HOLT — Zander Woodruff hasn't given up on his Division I basketball dreams. But he sees a specific Division II opportunity as his best chance to grow and perhaps still get there.
The Lansing Community College All-American and former Laingsburg High School star is headed to Roosevelt University in Chicago to play for Illinois basketball legend Dee Brown, who's in his fifth season coaching the Lakers, who play in the GLIAC with mostly Michigan-based schools.
"The main thing was the coach — coach Dee Brown — over there has a lot of good connections, and also he was a really successful player and I've heard from other players that he's a really good guard coach, so I'm just going to go and learn from him," Woodruff said this week, after playing in the Moneyball Pro-Am summer league, on a team with a couple of his former LCC teammates (DeAire Lee and Lamont Green-Torbert), as well as MSU's Jordan Scott and Julius Avent. "He can just get me better. That's all I want to do, is get better, and being in Chicago, downtown, when once I went on my visit, it kind of just clicked right away. It was a thing where, this is a spot I want to play basketball."
Woodruff has two seasons of eligibility remaining at the Division II level and likely three seasons left if he includes Division I in his journey. Division I has adopted a five-years-to-play-five-seasons model, while Division II, for the time being, still allows four years of eligibility.
Woodruff is one of the more successful and decorated players in LCC history. He's the program's all-time leading scorer and, last season, led the Stars to a seventh-pace finish at the NJCAA Division II national championships, after which he was named a First-Team All-American.