On November 16, 2021, the University of Michigan gave a five-year extension to Men's Basketball Head Coach Juwan Howard, something your author called "a no brainer". At the time, Michigan was #4 in the country, 2-0 on the young season after knocking off Buffalo and Prairie View A&M. To that point, Howard's record as Michigan's head coach was 44-17, coming off a Big Ten regular title and an Elite Eight appearance. The team he was coaching was hyped, with sky high expectations following 2020-21's roaring success and adding a recruiting class that public scouting services loved. It all made sense. After all, Michigan Men's Basketball had established itself as a giant of the B1G over the preceding decade, winning three regular season titles and two conference tournament titles, making the Sweet 16 six times, the Elite Eight four times, and the Final Four twice. 

That night, after the extension was announced, Michigan played host to a so-so Seton Hall team that would make the NCAAs as an eight seed. They lost that game, the first sign that the 2021-22 team was perhaps not going to be what the expectations have conveyed. In hindsight, it was the beginning of a larger slide into despair for the Michigan program. Beginning with that game, the men's basketball team is 43-47 in their past 90 games, leading up to the present. They slipped into the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed, then missed the tournament the following season, culminating in this year, when Michigan is 8-16 and has a chance to be the first Michigan team to win only single digit games in four decades.

How did it all collapse so quickly? Today we will look back through the journey and perhaps glean some overarching lessons on where and how it all went wrong: 

[AFTER THE JUMP: How it all went wrong]

 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

The Beginning: 2019-20

Howard was hired after a unique search process in May of 2019, following John Beilein's odd departure. Happening much later than the usual time-scale for a coaching change in college basketball, Michigan was put behind some degree of an 8-ball and sifted through a number of peculiar coaching names. Brian's original SearchBits column had the secondary summary of "love to have a coaching search with like two candidates", listing three names deemed as more desirable than retaining Beilein's defensive coordinator Luke Yaklich. Those three were Billy Donovan, then of the OKC Thunder, Steve Prohm, then of Iowa State, and Juwan Howard, then an assistant for the Miami Heat. Subsequent SearchBits columns got increasingly desperate as names like Providence's Ed Cooley (now at Georgetown) and Loyola-Chicago's Porter Moser were floated as top candidates, in addition to the rise of Shaka Smart, then at Texas, as a plausible option. 

The only candidate that both Michigan and MGoBlog seemed to really like was Juwan Howard and eventually that's where the decision-makers in the Athletic Department landed. On May 22, 2019, Howard was named the head coach of Michigan Men's Basketball and the period leading up to his first season was promising. He gave a passionate, emotional press conference and while he shuffled the staff some, he managed to keep lauded strength coach Jon Sanderson, something this site celebrated. Howard also kept the roster together, with Beilein seniors Zavier Simpson and Jon Teske sticking around, while recruit Franz Wagner, who was in the process of being recruited by Beilein, decided to commit to Michigan even after the coaching change was made. Franz's older brother Moritz was a big part of the decision, but the fact that Wagner signed onto the nascent Howard regime was a good sign for continuity's sake. 

Howard's first team, made up entirely of Beilein guys, started off strong. The team went 4-0 at Crisler and then headed off to the Battle 4 Atlantis, where they crushed the tournament. They knocked off an ISU team that wasn't particularly good but did feature future NBA star Tyrese Haliburton, a UNC team that was believed to be elite but in actuality finished sub-.500, and then a Gonzaga squad who finished the season #2 in the polls. In hindsight only one of those wins was impressive, but the Gonzaga win, which was a blowout, was a genuine "holy cow" moment. Howard ended the tournament dancing on the court with his players and expectations for a team that didn't have a ton at the start of the season, soared. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Ranked #4 in the country after their Bahamas conquest, Michigan headed to Kentucky to face the #1 ranked Louisville Cardinals. The offense faltered and Michigan was punked, doing something to reset expectations. From there, it was a bit of a seesaw, Michigan losing a painfully close OT game at home to eventual PAC-12 champion Oregon, getting blown out in Breslin by MSU, but knocking off Iowa and Purdue at home. January brought with it a four game losing skid, capped off by a loss to Illinois at home on a Ayo Dosunmu buzzer beater. Michigan had lost 8 of 12 and suddenly, the Battle 4 Atlantis felt like a distant memory. 

