Trey Burke’s future changed while he sat in a Northland High School classroom on Wednesday afternoon, three weeks from graduation.

The first sign of change came as he checked email in the Columbus, Ohio, room and noticed his Twitter followers expanded by at least 150 people. The second sign came in a text message from his father, Benji, saying it was official, Michigan point guard Darius Morris stayed in the NBA Draft.

Trey Burke works out each day in hopes that he can find significant playing time as a point guard for the Michigan basketball team.

Burke’s role as an incoming freshman for the Michigan basketball team jumped from a key backup with a chance to push for more minutes to potentially a major key to success for Michigan next season.

“I kind of knew,” Burke said Wednesday night before a workout. “After a while I got all these followers, and I thought about it and knew Darius was making a decision. I received a text from my dad saying he was staying in the draft, so I knew a lot of people were going to start following me. And I had shouted out to Darius, and that got me a lot of followers, too.”

The point guard job isn’t Burke’s yet — he still has to win the job from senior combo guard Stu Douglass and freshman Carlton Brundidge — but he’ll be the only pure point guard on the roster.

If he didn’t realize it, Twitter told him.

“I was following it, what people were saying,” Burke said. “I was trying to respond back to everybody, everybody saying that it was my job to lead the team next year, make sure I respond to everybody.”

Burke, who averaged 23.6 points, 6.8 assists and 3.1 rebounds a game as a senior, didn’t need motivation. He’s had it since his Northland season ended with a Mr. Basketball award but a loss in the state championship game.

Every day, Burke wakes up at 4:15 a.m. and heads to the Lifetime Fitness Center in the Easton Town Center, a Columbus mall. There, he meets his trainer, Anthony Rhodman, and starts his day in the steam room to loosen up followed by 20 minutes of stretching.

In the mornings, they do on-court work and drills for one to two hours, including using a speed ladder with a basketball to improve his footwork and ballhandling simultaneously. He does other drills with resistance bands on his legs so when he takes them off, he has more explosion making drives.

“I like to put Trey in scenarios he’s going to have in the game, so when he comes into a situation, he has been there a thousand times,” said Rhodman, a former Louisiana-Lafayette point guard who runs In God’s Image, an independent personal training business. “A lot of people do drills for drills sake. I don’t like those drills. I like what is similar to what is going to happen in the game.”

After the drills, Burke showers and heads to school. Later in the day, he returns to Rhodman, where they lift, do pylometrics and shooting drills. He gained four pounds to 176 in the last two weeks in hopes of reaching 185 by the time he arrives in Ann Arbor.

If Burke shoots 30 3-pointers, Rhodman requires him to make 25 or 26. If he has him make five 3-pointers from five spots on the floor, he has six shots to do so.

Then there is the Kobe drill, where Burke receives one point for every made shot and “Kobe Bryantt” receives two for every shot Burke misses. First to 10 wins.

“He is in the playoffs right now,” Rhodman said. “And is up 3-2 on Kobe.”

When Burke finishes, he’ll sometimes watch Michigan games from last season and studies Morris and Douglass. Since Michigan’s coaches can’t work with him until September, this is his best way to learn the offense and defense.

He actually doesn’t bother with the games, focusing instead on trying to understand the slight hand signals Douglass and Morris made to call plays. Then on defense, he pays attention to the intensity in an attempt to understand how hard he needs to train.

“I actually need to watch more (games), only watched a couple,” Burke said. “But now that Darius is gone, I’m going to have to buckle down and going to have to learn the offenses and have to perfect them.

“My job is to go in and learn the offense right away and show that I’m on top of everything.”

He plans to head to Los Angeles the last week of May to work out with his AAU team and perhaps the man he might replace, Morris, before heading to Michigan.

When he arrives, the biggest concern is his inexperience early if he wins the job. Michigan hasn’t completed its schedule, but will play in a difficult Maui Invitational field and then on the road in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

“We’ll make sure we can make it as seamless than it can be,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “It is different than last year and when I first got here because all the other guys have a pretty good feel for how we play and the culture.

“He is sort of fitting into that, as is Carlton as well.”

Burke isn’t concerned. This, maybe more than he’d even want to admit, is kind of what he wants.

“It’s going to just really help me come in and be an impact freshman right away,” Burke said. “With (Morris) leaving, that’s going to be a big thing on my shoulders and I’m going to have to do a lot of things and a lot of things are going to be expected of me as a freshman.

“But I think I’m ready for everything that’s going to be thrown at me for the most part.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by email at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein