Hey, remember this? The last time I posted one of these John Beilein was looking forward to a season with Iggy Brazdeikis and Jordan Poole in addition to defensive aces Zavier Simpson and Jon Teske. Fast forward a few months and Michigan basketball is doing an admirable job of rebuilding society after a nuclear winter.

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

Now for Interchangeable Wing City:

ROSTER

Franz Wagner (Fr.): 10 MPG in a league where a 24-year-old Derrick Walton is a backup. 39% from three with the international line. Moe's brother.

Eli Brooks (Jr.): Looked like transfer bait for much of the season, but finished well. Good defender; seemingly had the yips on offense for much of the season. Needs to become a 35% three-point shooter to be viable.

Cole Bajema (Fr.): Hopefully this is a Caris 2.0 situation. Caris 1.0 was hard to play as a freshman because he was a stick.

Adrien Nunez (So.): Recruited as Just A Shooter; 1/13 from three on the year; judging anyone on nonsense garbage time attempts is stupid; still a bit ominous that Nunez didn't get a look despite some real rough times with Brooks over the past year.

David DeJulius (So.): Point guard on a team with a senior Zavier Simpson so if he's going to get more than 5 MPG it's going to come at the two.

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS

So Franz is an instant dude, right? And he can play the two? Please tell me he can play the two?  

Probably a dude. Ace detailed why in Wagner's hello post. Franz was a legitimate rotation piece, particularly late in Alba's season…

Here's Franz Wagner, not your typical 17-year-old, scoring 14 points on 100% shooting in Game 2 of the BBL finals against an Euroleague team in Bayern Munich. He also hit a couple of clutch shots in the 4th quarter. Not afraid of the moment. pic.twitter.com/fGGTwpT11R

— NBADraftProspects (@draftprosnba) June 21, 2019

…as a 17-year-old. At the same stage Moe got 18 minutes with Alba's senior team. Wagner had over 600—that's the equivalent of playing 18 MPG over the course of a college regular season. Between that and some time on loan at a lower level he piled up a ton of experience, much of that at a higher level than most college basketball.

Wagner's #1 skill is going to translate, because it is shooting and Wagner's three pointer is of the instant-release, infinitely-repeatable, established-at-the-FIBA-line variety:

He was a 39% three-point shooter across all competitions and had a FT% near 90%. He is an elite, elite, elite shooter.

[After: but not just a shooter!]

He is also Not Just A Shooter. The highlight film embedded below is most useful for its time spent on Wagner's defense but also has some sections where Wagner posts up smaller guys on the block, catching entry passes over the top and finishing as 6'2" guys try to front him. He's also got long arms that allow him to swoop in and finish layups even when decent defense pushes him out of the range where you'd expect him to be effective.

Wagner projects to be an excellent finisher. Per UMHoops Wagner was 62% at the rim against grown men last year, a couple points better than Brazdeikis over the course of the season and significantly better from two than Iggy in a large sample against quality competition. Brazdeikis shot 46% from two in Big Ten play, and when he put his name in the draft his lack of length and athleticism were knocks that saw him drop to the second round. Wagner measured in with a 6'8" wingspan when he was a 6'5" kid at the 2017 Jordan Brand Classic. Poole was 6'7" and Brazdeikis 6'9" at the most recent NBA combine; Wagner is probably pushing seven-foot-even now.

arms: long

As far as Wagner's ability to play the two: also, yeah, probably. Even if he is 6'9". Offensively it's not even a question. Wagner's a sniper and accomplished driver of closeouts who will at least be a freshman Stauskas. While defense is murkier, these days positional designations on defense are close to irrelevant for guys 2 through 4 since they're going to get switched onto each other's guys and often the point guard.

Early indications are that Wagner might actually be a plus defender—a couple of NBA-focused scouting reports mention his D as a positive, and if you skip ahead to 4 minutes here you get a number of plays on which Wagner disrupts plays with his long arms and chases guards around a bunch of screens:

He's built differently than his brother and looks like he'll be able to maintain at least wing quickness even as his height approaches Kevin Durant territory.

Wagner can easily slot in as a small forward if one of the other shooting guard candidates busts out; this space is going to project that Johns and maybe even Castleton are going to get significant minutes at the 4 and that Wagner plays about 20 minutes at the 2 and 10 at the 3.