But February helped get the team back on track. They won seven of eight games, including a pair of ranked wins, and their lone loss featured refereeing hijinks, a close defeat at home against Ohio State. Michigan hopped back into the rankings at #19 at the end of the streak, but went out in a bit of a whimper to close the regular season, losing three of four to Wisconsin, Ohio State, Nebraska, and Maryland. In a highly competitive B1G, Michigan finished 9th at 10-10, but just two more wins would've left the team 5th, as seven teams finished between 11-9 and 9-11 that season. In a show of the B1G's strength, Michigan managed to finish 16th in KenPom with a 10-10 conference record, as eleven of the top 30 teams on KenPom's rankings were B1G squads. 

Michigan was likely headed for a six seed in the NCAA Tournament, pending what was to happen in the Big Ten Tournament, where Michigan was in the 8/9 game against Rutgers. However, that game never happened, the season called off suddenly due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, and that was the abrupt end to Howard's first season. From a bird's eye view, given the preseason expectation, the season was mostly in line with the expectations, but it held both meteoric highs (Battle 4 Atlantis, the hot streak in February) to make you believe the Howard regime could win big and legitimate warning signs for the future (the long cold streak and a tendency to lose close games). 

 

[Campredon]

The Success: 2020-21

Juwan's first full offseason as Michigan head coach would prove to be his best, as he added a recruiting class and a set of transfers that would set his second team up for immense success. The recruiting class was less hyped than it was originally expected to be, as one-time commit Isaiah Todd opted for the G-League route and 5* guard Josh Christopher surprisingly chose Arizona State over Michigan on his commitment day in April, but Michigan still signed four players, the most touted being high 4* Hunter Dickinson. They also added Juwan's elder son Jace, not a hyped recruit, in addition to Terrance Williams II and Zeb Jackson, the latter of whom was the last Beilein commit to play at Michigan. The bigger wins came in the transfer portal, where Michigan added two players who would play massive roles, Chaundee Brown from Wake Forest and Mike Smith from Columbia. 

The 2020-21 team opened the season without sizable expectations, ranked #25 in the poll as a bit of reverence for the solid veterans like Isaiah Livers and Eli Brooks, in addition to the promise of Wagner, who was now a sophomore. But there was considerable uncertainty with Simpson and Teske, the pillars of the 2019-20 team, departing. Instead, it all clicked, pretty early in the season. A shaky OT win over Oakland was an ominous sign, but around the holiday time the group hit its stride. They easily handled Nebraska and Maryland on Christmas and New Year's Eve, respectively, and then proved they were the real deal with three successive blowouts over ranked Northwestern, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in January. The Wolverines vaulted up to #7 in the polls and were 6-0 on the season. 

They hit a road bump without Eli Brooks in Minnesota but then just kept winning, even with a COVID pause in the middle. They won at Purdue, at Wisconsin and thrillingly, at Ohio State. They knocked off an elite Iowa team at home and then easily dispatched Indiana in Assembly Hall to move to 18-1 on the season and 13-1 in conference play. The team just seemed to make perfect sense, a dominant post-up big in Dickinson, who was immediately ready for college basketball as a freshman, surrounded by quality shooters, which meshed well because Dickinson was instantly a strong passer out of the post. Mike Smith, Isaiah Livers, and Eli Brooks all shot >39% from three and Franz Wagner shot 34.3%.

[Campredon]

The Wolverines had strong perimeter defense thanks to the incredible Wagner, and Chaundee Brown could bring shooting and defensive energy off the bench as the team's ace sixth-man. Even Austin Davis, who was by no means an exceptional player, provided decent minutes as a seasoned veteran big in place of Dickinson. When you toss in junior Brandon Johns Jr. at the backup four spot, six of their top eight minutes-getters were seniors. The two who weren't were Wagner, a top 10 NBA pick who is currently a very good professional player, and Dickinson, who is one of college basketball's best players as a senior. It was a roster that made sense, tactical roster construction that mixed experience and high-end talent. 

