Michigan basketball's season turns to growth as tournament odds fade

This has been a bad season for Michigan basketball. There is no other way to describe it. Once considered one of the favorites to win a national title, the Wolverines sit at 7-7 (1-3 in Big Ten play) and might not even make the NCAA Tournament. That is going to be a hard one to explain away.

The ingredients seemed to be there. Eli Brooks, one of the winningest players in Michigan history, is back for a fifth season. Hunter Dickinson returned for a sophomore campaign after an All-American freshman year. The No. 1 recruiting class in the country and two five-star freshmen.

It just has not clicked. The eyeball test suggests it might not the rest of the year.

At this point, all that matters is what comes next. The body of work this season is what it is to this point. The rest of Michigan’s campaign will revolve around how it develops as a team.

Time to play the freshmen

Caleb Houstan was the crown jewel of the 2022 recruiting class but has struggled to find his footing. The five-star prospect was hailed as a knock-down shooter and savvy presence on both ends of the floor coming out of high school. There have been flashes, but he looks more like a true freshman than someone labeled a pro prospect at the prom. The only thing Michigan can do here is to keep his head up and let him keep playing and developing.

The same can be said for forward Moussa Diabate, Michigan’s other five-star talent. He is so instinctually impressive and athletic for a player his size, but has also been inconsistent and does not have anything to lean on offensively. Both he and Houstan have been in the starting lineup, so there is not much to do to increase their workloads other than letting them ride it out.

The same cannot be said for the rest of the class. Four-star guards Frankie Collins and Kobe Bufkin could potentially be the team’s starting backcourt in 2022-23. Senior transfer DeVante’ Jones has played better of late and will continue to get the bulk of the minutes at the point. The staff will continue to add more to Collins’ plate to find out if Michigan basketball has its point guard for next season. Bufkin’s development has been kicked into gear with double-digit minutes played in each of the last five games. Their development becomes key in a season that has gone awry.

Find out who your leaders are

There has been a fair amount of heat on Juwan Howard for how this season has played out so far. Some of it is warranted, some not so much. At the end of the day, this is a roster entirely of his construction. Michigan has dropped four of the last five games and appears no closer to answers than it did in November.

On the same token, perhaps we all understated how much it was going to hurt to lose Isaiah Livers, Franz Wagner, Mike Smith and Chaundee Brown. All four of them are playing pro basketball right in some capacity. Wagner is one of the leaders for the NBA Rookie of the Year honor.

Michigan does not have a single player on the roster currently that looks like it could be playing in the pros next year. With how young this current group is and how Howard has built this team, that’s an issue.

Brooks moves on after this season. Dickinson has maintained that this is likely his last at Michigan. Even with the freshmen struggles, will Houstan and Diabate be around next year? The Wolverines have to establish who this program is going to be built around next year because the foundation begins now.

Michigan basketball’s road ahead

This season is not completely lost just yet. Despite a .500 record and questions that still require answering, every night in the Big Ten is a chance for a resume win. Michigan getting hot at any point in time for a few games could put them on the tournament bubble. They are not there right now, but it is also mid-January. It might be a little premature to call them dead in the water just yet.

TeamRankings.com still projects that Michigan makes the NCAA Tournament, giving them an 87% chance as of Jan. 17. This is down 3% following last Friday’s loss.

The effort at Illinois was commendable despite being shorthanded. Continuing to play hard while other areas of the game improve could be the chemical mixture that helps this team round into form. Many of their issues seem to revolve around roster construction, but there is still time to salvage the season and put some momentum together.

Through 14 games, it is impossible to call the season anything but a bust so far. Some believed this had the chance to be Howard’s best team yet at Michigan and it simply isn’t. Given that he is the architect, those are criticisms he will have to take head-on. The early-season struggles are a disappointment, but Howard deserves the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to keep growing this team.

Find a way to have good days and keep stacking them on top of each other. Parlaying that into victories is most ideal, but improving the young talent on the roster will ultimately be what defines Michigan basketball heading into 2022.