Your slightly-dated, already-posted positions: point guard, shooting guard, small forward and center.

Aaand the basketball season aftermath posts get done by late August. Woo! Been a weird summer!

ROSTER

Brandon Johns(So.): Bouncy gent spent most of last year as a backup 5, which he is not. Lost defensively both there and after a move back to the 4, through no fault of his own.

Isaiah Livers(Jr.): Swiss-army-knife sixth man now pressed into third banana role. Great shooter; difficulty getting to the rim. Superior defender.

Colin Castleton(So.): Would give Michigan a Reuvers-Happ look if he played at the same time as Teske. Potentially viable for up to ten minutes per game?

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS

How are we supposed to calibrate Johns expectations?

[Campredon]

Oh God, I have no idea. His freshman year was wasted as Michigan really tried to make him a backup center. This worked well exactly once. When forced into duty against Indiana Johns was 4/5 from the floor with 8 rebounds, 3 of them offensive, and a block on Juwan Morgan. That's doing work in 13 minutes; it is no coincidence that work came against Morgan, who is 6'7" tops. Juwan Morgan is 6'2". In three inch heels. Juwan Morgan is a hobbit.

I digress. Johns's other extended Big Ten outing as a center was against Iowa. With Teske in foul trouble Johns was sent out to check Iowa's collection of albino Ents; he was repeatedly dunked on due to sheer lack of size. Michigan gave up on the Johns-is-a-center project around then, but the damage was done. His next extended playing time came in the weird guys game against MSU. Johns gave up a couple of buckets because he didn't know what he was supposed to do on defense. He had no offensive impact for the same reason.

Normally a touted prospect who'd provided so little as a freshman would be in line for a severe expectations downgrade. The position flip-flopping, which was more about Austin Davis than any deficiencies Johns showed as a potential four, complicates the picture here.

[After THE JUMP: breakout potential, also… Castleton?]

Presumably now locked in as a full-time four, Johns has breakout potential. He's the most athletic guy on the roster now that Charles Matthews graduated…

Attack this day like Brandon Johns attacked the rim against Indiana: pic.twitter.com/BnQGPlfmKb

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) January 7, 2019

…unless it's Castleton, discussed below. He's also executed the obligatory Hello I Am Ripped picture during the most recent Camp Sanderson:

But the coaches are talking about Johns in If terms, not When:

“I think going into this year, not that he has to have a D.J. Wilson type of year, but he needs to be trending in that direction,” Washington said. “I think for Brandon it's just him understanding that he doesn't have to live up to any expectations. He just has to be the best version of him.”

Adding Howard has to help various Michigan bigs; Johns is the best-positioned physically to take advantage of that at the four. But until we know, we just don't know.

Can Castleton actually play this spot?

Castleton: long [Patrick Barron]

For starters minutes, no. Even aside from questions about his ability to function at the spot, Michigan is probably at its best if Teske is unleashed defensively from minute one, with the commensurate reduction in minutes because sometimes he's going to get called for early fouls. Castleton is going to get 10-15 minutes as the backup 5 and is not going to get another 25-30 minutes at the four, because of physics.

In short bursts, yeah, sure. Castleton's combination of giant wingspan and vert made him only the seventh guy in the Camp Sanderson era to put up a 12-foot vertical jump:

Someone just joined the 〽️ 12-foot club! ⬆️

Elite group ➡️ @GRIII, @1CMatthews, @Lanky_Smoove, @CarisLeVert, @ibi_watson_2, Jon Horford & NOW ... @Castleton_ @CampSanderson #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/UCTqnYVYLD

— Michigan Men's Basketball (@umichbball) August 8, 2019

(Jon Horford? Really?)

That'll give Castleton some ability to play off on the perimeter without losing the ability to contest and help him when he inevitably gets switched onto some short guys. There are going to be plenty of matchups in which his lateral agility is going to be just fine. And as Wisconsin proved last year, there's something to be said for having a lethal helpside defender playing the 4.

As with Johns it's hard to project what his impact will be offensively. Castleton hit 38% of his threes his senior year in high school and could function as a GRIII-esque corner shooter and dive man. That would mean the 4 is almost exclusively absorbing shots, not creating them. As the rest of this series has detailed, the lack of creators at every spot outside PG threatens to heap an untenable burden on Zavier Simpson.

How does this spot change under Howard?

One dollar Michigan power forwards post up now. Depending on the matchup the quantity of posting could vary from occasional to frequent, but it's going to be in their toolkit and Michigan will use it. These posts have repeatedly addressed the lack of shot creation it appears Michigan's going to suffer through next year; post-ups do indeed create shots. Usually not great ones, but beggars can't be choosers.

Teske's flashed some passing ability so I wonder if we might see some high-low action similar to what Minnesota ran last year when Jordan Morgan and a center were on the floor at the same time. No Minnesota bigs were shooters, so the Gopher action ended up being fairly predictable. All of Michigan's guys are at least hypothetically competent shooters, which will open some things up.

The other potentially major change is how Howard views rebounding, particularly offensive. Michigan 4s have not often had the green light to hunt OREBs over the past decade. When John Gasaway wanted to name a stat for teams that are somewhat inexplicably worse at DREBs than OREBs he named it the "Inverse Michigan Factor" because of the consistency with which Michigan's defensive rebounding outperformed its offensive rebounding under Beilein.

If Howard is unable to replicate Beilein's astounding turnover aversion—and the history of basketball suggests he will be unable—then the only way to make up the hit to shot volume will be with more second chances. That would give an edge to run/jump guys like Johns over Livers, at least insofar as playing time at the 4 goes.

Defensively it shouldn't be too different. To some extent defense is defense.

OUTLOOK

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are two ways this can go well. One is that Johns comes through. The other is that a couple guys at the two and three do and Livers can play most of his minutes here.

This preview has its money on Johns based on a couple of admittedly speculative assumptions. One is that Howard will prefer more burly lineups than Beilein did. Maximum burl lineups all include Johns. The second is that Johns will have a breakout because of positional certainty and the freshman-to-sophomore leap a lot of players make.

But we've got a sophomore who did almost nothing as a freshman and was a good-but-not-great recruit coming out of high school. He's got the widest performance range of anyone on the roster.