Michigan was top 10 in both offense and defense and was clearly one of college basketball's three best teams when disaster struck. The team went into the Big Ten Tournament as the #1 seed after winning the regular season title by win% (something Illinois fans will never forget), but after the quarterfinal matchup with Maryland, Isaiah Livers was confirmed to have suffered a stress fracture in his foot, an injury that would eventually keep him out for the remainder of the season. Sapped one of its top players, Michigan lost in the semifinals to Ohio State.

They were still given a #1 seed for the NCAA Tournament and to their credit, did well with it. They moved past a tough LSU team in the Round of 32 to make the Sweet 16, and then handled Florida State and Scottie Barnes in that round. Matched up with underdog UCLA In the Elite Eight, it seemed as if the path was clear for Michigan to make the Final Four. In an ugly game marked by wretched shooting, it was Michigan that ended up being the worst at shooting the ball, Wagner airballing an open three and Smith missing one of his own, both in the final 30 seconds, that could've given Michigan the win. 

The ending was a bitter pill to swallow but at the end of the day, most Michigan fans were happy. The team had wildly exceeded expectations and it didn't feel like they had missed out on a likely national title. Sans Livers, the team would've been an underdog against Gonzaga in the Final Four and almost certainly would've been beaten by a tremendous Baylor team that rolled Gonzaga to win the national title. Michigan had gotten nearly all you could ask for from the season and it was hard to even a small bit pessimistic about the future. They had a young coach who had just put together an excellent team and had an ostensibly elite recruiting class coming in... 

 

[Campredon]

The Warning Sign: 2021-22 

Hype was high for the 2021-22 team in spite of the offseason losses. They lost Smith and Davis to graduation, plus Livers, Wagner, and Brown to the NBA/G-League. Dickinson and Eli Brooks returned, but it was to be a different team. Still, most fans had few reasons for trepidation, believing in the coach and his vision, not to mention a recruiting class that was top three in the 247 team rankings. It featured two 5*s, Moussia Diabaté and Caleb Houstan, two well-regarded 4*s in Frankie Collins and Kobe Bufkin, plus another 4* wing (Isaiah Barnes) and a developmental stretch four option (Will Tschetter). The cupboards seemed to be replenished, with the recruitment of DeVante' Jones out of the portal from Coastal Carolina to fill Mike Smith's PG shoes helping as well. 

Things started well, a slightly underwhelming performance against Buffalo being followed up by a strong showing against Prairie View A&M leading up to the moment referenced in the opener, Juwan's extension and the Seton Hall defeat. That loss, followed by a spanking at the hands of Arizona on the weekend in Las Vegas, sent a very clear message that the 2021-22 team was (at that point) a far cry from 2020-21. A couple weeks later Michigan was blown out in Chapel Hill by North Carolina and they were out of the top 25 entirely, having fallen from #4 to unranked in the span of a few weeks. They steadied themselves with a win over San Diego State, but a blowout loss by UCF followed by COVID-19 issues leading a hamstrung roster to lose to Illinois dropped the team to .500 early in January. 

Fast forward a few weeks and the squad was firmly on the bubble when #3 Purdue came to Ann Arbor in early February, the Michigan team in desperate need of a big win. They got it via an 82-58 surprising blowout of the Boilers, which began a period to close the regular season that saw the team infuriatingly alternate between wins and losses. Over the next ten games, Michigan would win one, then lose one, with the cycle repeating over and over, never once winning two in a row. During this period was a defeat in Wisconsin, marred at the end when Howard smacked a Wisconsin assistant coach in the noggin during a post-game altercation, leading to his suspension for the remainder of the regular season.