Ye gods what was this going to look like without Franz?

 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

It might have been okay! Michigan didn't seem to have any obviously good options but did have four shots at a decent, if likely suboptimal, Big Ten starter. Eli Brooks and David DeJulius were discussed in the point guard post, right after a Hoop Lens screenshot demonstrating that when Simpson was on the bench Michigan's offense died in a hole. Things were better when Brooks played next to Simpson, but the big obvious problem was the big obvious problem:

cupcakes excised

A Simpson/Brooks backcourt was probably the country's worst-shooting pair of short guys. If Brooks can hit an average number of threes he's a viable low-usage backup because he's a solid positional defender. Michigan would like to get more out of what's going to be at least 20 non-Franz minutes at the two.

DeJulius and Adrien Nunez are candidates to provide a bit more. They may not be especially strong or likely candidates but both came to Michigan with reputations as dead-eye shooters. They combined to go 2/28 from three on the season, which is [checks notes] Not Good. Almost all of those shots were garbage time late-clock jacks, so whatever.

A little more concerning is the fact that neither guy got much of a test drive despite Brooks's struggles—the chart above would have looked even more alarming halfway through the season. Beilein was notoriously tough on freshman point guards and DeJulius looked decently promising when he got a blip of playing time late in the Big Ten season. Nunez didn't even get that. Coaches are inherently conservative and last year's defense-focused team had cause to keep the pressure up with Brooks. But, uh… this is our concern, dude.

DDJ was an evil Walton-esque off the dribble sniper in high school and you have to believe that's still in there, waiting to bust out. Nunez was recruited by John Freakin' Beilein to be Just A Shooter, you have to believe that's still in there too. Getting there is a lot harder than it seemed a year ago.

And how about the other freshman?

Michigan's last and highest upside backup option is freshman Cole Bajema. He's a lot like Franz Wagner since he's a lanky jumbo sniper with some ability to drive. He's also the platonic opposite of Wagner because he spent his high school career about three feet from the Canadian border playing in Washington's smallest high school classification. Wagner may actually find the going a bit easier in Ann Arbor. Bajema's going to have culture shock, especially because he's skinny as heck.

Or at least he was. Bajema's by no means filled out but the most recent photo evidence of his existence is a lot more plausible than freshman Caris. He's 22:

Another few months with Sanderson and he'll be fine.

Bajema does bring something to the table that Wagner does not at this point: pick and roll ability. Wagner's assist rate was near zero and he did almost all of his work off the ball. Bajema is described as a 6'7" combo guard:

“He’s great in ball-screen situations, which he’ll have a chance to do in that system. I think he projects as a play-making combo guard,” Brady said. “He’s a fantastic ball-handler in the half-court. He can shoot it on his own, he’s got great vision, and he’s got the length to see over the defense. He can actually capitalize on (his vision), he can make all the passes that he needs to make.”

Forgive the excessive slo-mo here but Bajema does have the ability to start and stop to get himself free from defenders for pull-up threes and drives:

Bajema's probably going to have a rough go to start but if he can emerge midseason as the primary backup at the two Michigan will be in good shape now and going forward.

OUTLOOK

Franz is all the difference in the world as he fills 30-35 minutes in the 2-4 spots that were entirely vacated by early NBA draft entries. And he should be an instant high-level player. I'd be surprised if he wasn't Brazdeikis's equal on offense, maybe starting out slower because he's younger but improving over the course of the season instead of stagnating. He's got a couple inches on Iggy, 3-4 more inches of wingspan, and will be at least his equal as a shooter.

Defensively he's likely to be an upgrade on Poole, quick enough to take advantage of his crazy gumby arms and more professional in his approach. A lot of people say he's headed for the first round of the draft, and you can see why. He's the odds-on favorite to lead Michigan in scoring.

The murkier question is what happens with the other guys. And there will be time Michigan needs to fill. Because the roster sets up with only a few guys able to play the 4—Livers, Johns, and maybe Castleton—without getting bashed on the boards, it's likely that Franz gets sucked up to the 3 for a big chunk of his minutes.

The good news is that someone is likely to emerge into a solid sixth man. The most likely outcome is early playing time for Brooks that people aren't too happy with because Brooks looks a lot like he did last year, and then Cole Bajema getting up to speed and providing size and shooting that outpace his competitors.