A series looking at Michigan's 2021-22 basketball outlook. Previously: center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard.

ROSTER

DeVante' Jones (Sr.): Coastal Carolina transfer shot 54/33 from floor with big FT rate and 87% shooting at the line. Had top 50 assist rate as sophomore before being pushed into more of an off-ball role last year. Crafty more than explosive.

Franke Collins (Fr.): Lightning-quick freshman has sauce levels worthy of Michigan's recent point guard legacy. Makes cynical blog type persons describe him in broad talk radio terms like "winner." Shooting questionable. 

Eli Brooks (Sr.+): Brooks was the nominal PG for about 20% of Michigan minutes last year and this went just fine, with TOs ticking down and 2P% ticking up. If he gets some PG minutes that'll work.

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS

How is DeVante' Jones going to translate from the Sun Belt?

We have a fairly close comparable from just last year. Mike Smith came from the Ivy League with massive usage and questionable athleticism, and he translated. He did so by almost halving his usage from 34% to 19%. This cut out a lot of high degree-of-difficulty shots, which was great behind the line—Smith's 3P% jumped from 34% to 42%—but insufficient to keep his efficiency inside the line consistent. Smith went from a 47% two-point shooter to a 41% one and his TO rate shot up from 14 to 21. Even so the numbers added up to an effective stopgap. Michigan won't be asking much more from Jones, and at first blush the transition will be similar.

[After THE JUMP: Relax, don't do it, he's a seven foot unicorn [DOES IT ANYWAY AT MAXIMUM VOLUME] ]

For the duration of Jones's career the Sun Belt has ranked in the same area as the Ivy League on Kenpom (until this year, when the Ivies didn't play and Sun Belt nonconference scheduling became so impossible that most teams played 4-5 non D-1 schools). Bart Torvik Dot Com has an implausibly sunny projection in which Jones becomes a 17% usage guy with a 122(!) ORTG—14 points higher than Smith last year.

There are some major differences, though:

• Jones has a lot less usage (25%) to give back to the Hump Up Some Crap gods.
• Jones's efficiency is much more dependent on his ability to get to the rim—42% of his shots there vs 33% for Smith in his last year at Columbia, and Jones converted at a clip that was 10 points better—and the line than Smith.
• Jones does not project as a knockdown shooter. He's at 32% on more than 300 career attempts without the kind of excessive chucking that would lead you to believe he's fired a lot questionable shots he can drop once he arrives on a better team. 83% of his threes were assisted last year.

All of these urge caution. Jones's game is a ton of crafty takes that may not translate that well against higher level competition.

On the other hand, Jones gives off a certain "point guard Austin Davis" vibe. He has a bail out option when he's cut off, which is an 80th percentile floater that he's almost at 1 PPP on. The PNR section of this highlight reel features it:

It also features a wide array of approaches. He's able to drive both ways, though he favors his right; he's got a spin move and a eurostep; he rejects screens and pulls up with that floater. The diversity of Jones's game is encouraging, because he's going to get guys going the wrong way and the increased athleticism of the league isn't going to matter as much.

Also there's a Coastal Carolina factor in his PNR numbers. This is most evident in his sophomore numbers, when he was the primary PG and put up a whopping 331 PNR possessions. His own offense: 63rd percentile. Passes to spot-up shooters: 57th percentile. Passes to the roll man and cutters: 19th percentile. (This is similar to Franz Wagner's PNR work last year, where Michigan was 0-fer on spot-ups off of Wagner passes for most of the season.) Jones was working with Tommy Burton, a 6'8", 215 pound JUCO transfer, as his nominal center. Going from that guy to Hunter Dickinson and Moussa Diabate should see Jones's PNR efficiency jump.

Jones is burlier than Smith and should be able to power his way through some opposition, and I'd expect him to approximately replicate Smith's performance (tertiary offensive option, decent defensively, questionable near the rim, sets up teammates a ton). This qualifies as reasonable optimism relative to Torvik's statistical projections.

How annoying are you going to be about Frankie Collins?

If all goes well, spectacularly annoying. Maybe the "give me guys who" thing is overplayed, but give me 5'11" point guards who try to dunk on Chet Holmgren.

I spent chunks of the last few months watching Michigan recruits play, because Michigan basketball recruits now pop up on ESPN with some regularity, and most of the time I watched Collins's Air Nado team play I came away buzzing. Dude shows up everywhere. He is a ball-dominant point guard no one can stay in front of, and also he hunts skip passes, and also he skies for tough rebounds in crunch time. He is both good and fun.

He took on Emoni Bates Prep in a game both Matt D and I had a close eye on.

Matt:

…the best player on the court by a fairly wide margin. He was electric in the open court, converting at the rim with explosion and sudden euro-steps, but his shot creating ability in half-court settings is what popped out from an evaluation perspective. Frankie was superb at navigating through traffic, collapsing the YP defense and finding teammates on dumpoffs and kickouts. His six assists don't do his playmaking justice.

 

Collins gets in the lane and then all hell breaks loose. I compared him to Zavier Simpson after one outing...

No one is Zavier Simpson but Frankie Collins is like 60% Zavier Simpson

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) November 13, 2020

…and the the Reply Guys said things like "do not want," because there's always someone on Twitter with his brain leaking out of his ears. Simpson was the starting point guard on teams that ranked 6th, 7th, and 16th on Kenpom! Yeah, Collins's shooting is questionable, and so was Simpson's, but . And Collins isn't going to have to develop a crazy skyhook to be effective near the basket since he can just elevate and dunk on (most) people.

There is going to be a transition period. Air Nado did not play with a real big—the loss to Ypsi Prep was largely because Ypsi Prep had a 6'9" guy who put back all of Bates's misses—and Collins hasn't done a lot of entry passing. He hasn't hit the roll man much. He absolutely can do these things, but there's going to be a period where it's rough. Transitioning from wide-open AAU ball to Juwan Howard's diverse offense is also going to be a process. Maybe that takes a few months; maybe it takes a year. I am betting on Collins as a long-term college star, unless he fixes his jumper and becomes a short-term college star.

Does anyone else have a shot here?

All three of the guys discussed in the shooting guard section are hypothetically projectable to PG. Brooks played it some last year; Zeb Jackson came in as a PG; Kobe Bufkin is widely considered a combo guard. If Collins is shaky to start and Jones is more Jaaron Simmons than Mike Smith, what happens?

Probably this:

Brooks used 132 PNR possessions last year, a number far higher than I expected, and was dead average on them. I would expect Brooks to get primary ball-handler duties even if the offense starts running through more dynamic guys after an initial action or two. That goes double if Michigan does indeed run a ton of high-low sets or just posts Dickinson a ton and relies on his gravity to create open shots and/or driving lanes.

Even if things go poorly here I'd expect alternative guard options to operate mostly in an off-ball role while the professor gets the gears in motion.