Evaluating Michigan’s playmaking options on opening night

Michigan’s offense didn’t show any signs of early-season rust when it took the court on Wednesday night. The Wolverines ran up 96 points in one of the best offensive showings of the Juwan Howard era.

Simply put, the U-M offense got whatever it wanted whether it chose to attack in transition, in the post, via set plays, or out of ball screens. Michigan scored 1.3 points per possession, a mark it only topped three times last season, against Presbyterian, Iowa and Indiana.

Forty minutes of basketball isn’t enough to draw any leaping conclusions, but it is a lot more than the zero games of data we spent the last six months analyzing. After the win, I dove into the film to look at who Juwan Howard put in playmaking roles and how they fared with those opportunities.