Daniel Horton made us forget about
postseason sanctions, forfeited games and invalidated championship
banners.

But he couldn’t make us forget about his freshman
year.

Horton won Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors, then played
inconsistently on offense during his sophomore year. A discrepancy
in points per game — 15.3 as a freshman down to 12.3 as a
sophomore — and assists per game — 4.5 to 3.6 —
provided an easy diagnosis: the sophomore slump. Horton’s
critics and those who pondered the decline kept reverting to what
he did as a freshman; the two versions of Horton were, for some
reason, different.

So what should we expect this year? According to Horton, we
should expect “the same.” But as he begins his third
season at Michigan, memories of those first two years raise
questions about the future.

About two months after being named the Big
Ten’s best freshman, something happened to Horton that he
never experienced before — he was cut from a basketball
team.

“One thing about Daniel, is that he is a winner,”
said Horton’s father, Daryl. “He’s been winning
his whole life.”

So, at first, Horton couldn’t understand why Oregon coach
Ernie Kent cut him from the USA Basketball Men’s Junior World
Championship Qualifying Team during the summer of 2003. Kent told
Horton that he wanted to put together a certain kind of team, one
that featured a system Horton wouldn’t fit into.

“When I went (to the tryout), I played well enough to make
any team,” Horton said. “During the whole process, it
really bothered me because I didn’t know why I wasn’t
playing.”

Horton’s uncertainty carried over into the fall of his
sophomore year, when fans and the media criticized him for not
being the type of player he was a season earlier.

“I think he was finding his identity, his role, his
niche,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. “There are
not many people that can do all kinds of things. It’s hard to
find that. And Daniel, sometimes he’s a shooting guard, a
point guard, he’s both. And to try to adjust and be both is
hard.”

Horton remembers a swirl of speculation that some off-court
issues affected his play. No such problems surfaced; Horton feels
there is a simpler reason for his performance last year.

“When I got (to Michigan), coach (Tommy Amaker) basically
let me play,” Horton said. “He let me do what I felt
was necessary for the team to win. Certain guys were allowed to do
a little more because the team needed us to do more. And then
sophomore year came along and we had better depth, better talent,
more overall talent. Coach asked me to become a more complete
player — a quarterback.”

Freshman year, Amaker would allow Horton to push the ball
up-court so that he could try to beat his man and score. But last
season, Horton said the Wolverines didn’t need him to do that
anymore. Amaker needed Horton to adjust to the influx of talent the
Wolverines recruited in the off-season.

“If Daniel played the way he did freshman year, a lot of
kids would have been unhappy on that basketball team,”
Indiana coach Mike Davis said.

Said Horton: “(Last year) we had a team where we could
make five, six, seven, eight passes and were able to get a good
shot. It was tough at first because I’ve always wanted to be
in a position where I’ve wanted the team to depend on me, and
it’s not like that anymore.”

How does a kid from Texas end up playing
basketball? Horton did play quarterback before a fractured
collarbone interfered with the upcoming basketball season. He
traded his No. 5 football jersey for a No. 30 basketball jersey.
Horton attended Cedar Hill High School, located in a suburb of
Dallas, Texas. The areas basketball class of 2000 was one of the
its best recruiting crops ever. The top prospects, known as
“The Big Six,” consisted of Horton, Indiana’s
Bracey Wright, Illinois’ Deron Williams, Toronto Raptor Chris
Bosh, Arizona State’s Ike Diogu and Southern
Methodist’s Bryan Hopkins. And Horton was the star.

In high school, Horton almost outscored The Colony High School
backcourt of Wright and Williams — 26 to 30 — during
one game. He scored 36 in a crushing win against archrival
Duncanville High School, and totaled 47 against Bosh’s
Lincoln High School. The list goes on and on. More likely than not,
Horton was the best player on the court in those days.