Michigan junior Carmen Reynolds high fives teammates earlier this month. Reynolds averages 11.2 points a game.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Whenever Courtney Boylan passes the basketball to her teammate, former roommate and close friend, she's confident it will result in points.

It wasn’t always this way for Carmen Reynolds. But this season the junior guard is among the most consistent players on the Michigan women's basketball team.

“In some respects (she has) got us to where we’re at,” Michigan coach Kevin Borseth said. “She’s bailed us out of some situations with some good shooting.”

Ohio native Carmen Reynolds said she didn't have any trouble falling in love with being a Wolverine once she was on the Michigan campus.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Reynolds, a junior guard/forward from Hilliard, Ohio, is shooting 42.5 percent from the 3-point line and 49.3 percent from the field, averaging 11.2 points a game. She's done well in big games, scoring 25 points against Wake Forest, 18 points against Boston College and 17 at home against Ohio State.

Michigan (12-7, 5-2 Big Ten) has another big game Thursday (7 p.m., Big Ten Network) at No. 24 Ohio State (13-6, 4-3).

For Reynolds, basketball is all instinct. There’s no thinking involved, at least not since she stepped on Michigan’s campus as a freshman and realized she could play in the Big Ten despite having few major conference schools recruit her.

From Columbus to Ann Arbor
It was the last day of the July recruiting period in 2007. Borseth and his staff had been criss-crossing the country looking for his first recruiting class.

One of his assistants, Dawn Plitzuweit, spotted Reynolds at an earlier tournament but now, in Cincinnati, Borseth watched this 6-foot girl play in the post.

Borseth watched Reynolds again in the last game of the day. This time, he saw her making 3-pointers.

“She was a complement for a lot of things we do offensively,” Borseth said. “And it’s proved to be right on.”

That day, her father, Jim Reynolds, pointed to the Michigan coaches in the stands.
Father and daughter laughed. This, after all, was a family that trades Christmas cards with Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel because Jim Reynolds had been recruited by Tressel as a high school football player and played for Tressel ended up at Miami (Ohio).

The whole family was Ohio State fans. Her brother, Cody, played lacrosse for the Buckeyes.

Jim and Carmen even had a conversation when she was first considering playing college basketball about what would happen if Michigan was her only scholarship offer.

“She said, ‘Well, I guess I’d be a Wolverine,’” Jim said.

Not that the Reynolds expected it. There they were, two weeks after Borseth saw her in Cincinnati on an unofficial visit to Michigan. Then Borseth made his offer.

Hours later, Carmen committed to Michigan, the only major conference school to make an offer.

“I was a huge Ohio State fan,” Carmen said. “And we’re like ‘What the heck, we’ll go up and visit it.’ I remember going in and thinking I wasn’t going to like it because I was an Ohio State fan, but I fell in love immediately coming up to campus, met some of the coaches, meeting some of the girls on the team.

“Just walking around campus, learning about the academics, everything. This was the school, and I converted immediately to a Wolverine.”

Going home
Nothing might beat Reynolds’ first time playing at Ohio State.

Borseth surprised her a little and told her to enter the game early in the first half in Columbus on Dec. 21, 2008. She walked to the scorer’s table and waited to check in to her first Big Ten game.

That’s when she looked across the court next to the Ohio State pep band at Value City Arena where the approximately 150 friends and family her mother, Mugsy, bought tickets for sat.

“No more than five, six minutes into the game,” Reynolds said. “I was shaking, shaking, had butterflies in my stomach.

“It was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life. Honestly.”

As she entered the game and settled in a couple of possessions into a 70-50 Ohio State
victory, her parents had the opposite feeling.

With every cut and shot, every possession, they grew more nervous.

“Her mom and I were nervous wrecks,” Jim Reynolds said. “I played college athletics, and I’m probably more nervous watching my kids play than when I did.”

That was two years ago. Reynolds said she’s more comfortable going home to play now. The anxiety is still there, sure. But nothing like that first year.

This year, the Wolverines beat the Buckeyes in Ann Arbor, 64-51. They have beaten a handful of ranked teams, both at home and on the road.

And beating Ohio State again would be critical for a NCAA tournament berth. So this year is going to be different. So the nerves won’t be just from playing at home.

“My freshman and sophomore years, we didn’t really have anything to prove. I think people expected us to go in there and not to get killed but people honestly expected Ohio State to beat us every time,” Reynolds said. “I think this time is different not only because we beat them early in the season but I think we’re better and more prepared this year and have a better shot at it this year than in years past.

“We have more to prove this year when we play them this Thursday. It’s going to be difficult, but I think we’re ready.”

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