[Zoey Holmstrom]

This period of alternating wins and losses also included three home losses against ranked teams that could have solidified Michigan's position in the tourney picture, but instead the frustrating inconsistency left the team hanging by a thread as the calendar moved to March. The latter of those losses, a solid defeat at Crisler against #24 Iowa, put Michigan in hot water for the NCAA picture headed into the regular season finale. Luckily, the season turned on its head and they kept the alternating pattern alive by going into Columbus and knocking off #23 OSU, a win that bumped the team to 17-13 (11-9 in conference), which ultimately was enough padding to slip in. The padding was necessary after the team blew a 13 point halftime lead to lose to Indiana in the 8/9 game of the BTT, with them squeaking in on Selection Sunday as an 11 seed, just avoiding having to play in Dayton in the First Four. 

To this point, everything about the 2021-22 season was immensely frustrating. The team undershot expectations by a country mile, could never put it together for more than a few games at a time, and the new faces were underwhelming. Michigan still leaned on Dickinson and Brooks for stability, but neither Diabaté nor Houstan were particularly effective college players as true freshmen, while neither Collins nor Bufkin were at all ready for big time action. DeVante' Jones also had his ups-and-downs transferring up into a high major conference and it was ultimately a team that could flash here and there, but lacked consistent indicators identifying them as a good team. 

This enigmatic team lumbered into the NCAA Tournament in the 6/11 game against Colorado State and pulled off a win thanks to a career game from Frankie Collins. Then, on Saturday, they upset 3rd-seeded Tennessee, with late game heroics from Eli Brooks sealing the deal and Michigan was off to yet another Sweet 16. Suddenly, in the span of just three days, all the agony and mediocrity of the season was forgotten as Michigan had something to celebrate. The run ended rather quickly as the Wolverines were easily beaten by Villanova in the next round, but Juwan Howard's third team had accomplished something and finished 19-15, 27th in the KenPom. All that said, you would've been crazy not to have concerns leaving the 2021-22 season. 

 

[Campredon]

Coming apart: 2022-23 

The roster chaos that has come to define the program's current misery began to show its head during the 2022 offseason. Frankie Collins, who had some promising moments as a freshman along with the usual freshman PG struggles, entered the transfer portal and opted for Arizona State. Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabaté, the former 5* recruits who underwhelmed in year #1, both opted to go to the NBA Draft even though neither were selected in the first round. Veteran Brandon Johns Jr. also chose to enter the portal (ending up at VCU). With DeVante' Jones and Eli Brooks both out of eligibility, the team was suddenly replacing nearly the entire roster yet again, with six of the top eight players by minutes departing. 

To counteract all this attrition, Howard brought in a seemingly decent recruiting class headlined by his other son, Jett, and added wing Joey Baker from Duke and guard Jaelin Llewellyn from Princeton. However, Howard's attempts to patch up the roster through the portal came to be defined more by who he didn't pick up than who he did. After a courtship with Texas Tech's Terrence Shannon Jr. seemed to have Shannon committed to the Wolverines, issues with the university's admissions office ultimately led to Shannon choosing Illinois instead, where he went on to star as an All-Conference player. 

The team that came into the 2022-23 season was ranked #22 in the preseason poll but warning signs emerged very quickly. The season opener against Purdue-Fort Wayne went by without concern but four days later Michigan was forced to grind out a five point win at Little Caesars Arena against a bad EMU squad that would finish the season with single-digit wins. Two games later, Michigan was punked by Arizona State in Brooklyn at a neutral site tournament. Later that week the Wolverines would escape in OT against Ohio, the end of a disastrous week of basketball which would bounce Michigan from the national polls. To date, that is still the most recent time that Michigan has been ranked in men's basketball. 

[David Wilcomes]

Then came the first of the close losses, of which there would be many. Michigan played #3 Virginia at home and lost by two. Then they played #19 Kentucky in London, England, and lost by four in a game that saw Llewellyn tear his ACL, meaning that Michigan's PG duties would now fall to true freshman Dug McDaniel, who wasn't ready for the gig. Skip forward a few games and Michigan lost by four to North Carolina in Charlotte. After a week off for Christmas, Michigan was beaten on its home floor by Central Michigan, a MAC school that would finish 10-21 on the season, largely because Michigan was out-worked, out-hustled, and out-rebounded by the Chips in a lifeless effort. 

