69 Days Until Michigan Football

Sophomore Channing Stribling, CB

Number: 8

Hometown: Butler HS, Matthews, NC

Height/Weight: 6'2, 176 lbs.

Three Things To Know About Channing

1. You already know Channing from one particularly unfortunate play last year, where he was matched up with Penn State's Allen Robinson on the goal line and — like many corners over the last couple years — he came up short.  The play ended up leading to a PSU overtime win and it would become Sportscenter's top play that night.

However, it didn't shake anyone's confidence in Stribling.  After the game, his coaches and teammates gave him their full support, including Hoke:

"He's come on," Hoke said. "If there's anybody I would want back there, I'll be real honest, in the secondary to make the interception, it would be Strib. I would still do that to this day, because of his skill level and his ball skills are really, really good.

"I watch him every day in practice. He's going to take two or three balls. We wanted to get him in the game because of exactly what we asked him to do."

2. Stribling was barely recruited for most of his high school career.  Even as his junior year ended he had really only heard from MAC level schools.  So when he showed up at Michigan's camp and earned his offer that weekend, he immediately jumped on it.

While many were nonplussed by the decision to bring on such a lowly ranked player, Strib set the record straight his senior year when he helped lead his high school team to a state championship by playing shutdown defense on the outside (including shutting down talented recruit Marquez North), catching 8 touchdown passes on offense, and being a dangerous return man.

3. Stribling would reprise his Allen Robinson moment a week later against Kofi Hughes, coming up just short of another interception.

Between Strib and Jourdan Lewis, Michigan caught a few bad breaks on ridiculously well thrown passes against good coverage that just wasn't good enough.

On the bright side, both were freshmen.  Another year of growth and experience could put them in that much better position in the future.