An irregular series previewing Michigan's upcoming basketball season position-by-position. Instantiated now since Michigan's roster has some clarity, particularly if DeVante' Jones does end up committing Saturday.

ROSTER

Hunter Dickinson (So.): Big Ten freshman of the year got off to monster start but slid back to pack once his scouting report got out and teams sat on his right shoulder. Late-season defensive work against monster posts like Luka Garza and Kofi Cockburn frankly incredible. Block and OREB rates just outside the top 100.

Moussa Diabate (Fr.): Will be an ideal NBA switchable C once he puts on some weight. Also currently developing his offensive game; not polished but has absurd athleticism for dunker spot. Jumper is a work in progress but is extant.

Brandon Johns (Sr.): Break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option next year since he's slated to start at the 4. Has a few hundred possessions at C under his belt, which went fairly well. Switchable, somewhat undersized, but good at contesting vertically at rim. Will be more fully discussed as a PF.

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS

What does Hunter Dickinson + Camp Sanderson + Juwan Howard + Offseason look like?

[Campredon]

Dickinson arrived at Michigan with a reputation as one of the most polished freshman bigs in the country, but even given that he massively outperformed expectations. He was 8th in the KPOY standings and finished the year as Michigan's highest-usage player, posting a 111 ORTG thanks to 61% shooting from two and a 74% free-throw stroke.

However, the wall he hit is obvious from the five-game moving average—the dotted line—of his ORTG:

11 games into the season, Dickinson's ORTG was 131. He was shooting 71% from the floor. The rest of the way he had more sub-100 ORTG games (10) than >100 ones (7). He dropped 20 points of ORTG in the final 60% of the year.

[After THE JUMP: reasons and a gumby person]

This dropoff had two main drivers. One was aggressive doubling from opponents. That mitigates the statistical dropoff significantly. Dickinson did not get credit for many assists (just a 7.3 assist rate) but his gravity meant that Michigan was able to hunt open threes off of rotations when he kicked the ball back out. Michigan finished 13th nationally in 3P% at 38%, and four of their five high-volume shooters hit 40% or better. (Franz Wagner was the lone exception.) Dickinson had a major hand in that. For what it's worth, Michigan hit 40% with him on the floor and 35% with him off—we usually discount three point shooting swings as random but here I believe there's something real.

Dickinson was not shooting from here early in the year [Campredon]

The second driver was Dickinson's scouting report getting out. Opponents sat on his right shoulder and forced him into tougher shots than he'd been getting in the first half of the season. That combined with the doubling made Dickinson uncomfortable. He forced some shots by going quickly, afraid of a double; he forced others by going right, through contact, on shots that were farther away from the rim. After an incredible start he tailed off:

• 2P shots through Wisconsin #1: 78/109, 71.5%
• 2P shots after Wisconsin: 78/150, 52%

This is our concern, Dude.

The good news is twofold. One is that Michigan players who come back for their second year traditionally have a jump in athletic ability—see Franz Wagner hulking up. Dickinson spent last offseason going head to head with guys like Luka Garza in summer sessions and arrived in pretty good shape; even so he is not yet a finished product. A little more lift, a little more lateral agility, and his efficiency on both ends will improve.

Two is that his head coach is Juwan Howard, 17-year NBA veteran who got along mostly on craftiness for the back half of his career. Howard came in with a reputation as a developer of big men and if Austin Davis is any indication, hoo boy this could be time for liftoff. I'm not sure anyone, including myself, fully appreciates how remarkable Davis's development was. We're talking about a center who lives so far below the rim he thinks Tim Horton is Godzilla. He shot 68% in Big Ten play on just over 100 attempts the past two years, almost exclusively on post-ups in college basketball's land of lost giants.

Let us sit and reckon with that. Austin Davis shot more or less the same percentage from the floor that Jordan Morgan did when Jordan Morgan was getting force-fed by Trey Burke as the PNR roll man. Davis did that on post ups.

If Dickinson can absorb half of what Davis did in his two years under Howard, opponents are going to implode. If Dickinson has another increment or two of athleticism, that'll help, too. I'm not even going to seriously contemplate this:

Yeah it’s over for the rest of the country pic.twitter.com/FSwpOPxlGN

— Twill is a B1G Champ (@TwillSZN) April 20, 2021

Yeah that's not happening, he told himself, hoping desperately it was happening.

Dickinson's range is between first-team All Big Ten (even a world where voters stick to one center instead of four) and your Naismith winner. I'm not betting against the latter end of that range.

What is Diabate's role and what can we expect from him?

I'll defer to Matt D's extensive scouting for the high-level view. On offense:

elite athleticism … advanced ball-skills and spatial awareness considering his size and position. … versatility a passer on the move and from stationary positions … elite leaper that possesses quick twitch explosion off 1 or 2 legs … can simply elevate over defenders with his combination of leaping, length and body control. … [jump] shots are almost all on-line. The question is simply whether there is enough arch to give the shot a chance to go in. … elite offensive rebounder, period … don't envision [post play] being a huge part of his role at Michigan

On defense:

elite lateral agility … 99th percentile athlete given his size/length/position. … fully expect Diabate to be one of the most switchable bigs in the B10 … motivated defender … length and leaping ability is going to make it tough sledding in the paint for the opposition. … great instincts as an off-ball defender. … hauls ass to get to the shooter, then his natural size/length/athleticism takes over. … can get walked under the rim by stronger bigs with more mass, but even then his length compensates

