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Welcome to Form Tracker, a weekly feature where we rate Michigan players based on their individual performance on a 1-through-10 scale to sort through the ebbs and flows of the college basketball season and track how players progress and develop.

The ratings are set on an inexact measurement of expectation, performance, role, importance (or anything else deemed important). As readers, your job is to provide balance by voting on whether my score is too high, too low, or sounds about right. We’ll also include weekly highlights of each player to look back at their performance over the last week and help you vote.

This week’s edition covers Michigan’s back-to-back wins over Northwestern and Ohio State and features high-water marks for Kobe Bufkin, Hunter Dickinson and Joey Baker.

Kobe Bufkin: 9.5/10

The box score says Kobe Bufkin was fantastic over the last week; the film says he was even better. Bufkin played the best game of his sophomore year on Thursday in Evanston, then he doubled down and did it again on Sunday against Ohio State.

The most impressive part of Bufkin’s development this season has been just how many different things he’s asked to do on the floor. Bufkin is Michigan’s starting shooting guard, backup point guard, and primary wing rebounder (20 rebounds in two games!). He guards the opposition’s best guard, has to help two freshmen next to him, and is going to play 38 minutes in any competitive game. When you are asked to do that many different things, it is hard to be good at any one of them.

With all that responsibility, it is no surprise that Bufkin has had some tough weeks throughout the season. After battling through those stretches, he put it all together over the last two games. He didn’t just manage to check all those boxes; he excelled in his role and was often the best player on the floor.

Now the only question is whether this was one great week for Bufkin, or a sign that he’s turned the corner into someone who can perform at this level consistently and carry this team on a late-season run.

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