Five thoughts on Michigan’s roster outlook after recent commits

Share

Tweet

Print

Email

Michigan landed its second commitment in the last ten days on Wednesday night when Malachi Brown committed to the Wolverines. Quinn Costello had been one of the top targets on Michigan’s board for the entire summer before he committed, while Brown was relatively unheard of. The 6-foot-5 wing didn’t even have a Division I offer before September, when UCSB and Michigan jumped on board with offers.

Now, the Wolverines have a three-man class in hand with a top-50 recruit, an international big man, and an under-the-radar hidden gem.

Here are five thoughts on the Wolverines’ class up to this point, the roster projection for the future, and the impact that NIL and revenue sharing are having on this current recruiting cycle.

1. The returning core has to be a roster priority

If this season goes well, Michigan will have the opportunity to bring back a significant part of its core from this year’s team.

The Wolverines have six projected rotation players with at least one year of eligibility remaining after this season, and at least two or three players in that group should be starters. That group includes Elliot Cadeau, LJ Cason, Trey McKenney, Winters Grady, Morez Johnson, and Aday Mara. And that’s without mentioning promising development pieces like Oscar Goodman, Ricky Liburd, and Malick Kordel.

There are multiple future starting lineups that you can build from that group if all of them return next season. That’s also probably 75% of a legitimate Big Ten rotation. On the other hand, it is likely to be an expensive and sometimes impossible task to keep a group together.

Michigan returns four players from last year’s team, but would have hoped to return even more at this point last year. The reality is that the NBA and the transfer portal are always looming.

If Dusty May likes this year’s roster as much as he has indicated, keeping that core together will have to be a priority in terms of both investment and fit.