Fab Five: Takeaways from Michigan's win over Prairie View A&M

Michigan basketball picked up a 77-49 win over Prairie View A&M Saturday night, moving to 2-0 on the season.

Here are five takeaways from a game that was never in doubt.

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1. Easy Work For Michigan Big Men

Just as we predicted in our game preview, Michigan had its way with Prairie View A&M on the interior. The Panthers don’t have a player that stands taller than 6-foot-8 and starts a 6-foot-6 center.

Sophomore center Hunter Dickinson scored the game’s first seven points and even hit his first career three-pointer, before finishing with 11 points on 5-of-8 shooting and 10 rebounds. Freshman forward Moussa Diabate had seven rebounds in his first five minutes and wound up with eight for the contest, while scoring six points on 2-of-3 shooting from the field. All told, the Wolverines shot 32 free throws.

The Wolverines could’ve actually had more success down low if they really wanted to. They scored 28 of their 77 points in the paint (just 36 percent) and went to post-ups just eight times (eight of them to Dickinson), per Synergy. The game got out of hand and Michigan tried to do some different things.

2. Poor Free Throw Shooting Becoming A Trend?

Michigan went 18-of-30 from the free throw line in the opener against Buffalo. OK, fine. One game, small sample size.

The Wolverines shot an abysmal 17-of-32 from the charity stripe against Prairie View A&M. OK, this might be something to monitor.

Fifth-year senior guard Eli Brooks and sophomore forward Terrance Williams II went 4-of-4 and 3-of-4 from the stripe, respectively, but fifth-year senior guard DeVante’ Jones was 3-of-7 and Dickinson was 0-of-3. The player on the squad who will get fouled the most (Dickinson) and another who will likely be in the top three in free throw attempts (Jones) have to be better.

Prairie View A&M fouls a lot (26 times in this one). Just imagine what the score could’ve been if the Wolverines cashed in on free throws.

3. Too Many Turnovers

Prairie View A&M plays aggressive defense and, despite struggling in its two wins entering Saturday night, actually had some success notching steals before playing Michigan. The Panthers got 10 against the Wolverines, who totaled 20 turnovers and gave the ball away on 27.4 percent of their possessions. Dickinson and freshman wing Caleb Houstan each had four turnovers.

While Prairie View A&M can be credited some for Michigan’s issues handling the ball, it was mostly on the Maize and Blue — too many lax passes and bad decisions. A lack of focus can happen in a game in which one team opens up a 21-point first-half lead, but it still shouldn’t if you’re Michigan and getting ready to play Seton Hall Tuesday.

In a pregame video released by the Michigan basketball Instagram account, head coach Juwan Howard told his team to “compete for 40 minutes, with our championship habits.” While nothing Michigan did Saturday eliminates them from championship contention — to say the least; it would be ludicrous to insinuate anything close to that — the habits weren’t always there.

4. Prairie View A&M Made A Run

After a clean start to the game, Michigan began turning it over, as just mentioned, missing some foul shots and playing a bit sloppy offensively.

The Wolverines were 9-of-26 from the field over the last 23 minutes of the contest. And despite playing great defensively all night long (holding Prairie View A&M to just 0.67 points per possession), the Panthers actually outscored Michigan from the 3:30 mark of the first half to the 1:27 mark in the second stanza. Michigan subbed a lot in the second half, emptying the bench late, but it’s still notable. We saw flashes of every offensive weapon Michigan has, but not a whole lot of consistency as an overall unit.

5. First Full Taste Of DeVante’ Jones

Jones was in foul trouble for much of the opener against Buffalo, so his 30 minutes in this one gave us a first real taste of what Michigan is with him running the point. It was some good, some not so good — and we didn’t expect it to be much different than that.

He had 10 points on 3-of-7 from the field and 1-of-2 from long range, with eight rebounds, five assists and just one turnover. That’s a solid stat line, other than his 3-of-7 mark from the free throw line.

As Jones actually noted before the season, though, it’s going to take a bit of time for this Michigan offense to figure out what it’s going to be. It has some nice luxuries with all the talent, including Dickinson, who the Wolverines can turn to when they need a bucket or things get tight, and Brooks, a steadying force. But they’re still figuring out everybody else’s roles.

There are a lot of kinks with the ball screen in particular. Through two contests, Jones has been the ball handler on 56 percent of Michigan’s ball screen plays, but he’s producing just 0.643 points per possession on those opportunities, per Synergy. He had a duo of nice feeds to Dickinson and a dish to Brooks for a three early on in the game, and there’s undoubtedly a lot of potential with him running the ball screen, but it just has to come around.

Brooks is the second-highest volume ball-screen ball handler (24 percent of the time) and has generated six points on eight possessions. Nobody else has run more than two pick-and-roll plays. We’re willing to bet those percentages will change by the end of the season, and it wouldn’t surprise to see Houstan develop as a pretty good ball-screen player, but right now, they’re still figuring it out.