The lack of legitimate non-conference wins due to all the close defeats, combined with the toxic L against a rancid CMU team, put Michigan's NCAA Tournament odds in big trouble as the calendar flipped to 2023. What followed was a season not unlike the previous year, except with small win streaks followed by small losing streaks, win a couple, lose a couple. And the losses were almost always by close margins. This included a six point defeat to MSU, an OT loss at Iowa, a six point loss at Maryland, a five point loss at Purdue, a one point loss vs. Indiana, and a five point loss at Wisconsin. Despite all the blown opportunities, Michigan banked enough B1G wins in the meantime, including over rivals MSU/OSU at home, to stay on the periphery of the bubble, but they needed a late season push. 

It seemed they'd gotten the stroke of luck they needed when Hunter Dickinson's heave at the buzzer went down against Wisconsin, as Michigan pulled off the win in OT over the Badgers to move to 11-7 in conference play. With two final road games against Illinois and Indiana up next, Michigan had a chance to move into the tourney picture with a win or two. In Champaign, Michigan overcame a late deficit to force OT and led 81-74 with 1:49 left in the extra session, but then things unraveled. The Illini stormed back to tie it, forced 2OT, and then pulled away, a devastating defeat for Michigan. In Bloomington, the Wolverines held another late lead, allowed Indiana to tie it, went to OT, and lost again.

[Campredon]

The team was running out of chances and they blew their last one with a lethargic performance against Rutgers in the B1G Tournament, 62-50 in a game that caused many of us to say "good riddance". The Wolverines got an invite to the NIT, won the first game over Toledo, and then lost at Vanderbilt in what may have been their greatest late game collapse of the season, losing in regulation after leading 65-57 with 1:45 to play(!!!). The loss put Michigan at 18-16 to close the season, their first in eight years without a trip to the NCAAs. 

The problems with the 2022-23 team were myriad. Their depth at guard was weak after the loss of Collins (and earlier, Zeb Jackson not panning out), putting Michigan in the worst possible position when their lone PG with experience (Llewellyn) went down with injury. Dug McDaniel had his flashes as a freshman but was inefficient offensively and was overwhelmed with all the responsibilities, as most true freshman PGs are. Jett Howard was a nonentity as a defender and rebounder, yet another in the line of touted Michigan recruits in the Juwan era who underwhelmed relative to recruiting expectations. Kobe Bufkin was a genuinely optimistic development story and Dickinson was typically steady, but they didn't have enough contributors beyond that and the team's defense was a major weakspot, in addition to the late game collapses, which felt almost unfathomable given the manner in which they became routine. 

 

[David Wilcomes]

Rock Bottom: 2023-24

Typically, when a team has a dud of a season and misses the NCAA Tournament, you'd expect that they could roll over a lot of players for the next season because if a team is bad, why would they have good players other teams/leagues would want? Michigan was not a typical team, however, and their three primary contributors, Dickinson, Bufkin, and Jett Howard, were all sought after by other colleges and NBA teams. Bufkin and Howard opted for the draft, where they were both respectable first rounders in spite of their flaws, and Dickinson was offered a starring role and a nice financial package at perennial contender Kansas. The big man took the offer and the cycle of "underwhelming season --> roster chaos" repeated. 

Again Howard sought help from the portal and again ran into problems with Michigan's admissions department. UNC guard Caleb Love, who was committed to Michigan, never made it past admissions. Papa Kante, a big originally from Senegal and one of the only prized recruits in the 2023 class, was also turned away. Howard tried to patch up the holes by pursuing Argentinian wing Lee Aaliya, but he ran into NCAA issues related to "professionalism" abroad. As a result, Michigan added only one recruit to the roster and three transfers (Olivier Nkamhoua of Tennessee was a decent get), leaving two open spots on the roster that were never filled. When you consider Llewellyn wouldn't be ready to start the season due to his ongoing knee recovery, it was not hard to realize that this would be a thin roster. 