The closest Big Ten comparable in recent years is Jaren Jackson Jr. Jackson is a 6'11", switchable big who was top five in block rate in his solitary year at MSU. He shot 60/40 from the floor with giant FT rates in… uh… barely over 20 MPG and infamously spent most of a second-round tourney loss on the bench so someone called Ben Carter could play. Diabate should have a similar defensive impact. Jackson on/off splits:

In a word: what.

somehow both of these guys are big-time NBA players [Campredon]

Jackson did come in bigger than Diabate is likely to (he was listed at 242 and Diabate's probably topping out at 230 as a freshman) and displayed shooting range that Diabate has not yet demonstrated. But just in terms of what it's like to stick a 6'10" ideal NBA defender on a college floor, that's what you're looking at.

But: Dickinson. Michigan has a champagne problem here: they've got a KPOY candidate returning, add a five-star, and have only 40 minutes to offer them at C. I think we can take it as read that Diabate's getting every minute at C that doesn't go to Dickinson, give or take one of those games where the refs get wild with it. Hopefully that's 10 or 15 minutes. Michigan cannot play Moussa Diabate for 10 MPG. So: he's going to play some four.

One thing that I think works in favor of Dickinson/Diabate lineups is how Michigan played after Isaiah Livers went out. When Brandon Johns took over the starting job at the 4, things were suddenly reminiscent of the Jordan Murphy/Daniel Oturu Minnesota teams. (Minus Richard Pitino looking pained at the general higgeldy-piggeldy unfolding in front of his face.) Michigan ran a ton of high-low post sets that were generally effective.

That was an on-the-fly adjustment to an injury. Now Michigan has an entire offseason planning around the fact that they're going to have two effective post scorers on the floor at all times. The high-low install and repetition is going to be relentless, and that's going to give those twin towers lineups more viability. Hunter Dickinson is a fabulous passer who's demonstrated he has an elbow jumper. Moussa Diabate should be able to dunk everything. Inverting what should be the usual high-low combination—Johns or Terrance Williams feeding Dickinson—in twin towers situations should give Michigan a path to enough offensive efficiency to run both guys out there, especially because those lineups project to be sheer hell for opposing offenses. Or just running it like normal, something Matt addressed in his scouting post:

The two possessions starting at the :28 second mark above provide a glimpse into the future. The first is high-low action from the wing where Diabate places the pass to the right of a defender that is playing 3/4 post-defense to prevent a catch in the middle of the paint. The pass placement is such that only his teammate can catch it, while leading him just enough so that he can turn, put the defender on his hip and convert an easy layup. Much of the same on the second possession, with this delivery coming from the corner rather than the wing. The common theme with both is that Moussa has good spatial awareness, great execution in terms of pass placement and soft touch.

I do think there will be an offensive dropoff when Diabate is at the four; I don't think there will be an overall efficiency drop. This looks like it'll be something like the Wagner/Teske center battery from a few years ago that allowed both guys to go full-blast without worrying too much about foul trouble or getting worn out.

Is this the best defensive center pairing in the country?

Almost has to be? Michigan finished third in 2P% defense last year with Davis playing ~10 MPG. Michigan did not double the post at all—a total of 10 possessions Synergy filed as hard doubles all season. Dickinson was all alone, and just looking at opposing C stats doesn't do Dickinson justice because there are a fair few buckets when he's on the bench.

And yet. Late-season trepidation about Dickinson's defense getting exposed by the various Big Ten/tourney kaiju resulted in this:

• TREVION WILLIAMS: 6/19 from two, 2 A, 1 TO, 88 ORTG.
• LUKA GARZA: 5/17 from two, 1 A, 2 TO, 83 ORTG.
• TRAYCE JACKSON-DAVIS: 3/12 from two, 3 A, 2 TO, 70 ORTG.
• EJ LIDDELL: 6/20 from two (two games), 6 A, 4 TO, 113 and 133 ORTGs.
• KOFI COCKBURN: 6/10 from two, 0 A, 2 TO, 105 ORTG.
• TRENDON WATFORD: 4/10 from two, 0 A, 0 TO, 78 ORTG.
• CODY RILEY: 2/6 from two, 3 A, 2 TO, 64 ORTG.

That's a paddling.

Liddell, and to a lesser extent Cockburn, were the only guys with any success against him. Liddell's was mostly because he went 6/9 from three. Dickinson is not particularly switchable and had problems closing out last year—he fouled a lot attempting to contest long off the dribble twos and his ability to get out on pick and pop  was questionable—but that appears to be his main weakness defensively. Anyone trying to take it to him in the post got obliterated, except Cockburn. And there aren't many Cockburns in the world.

Add in Moussa Diabate and you have the perfect complement. Diabate is built to obliterate teams that want to pick and pop. He can switch on screens, or his athleticism and length allow him to recover on shooters. There are going to be games where it makes sense to play Diabate 20 or 25 minutes and crush five-out teams. I'm envisioning Dickinson getting all the Zed Key minutes versus OSU and limiting his Liddell exposure to 5-10 minutes.

What's more, the dynamics of having two guys who could legitimately play 30 MPG if they weren't on the same team makes both guys better. They don't have to be so careful about fouls; they don't have to marshal their energy so much. The outlook here is better than any I can remember.