Michigan has remained active in the transfer market, landing Wake Forest transfer Chaundee Brown:

#GoBlue〽️@umichbball @MaxWood711 pic.twitter.com/YqQC2PZZuH

— ⭕️Chaundee️⚠️Brown (@cbrownballin935) May 19, 2020

Brown, like Nojel Eastern, has played three years and has one year of eligibility left. He'll try to get a waiver to play next year, and since Wake Forest fired Danny Manning he'll probably have a shot even if there's not a COVID-19 blanket waiver. Brown's other finalists were Gonzaga and Illinois, so he had some tourney-level teams after him.

[After THE JUMP: Brown in detail]

Brown was a top 50 recruit in the class of 2017, landing #36 on the composite, and he's been a starter at Wake the last two years. This puts him on another level from an up-transfer even if he hasn't been particularly efficient: his numbers were at an ACC school and should transfer more or less intact. Those topline numbers: 51/33/83 shooting and a 109 ORTG on 21% usage.

Brown is a burly wing whose game depends heavily on his physicality. His highlight film is a lot of Brown humping up shots through contact; it's light on blow-by moments where he gets himself an easy look.

Brown was Wake's third banana last year behind center Oliver Sarr and PG Brandon Childress.

Brown is a mediocre deep shooter who's hit 33% of his 270 career threes, and there's little upside from the context. He didn't hit an unassisted three on the season; from my viewing of his games it looks like his attempts are all completely reasonable. There aren't any bullcrap shots he had to take because he was on a bad team to excise.

He is an excellent FT shooter (83%) and did improve his work inside the arc last year, hitting 55% of his twos against Kenpom top 100 opposition after hitting 46% last year. Those numbers are a little light since Brown missed 7 ACC games with an injury—just 67 attempts—but he did have a four point improvement on his two point shooting over the course of the full season.

Brown had a terrific year as a rebounder; his 19% DREB rate is superb for a wing and actually went up in ACC play, where he finished 7th in the conference. He's decently active on the offensive boards as well. His assist (11) and TO rates (15) are solid for a wing who does most of his work inside the arc. FT rate is pretty low against high-level competition: he had just 30 attempts in 13 ACC games.

ADVANCED STATS

Brown's on/off splits are encouraging. The slice of the season without Brown didn't go well: Wake went 1-6 with their only win against ACC bottom-dweller Boston College. Per Torvik Wake was the #62 offense and #220 defense during this period; over the course of the season the Demon Deacons were 55th and 165th, respectively. Brown's impact at Wake is obvious in his splits:

cupcakes excluded; FWIW, I ran a version of this without the seven games Brown missed and it looked more or less the same.

Brown made a major impact on Wake Forest's two point percentage on both ends of the floor and had a noticeable one on the defensive boards. Approximately zero of Wake's improvement with him on the court is three-point luck. They were a break-even team against high-major competition with him and bad without him. Put another way: over a game's worth of possessions (70), Wake was 7 points better with Brown on the court than off. (This is in part because Wake had just three rotation players with triple-digit ORTGs.)

On the other hand, Brown's Synergy profile is all over the place. Some highlights:

• The past two years he's been in the 25th and 32nd percentile in transition, which accounts for about a fifth of his usage. Wake isn't a particularly uptempo team.
• He's been significantly better in half-court situations, finishing in the 70th and 87th(!) percentile the past two years.
• That latter number is hard to figure out since Synergy has him in the ~60th percentile of spot up and cut actions, which account for a large majority of his half-court usage. Cuts and putbacks (his third-most frequent halfcourt activity) are inherently efficient actions; I assume getting a third of your halfcourt usage in those situations makes you efficient.
• Synergy credits Brown with just 14 isolation attempts on the season, 11 as a PNR ball handler, and 14 post ups. He's not going to initiate much offense himself.
• He's a mediocre shooter in spot up situations (0.89 PPP on catch and shoot opportunities) who attacks closeouts well.
• Synergy defensive numbers are to be taken with a grain of salt but Brown was just behind Childress as Wake's best defender with a 63rd percentile grade. On/off splits concur that Brown is a good defender.

SCOUTING TAKES

I watched Wake Forest's games against Notre Dame and Duke to get a feel for Brown's game. The stats paint a good picture of what you're going to get.

Brown plays off the ball and is largely content to take what comes to him. He's an opportunistic offensive player who will drive to the basket off closeouts or scramble situations; he's very good at identifying spots where he might be able to grab an OREB and regularly attempts to chase them down.

If Sarr misses that Brown is going to put it back.

If Brown starts a drive with a positional edge he's pretty good about creating a shot off that.

The shots he creates are often like the above: solid opportunities but not outstanding ones. A lack of height and lift means he's not always able to convert around the rim, and he's not exactly a graceful player. There's a lot of crashing around. Sometimes that results in free throws. Sometimes it results in turnovers or questionable shots. This is a 25th-percentile-transition-player event:

He is a mansome rebounder and a solid on-ball defender. He'll occasionally overcommit on a closeout and allow a drive, but I didn't catch him making a mental error over the course of the two games.

Michigan needs someone to handle the ball and create shots in the pick and roll. Brown is not that. The recent Michigan player he's most comparable to is Glen Robinson III, who played the four for John Beilein. Brown doesn't have the explosion GRIII did but he's a hair better as a shooter. Both guys are effective after someone else has broken the defense down.

ROSTER UPSHOT

Brown nominally fills Michigan's last roster spot for 2020-21. The "nominal" bit: Rivals is reporting that Nojel Eastern might not actually enroll if he has to sit out a year and would instead go play overseas. If that's the case Michigan has another slot. Also, Isaiah Livers has put his name in the NBA draft and may elect to stay in.

As both the Eastern and Brown commitments indicate, transfers tend to come out of nowhere, and new names are entering the portal daily. Speculating on who might show up is a fool's errand. Michigan should be looking to fill a hypothetical spot with a sit-out transfer, though. They'll have at least five spots if Brown or Eastern is immediately eligible and will probably have six or seven after transfers and potential NBA attrition.