Another offseason development of note was Juwan Howard's heart surgery, as he underwent a serious operation in September that would keep him away from formal coaching duties early in the season. Assistant coach Phil Martelli ran the show during that period, with Howard eventually resuming head coaching roles a month or so into the season. The 2023-24 season started well, in maybe the most incongruent segment of the entire Howard era. For three games, this team looked legitimately good, blowing out mid-majors in the way that good teams do and then going into New York City to beat up St. John's on the road, a Red Storm team currently on track to make the NCAA Tournament. Using Barttorvik.com's Game-Score stat which rates a team's performance out of 100, Michigan got a 96, 99, and 99 for those first three games. 

[Campredon]

And then? Disaster. Michigan gave up 94 at home to an uninteresting Long Beach State team and it was only downhill from there. They won only one game in their return trip to the Battle 4 Atlantis, lost on the road to Oregon in OT, beginning the parade of close game losses, just like the previous season. In between have been a series of bizarre events, including Juwan Howard letting Martelli be Coach For A Day against Penn State in Philadelphia and the altercation between Howard and longtime strength coach Jon Sanderson (allegedly involving Juwan's son Jace), leading to an HR complaint against Howard. The athletic department cleared Howard but Sanderson is no longer working with the men's basketball team, making it unclear if this Michigan team has a S&C coach at this point in time. Dug McDaniel also ended up in hot water, being suspended for six road games due to seeming academic issues. This is the first case of a road-game-only suspension that your author can remember. 

While all these strange things keep happening off the court, the product on the court has continued to deteriorate. They still lose close games, but not as many as they did previously, with beatdowns becoming more frequent. The biggest theme has been second-half disasters, as Michigan's second-half scoring margin is almost incomprehensibly terrible. The team is unwatchable on the road without McDaniel and melts down in the latter 20 minutes at home even when McDaniel plays. Over the previous weekend the team led by 15 in the early second-half and lost by 10 in regulation against 12-10 (4-7) Rutgers at home. This weekend against Nebraska on the road without McDaniel, they trailed by 30 in the first half. The team's defense, which was a sore spot in 2022-23, has somehow cratered without Jett Howard on the roster. With a month to go in the regular season, whether the team reaches double digit wins is a more compelling storyline than whether they make the NCAA Tournament. 

 

[Campredon]

What have we learned?

In rehashing all the years and events of the Juwan Howard tenure, several storylines emerge as having helped drive Michigan into the sea. They are as follows: 

- Poor scouting and recruiting: At the end of the day, you're only as good as the players you have on the roster. As a *college* coach, Howard is responsible for choosing the players on his team and despite the accolades from the recruiting industry, the players Howard has recruited simply have not been good enough. Whether that is fool's gold in his evaluations or failure to develop the players after they arrive, I am not entirely sure, but the easiest answer is it's a combination of both.

If you go back to his "#1 rated recruiting class" of 2021, the results do not line up with an elite class. Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabaté both played just one season and didn't add much in the way of exceptional on-court value and neither were first rounders despite the 5* rating. Isaiah Barnes down-transferred to Tulsa and is now a merely decent starter as a junior on a 12-11 squad ranked 180th in KenPom. Frankie Collins is now the lead guard on 12-12 Arizona State, boasting a 94.3 ORTG. Only Kobe Bufkin really hit an expected ceiling in terms of being an NBA first round pick, but he left Michigan before truly morphing into a game-wrecking player. [Note: Will Tschetter was in this class as the 6th piece and has mostly hit his projection as a vaguely interesting wing. He was not important enough in this class to merit extensive discussion]

[Campredon]

Through five years of the Howard tenure, only Hunter Dickinson can really be cited as a true scouting victory for Juwan. Dickinson has been a high level player the entirety of his NCAA career, the exact sort of player you build programs around. But Dickinson has basically been it, if you don't consider Franz Wagner a Howard find (I don't because Michigan was already in advanced recruitment when Howard was hired). Too many players have underwhelmed expectations and left before developing into a force at the NCAA level because of NBA aspirations, and the developmental players, the Barnes and Zeb Jackson types, didn't deliver many developmental rewards and ended up transferring out.

