This year's basketball offseason is the most tumultuous in recent memory for a lot of reasons: COVID, the NCAA allowing folks an extra year of eligibility, the general trend towards transfers over the past decade, the presumption that anyone who moves will be immediately eligible. Michigan is the only Big Ten team without a player in the transfer portal.

That still didn't mean that Michigan's immediate future was easy to project. Michigan has a lot of seniors who aren't prime NBA material and might have given some thought to returning. But with Eli Brooks's return confirmed by our own Matt D, Austin Davis announcing he won't return, and Chaundee Brown, Mike Smith, and Isaiah Livers announcing for the NBA draft, we finally have enough clarity to project what Michigan's minutes are going to look like next year. (The sole remaining question for guys currently on the roster is "will Franz Wagner enter the draft?" which we're going to take for granted since he is universally projected as a first-rounder.)

This will be a briefer overview post before I re-run the Let's Start Again series.

Center

The easiest spot to project. This will be 25-30 minutes of Hunter Dickinson with freshman Moussa Diabate getting the remainder. Brandon Johns should remain as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option. As a reminder, we got about two games worth of Johns at center minutes last year and they went pretty well:

Since Michigan has a lot of options at the 4, sliding Johns over on occasion should remain a viable route around foul trouble. I don't think Michigan needs to add a backup post from the portal.

FWIW, Dickinson averaged 26 minutes per game. Since Davis was a fish out of water during many of his minutes because of his lateral mobility and defensive limitations, I think it's reasonable to expect that Diabate will put more pressure on Dickinson, enough to offset his freshman-to-sophomore progression and keep his minutes relatively level.

[After THE JUMP: things get slightly murkier.]

Power Forward

Isaiah Livers's injury was tragic on many levels but it did clarify what happens when there's no Isaiah Livers around:

Brandon Johns starts, is reasonably efficient, and picks up buckets of fouls. The above five-game stretch took him from "will he transfer?" to "he's going to start." Ace detailed the big gap between the backup, limited-minutes version of Johns and the above:

There's a lot to be said for the idea that Johns will improve with more consistent minutes. After splitting the stats, it's clear that he's better in games in which he's played more. While there are some cause/effect issues here—as a general rule, one plays more when they're playing well—the results pass the eye test. All rate stats are per 30 minutes, which is a decent approximation of what he'll play without Livers (he got 24 minutes against OSU):

 

Minutes	GP	Min	OR/30	DR/30	A/30	TO/30	Blk/30	FC/30	2PM-2PA	3PM-3PA	FTM-FTA	PTS/30
10 or more	12	164	2.2	4.0	1.5	2.2	1.3	4.0	21-30 (70%)	4-7	20-24	13.5
9 or fewer	12	89	3.7	2.0	1.0	3.7	0.3	4.4	8-21 (38%)	2-7	2-2	8.1

Yes, we're working with limited sample sizes, but that's all we've got. In games Johns has played ten or more minutes, he's been much more efficient, productive, and disciplined, while also playing with greater aggression, as the huge gap in free throw numbers shows. The only area he drops off is on the offensive glass and I don't think that'll be a problem with him set to play more as the second man hitting the boards at power forward than as the only big man in small-ball lineups.

Johns looks like he should be a quality B10 4 even if he doesn't improve, so let's slot him in for 20-30 minutes. Moussa Diabate will get the rest of his minutes here and probably the large remainder of the ones Johns doesn't get.

Sophomore Terrance Williams should be the third option. Williams will benefit from Johns acting as the starter since he looked his best when Michigan was using him in high-low sets to feed Dickinson. He still needs to drastically improve his shooting if he's going to get more than spot minutes. He was a solid outside shooter in high school, FWIW.

Will Tschetter will probably redshirt, or get the kind of spot minutes that make you think the guy should probably be redshirting.

Small Forward

Also clear: five-star freshman Caleb Houstan should start and see the lion's share of minutes. Houstan is a plug-and-play shooter who will enter college as battle-tested as possible after attending Montverde the past couple years and playing on all the relevant Canadian FIBA U-whatever teams. This highlight reel of Montverde against Oak Hill only features one Houstan three but I think it's informative about the other things he brings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEo94KDllPc

He Ds up against five star junior MJ Hill a couple times and at no point gets roasted by him; he should have the lateral agility to defend small forwards. He cuts off the ball, chips in some rebounding, and acts as a secondary playmaker in PNR. Freshman Zak Irvin is probably the floor here and I'm expecting him to be more involved in shot creation than Irvin was. Houstan should be an instant 30 MPG player, because his worst-case scenario is a really good shooter on a team that needs a couple.

The other ~10 minutes are more speculative. One of the guys listed at the four could bump down for a bit, or one of Michigan's two big guards could pop up for a little while. The most likely backup here is freshman Isaiah Barnes, who may have had his rankings blowup cut off by COVID. Barnes is bouncy and shot 45% from three last year; he's only just started his senior season after transferring to Chicago power Simeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEo94KDllPc

If the shooting holds up he should see a fair bit of PT.

Jace Howard could also be an option here. Given his recruiting rankings I'd imagine he's more of an emerge-as-an-upperclassman sort.

Guard

We're going to bunch these guys up because there are two major swing questions remaining. One: do they add someone from the portal? And two: which guy not named Eli Brooks emerges? The answers to those questions will determine how many of Eli Brooks's 30+ minutes are on-ball.

I don't think it would be a problem if the most of his were. While it occasionally felt like the offense bogged down without Mike Smith running the show, that did not pop out in the stats.

cupcakes excluded

Michigan's TO rate dipped and 2P% rose with Brooks at the point. If he ends up playing a significant amount of minutes at the 1 it'll probably be fine, especially since Michigan figures to get a lot of shot generation out of the post next year.

So we're agnostic about whether a portal addition plays PG or SG. Despite that expanded base it doesn't seem like Michigan has been particularly active in seeking guys out. Marcus Carr was briefly mentioned and Jacob Young's name has been floated out there, but Carr is reportedly leaning to Kentucky or the NBA and I'm not sure Young is an upgrade on Michigan's already-extant options. 

Those options include Frankie Collins, Kobe Bufkin, and Zeb Jackson. Jackson is the only one with college experience but looked a fairly long way away from being a guy you can rely on for major minutes last year. Collins and Bufkin are both incoming freshmen ranked around 50th, which is certainly a spot you can find a big-minutes starter. (See: Hunter Dickinson.)

Time for random guessing: Jackson emerges into a plus defender and hits some shots for 10 MPG and the two freshmen split the remaining 40 down the middle.

In a nutshell

C: Dickinson 25, Diabate 15
PF: Johns 25, Diabate 10, Williams 5
SF: Houstan 30, Barnes 10
SG: Brooks 10, Bufkin 20, Jackson 10
PG: Brooks 20, Collins 20

Deeper bench: Tschetter, Nunez, Howard