If you hoped to know Michigan’s best player, lineup, or style after one exhibition game. You’re going to have to keep waiting.
The answer to “What’s Michigan?” is that there’s enough depth on this roster that we still don’t know. This team doesn’t have one go-to guy; it has a handful. There’s not one way to play on offense; there are multple.
Even with its tricky zone, Oakland didn’t present enough challenges to determine whether any of those options will withstand tougher tests. The Wolverines easily dispatched the Golden Grizzlies, coasting to a balanced 92-48 win.
All ten scholarship Wolverines who saw the floor scored, with five in double figures, and none scored more than 15 points. Michigan had three starters with at least four assists and eight players hit at least one 3-pointer.
Everything isn’t going to work on every night, but tonight it did. Michigan showed that it has enough options to feel good about itself, at least for a team with a new roster and a new coach on October 20th. The Wolverines didn’t look like a group trying to figure out what Dusty May wanted, they looked like a group that was bought into the vision and starting to click into place.
Preseason games are a lot better at telling you if you have a lot of work to do than if you are good. Beating Oakland by 44 points doesn’t prove that the Wolverines are great, but they surpassed expectations in the first test of the year.