Moreover, Howard's issues scouting seem to be even clearer when you look at who he wanted but didn't get. He vigorously pursued Isaiah Todd and Josh Christopher in the 2020 class, but neither guy became much of anything. Todd became a career G-Leaguer after being a 2nd round pick, while Christopher underwhelmed in one season at ASU, was a 1st rounder because of his recruiting pedigree, and has also yet to do much of anything at the NBA level. Recruiting rankings, while useful, are not gospel, and it's on the coach and his staff to identify the players who are going to hit or exceed their projections as NCAAers. Howard has not demonstrated much of any aptitude for that outside of nailing Dickinson four years ago. 

 

[Campredon]

- Roster chaos and attrition: Compounding the problems scouting and developing is that roster attrition component. The players that Howard have recruited have generally not stuck around very long. Dickinson and Terrance Williams II making it as long as they did are the rare success stories. As outlined in my previous discussion of the 2021 recruiting class, just one of the six players made it to their junior year. That is not what you want, especially not when the players aren't giving you all that much in the way of production before they leave. The same can be said for one-and-done Jett Howard, who was not a major help to the 2022-23 team due to his abhorrent defense and then left. Michigan had to replace five of their top eight players by minutes in the summer of 2021. They had to replace six of their top eight players in the summer of 2022. This past summer, they had to replace "only" four of their top eight, but three of their top four, all of whom were the team's primary scorers. 

When you have to reload most of the roster every offseason, winning each year becomes much harder. Even in this volatile world of college basketball, you'd like to be able to hang onto players for more than one season to grow and develop them. Though the 2020-21 team was having to replace some key players like Simpson and Teske, the returns of Livers, Wagner, and Brooks provided a blueprint that was much easier to work with. From there, Juwan merely had to plug a couple holes through the portal, which he did masterfully. That is very different than starting from near-scratch, as he's had to do in multiple offseasons recently. 

[Campredon]

Having to restructure the roster every offseason becomes even more problematic when you remember what Howard is working with. Michigan Athletics are limited by the admissions department, restricting which kids can and can't be recruited for primarily academic reasons. TL;DR, it makes it a lot harder to navigate the transfer portal. As I said to Brian and David before the season, "if your plan is to build a team out of the portal at Michigan every year, you're fucked".

Howard has absolutely been screwed by Michigan admissions, but at the same time, A) it shows why it's all the more painful he can't keep recruits around for longer than a year or two and B) it's on Howard to eventually adapt. Football has not had the same issues in getting kids turned away because they go into the recruitment process knowing which players can actually be admitted to the university. If, in year #5, Howard still hasn't been able to figure that out (as it seems he hasn't given Caleb Love and Kante in one offseason), that's a bad sign. 

The inability to keep players around and find fits for Michigan out of the portal/recruiting class has left Michigan with this bizarre roster. They have few guards and even fewer big men, an abundance of wings and pieces that generally don't fit together. It's on the coach to build the roster and he has not built an effective one. 

- As Beilein players exited, things got worse: It's hard not to trace, walking through each season in the way I laid it out, how it all began to unravel once the last Beilein guy left the roster, Eli Brooks. The 2021-22 team was a disappointment, but they did make the tournament and did win two tournament games. They won clutch games to get in and won in the tournament once they were there. Who was the hero of the biggest win of the '22 season? Eli Brooks. Again, the 2021-22 team had its issues, but they weren't losing at home to CMU and McNeese State. Once Eli left, things really took a nosedive, finishing off a decline that was beginning after the 2021 team, when a few more Beilein guys (Livers, Davis, Franz?) moved on. Once the team aged into fully "Juwan's guys", the winning began to vanish. 

