight through adversity and find a way forward through everything."

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In August, before the season began, Matthews decided he was done with social media. He didn't do this to become more focused; Twitter and Instagram just no longer interested him. He was tired of scrolling through his mentions and wondering whether he should reply to the eggs. "I guess I'm an old soul," he said.

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There have been a couple of shoutouts that have penetrated his social media shield during this NCAA tournament run, but only because freshman teammate Poole pointed them out to him.

The first was from Wade, who referred to Matthews as his "young fella" and "family" in a snap while he was watching Michigan take on Texas A&M. The second was from Kentucky head coach John Calipari, who congratulated the Wolverines for making the Final Four and called Matthews "a terrific player and a great young man."

Matthews didn't reply to Wade because they text and FaceTime frequently. But he did respond to Cal, thanking his former coach and saying he loved him.

"It was a respect thing," Matthews said. "I wasn't going to leave it out there as a dead end. I just got out there, gave him my appreciation for what he said to me and kept it moving."

That same social media abstinence kept the Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt phenomenon from reaching Matthews' phone, and it was why he responded honestly that he'd never heard of her after Michigan won the West Regional.

On Friday, in the same press conference that began with the awkward Kentucky exchange, Matthews was asked to name the Sister Jean of Michigan basketball. He didn't hesitate. "Greg Harden," he said. "I call him Mr. Miyagi or Yoda."

Harden, who had slipped into the back of the room unnoticed, burst out laughing. On Saturday night, after Matthews turned in Michigan's only memorable performance (17 points, five rebounds) besides Moritz Wagner's in the 69-57 win over Loyola-Chicago at the Alamodome, Harden was there again to congratulate him and remind him of how he's gotten to this moment by remaining in the present through every practice, film session and game.

And now, Matthews knows he is just 40 minutes away from being remembered forever as a Michigan man.