[Campredon]

- Failures in close games: If one story stands out as a recurring theme, faltering in close games is it. This was an issue for Howard's very first team, a roster with a senior PG and plenty of other veteran players. It has continued to be a problem in each of the last two seasons, with really only the magical 2020-21 team not being majorly punished for it. KenPom's luck factor, which looks at how your record deviates from your expected record and a metric that one can view as an indicator of your abilities in close games, has indicated Michigan is "unlucky" for years now. Over the five seasons of Howard's tenure Michigan has finished 301st, 156th, 217th, 336th, and 344th in KenPom Luck.

At some point, when you are routinely one of the most "unlucky" teams in the country, it stops being luck and starts being who you are, as it was for Scott Frost at Nebraska. Michigan's late game meltdowns (and now, second-half disasters) are not statistical anomalies without explanation, but result from something about the way the team is coached. Why? I can't tell you. I don't watch practice and have never pretended to be a basketball expert. But we're at the point where it's impossible to argue otherwise because it just keeps happening, season after season. 

- Miscellaneous shenanigans: This is the bucket for all the other strange things. This also began as Beilein players filtered out, but you can go back to the slap against Wisconsin in 2022 as the beginning of this. That deprived the team of its head coach for the remainder of that regular season and then not even two full years later, Howard was involved in another "incident". Considering the way that the coaching staff seems to have lost the locker room in recent games (see: Howard's post-game comments after the Rutgers game), it's hard not to wonder if the Sanderson altercation has played a role in the team's effort level seemingly declining. You can also include the McDaniel suspension as another oddity in this category, but all of it has built up into a team that has appeared to lose the will to compete.

The current team's roster is stinky, but that does not explain being 179th in KenPom defense. Michigan is 16 spots worse than the next worse B1G defense, which is IOWA for god's sake. We bemoaned the team's defensive issues last season, yet that team's defense was nearly 140 spots better than this one's, a fall that has happened by ... subtracting Jett Howard? It's quite difficult to be as bad as Michigan has been defensively when your roster is made up of high-major players. Talent and roster construction are problems, but you can't get to this ranking in defense and not have basically had the team quit. I don't know if we're there yet but there have been moments this season where it's seemed that way. 

 

[Campredon]

Closing Thoughts 

Whether or not Michigan's athletic department is able to see it, the writing seems on the wall at this point in time. I would love to be wrong and see this whole thing turn around, but the current situation is bleak. Torvik now projects Michigan to finish the season 10-21 (5-15), which feels about right if you've watched the team consistently in calendar 2024. This is a program that has had chronic problems retaining players even when the team was mediocre... how many guys are going to return to a team coming off a historically bad season? Michigan already has an older roster and has only three recruits committed for next season, not to mention that the sophomore McDaniel would appear to be a major flight risk given his academic issues. 

Warde Manuel can try and compare this situation to Michigan Football in 2020, except that analogy makes no sense beyond wishful thinking. The 2020 season was played under extraordinary circumstances and was an anomaly both within the Harbaugh tenure, where Michigan had consistently been a top 15 team to that point, and Harbaugh's entire life as a coach. This 2023-24 basketball season has no similar extraordinary circumstances obscuring the picture and the broader trajectory of this program does not show this is an anomaly. As I have laid out in this piece, the arrow continues to point downwards for Michigan Men's Basketball, a multi-year arc of recurring problems and compounding failures. No one thought the team would be this bad, but this is a team that was picked 11th out of 14 teams in the preseason media poll. Next year is not Juwan's make-it-or-break-it season, this one was. And boy do we have an answer.

Howard seems like a good guy and will always be a Wolverine hero for his playing days, but eventually enough is enough. Missing the NCAA Tournament two straight years for the first time since the George W. Bush administration and threatening to finish last in the B1G for the first time in over a half-century is enough for me. I, like the other authors at MGoBlog, liked the idea of hiring Juwan Howard in 2019 and wanted it to work out. I relished in the success of that 2021 team. But barring some miraculous turnabout late in the season, it has not worked out and there is no obvious, immediate path for a return to the lofty standards this program held just a few season ago. And if that is the case, there is only one path forward for this program.