The 2019-20 Michigan basketball season began with a roller-coaster win over Appalachian State. That game proved to be quite the metaphor for the early part of the season, as this team has been all over the map in Juwan Howard’s first year at the helm. It’s a tradition as old as time (1966): let’s go over the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Michigan basketball season so far.

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The Good: Battle 4 Atlantis Championship

A bunch of college dudes get to take a late-November vaca from Michigan to the Bahamas. Float around in the lazy river, knock off a couple of top-ten opponents, you know, run-of-the-mill R&R stuff. 

That was about the extent of Michigan’s 7-0 start to the season which culminated in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament championship, which has produced the last two NCAA national champions (Villanova, Virginia). After taking down Iowa State in the tournament opener in a fairly competitive game (albeit a comfortable win), Michigan absolutely rolled up No. 6 North Carolina (73-64) and No. 8 Gonzaga (82-64), capping an undefeated and dominant November where they outscored their opponents by an average of 16 points per game. That includes four likely NCAA tournament teams. 

Michigan’s efforts in the Bahamas took them from unranked to No. 4 in the country, tied for the largest single-week jump in the history of the AP Poll.

While the luster of the North Carolina win has worn off considerably as the Tar Heels have since limped to an 8-6 record and are currently unranked (mostly due to the loss of star PG Cole Anthony), the Gonzaga win looks even better now than it did at the time. The Zags are the current No. 1 team in the nation, with Michigan being their only blemish, and were recently endorsed by The Athletic’s Seth Davis as a true national title favorite. Michigan led by double digits for the final 14 minutes of that game. 

Some were making the argument that Michigan should have jumped straight to No. 1 following their island getaway, and you can count me in that group. They were undefeated, had by far the best resume in the country, and simply were being punished for going into the season unranked (they did end up receiving a handful of first-place votes). Ah, preseason polls. Can’t really get too upset about it, as Michigan football has made a living on being overvalued in “expert” polls.

So the season started out pretty much perfectly. In a season where I expected Michigan would have a high floor but a low ceiling, given the loss of three starters and a future hall of fame coach from 2018-19, Michigan was showing that they possessed the necessary upside to once again put their names in the hat for national championship contention. And that whole “not being ranked No. 1” thing would sort itself out soon enough in their upcoming matchup with actual No. 1 Louisville.

Things were going great…until they weren’t.

The Bad: The Hangover pt. 4 – Louisville

Undefeated at 7-0. Record-setting rankings jump. All the momentum in the world. Chance to knock off the No. 1 team in the country on ESPN. What does all that amount to?

The Ugly: Only the lowest scoring first-half (18) for Michigan in eleven years, en route to a 58-43 loss. Didn’t see that coming. 

With seven minutes to go in the first half, Michigan had as many turnovers as points (5). Michigan trailed by double digits for the final 16 minutes, flipping the script from the Gonzaga game. It’s not often you see a team shoot 36.7% from the field, yet still blow out their opponent. That’s what Louisville did, as Michigan could muster only 25.9% shooting of their own.

While it would have been quite the bullet point for Juwan Howard to claim that he took his team to the top spot in the AP Poll within the first month of his college coaching career, the Louisville game proved that Michigan wasn’t quite ready to enter top-tier status. They had, however, built up quite the NCAA tournament resume with the above-mentioned wins, combined with…

The Good: Underrated wins over Creighton and Iowa

They didn’t seem like much at the time, considering Michigan was a 5.5 and 7.5 point favorite in these games, respectively. But these teams are currently a combined 22-7 against everyone not named Michigan, and both should be in the NCAA tournament field come March. Not only did Michigan win these games, they did so in very different ways, while covering the spread in each.

The Creighton game (79-69) was a classic John Beilein era Michigan performance. Michigan committed only seven fouls on the day, and Creighton did not make a free throw in the entire game. Low turnovers and low fouls are two of the Beilein commandments, and Michigan checked both boxes in this one. Beilein’s ears were probably ringing from Cleveland as the final horn sounded. Either that or they were ringing from Tristan Thompson yelling at him.

*Breaking side-note: John Beilein is in hot water after calling his players a bunch of thugs in a team meeting. He claims he meant to say “slugs”. What the actual hell is going with Beilein in Cleveland? His NBA coaching career is going off the rails hard and fast. I’ll wait for more information before making my final verdict on Beilein, as insensitive comments would be way out of left field for a man as liked and respected as he is. Even if he did mean to say slugs, what are you, 1,000 years old? Good luck relating to anyone over the age of seven.*

The Iowa game, on the other hand, was an old west shootout (103-91). Iowa got 44 points from breakout star Luka Garza, while Michigan countered with a balanced scoring effort. Seven different Wolverines scored between 18-8 points. Iowa has emerged as the #2 offensive team in the country, per Kenpom efficiency metrics, so this result isn’t too crazy. It is encouraging to see that Michigan is capable of winning a shootout, even though that isn’t their preferred style of play.

Interestingly, this was the game immediately following the Louisville tire fire. So, to recap: Michigan went from 82 points (Gonzaga) to 43 points (Louisville) to 103 points (Iowa) in a three-game span. 

Maybe the Louisville game was just a bump in an otherwise smooth road to success in 2019-20? That would have been a conceivable narrative in early December, until…

The Bad: Back-to-back losses to Illinois and Oregon

Uh oh. Whatever feel-good vibes remained from the trip to the Bahamas were dashed after dropping these two games. To be fair, neither can be considered bad losses. Michigan fell to Illinois 71-62 in Champaign, a game in which they actually entered as underdogs (+1.5) despite being the No. 5 team in the country at the time. It was a cold shooting night from outside that did them in, tying their worst 3pt output of the season (3-18). These nights happen over the course of a long season, you just hope to get them out of the way before tournament time.

The Oregon game was a heartbreaking 71-70 loss in overtime and stands as the only Michigan game decided by fewer than seven points so far this season. While a strong strength of schedule typically pays dividends down the road in terms of player and team development, the fact that so few games have been competitive down to the final buzzer is a bit concerning for the team’s mental makeup. This might not end up being a factor in the long run, but the final 10 seconds of OT sure looked to me like a team involved in their first crunch time scenario. An inbounds pass from your own 3 point line to the opponents 3 point line, leading to a hero ball prayer from Zavier Simpson. Just terrible execution.

A look back at the box score from this game makes it difficult to see how Michigan even got this game to OT. The Ducks outshot Michigan by a full 10% from the field, as the Wolverines missed a quackload (I apologize) of bunnies in the first half. Brandon Johns Jr. missed two dunks in a span of two minutes, before eventually righting the ship in the second half, making some key defensive plays and gritty buckets late to give Michigan a chance. On the night, Michigan shot better from 3 (42.9%) than they did from 2 (40%). That’s generally not how it works. 

The only saving grace for Michigan was that, as a team, they took much better care of the ball than Oregon. They totaled only 11 TOs in 45 minutes of game action, which helped make up for their struggles near the basket. I say “as a team” because one man has had major ball security issues this season, and it’s the guy you would least expect. This hurts, but I have to call it like I see it…

The Ugly: Zavier Simpson’s turnover problem

Simpson’s four turnovers against Oregon, including a bad traveling violation in OT, was one of the lowlights of what has become an ongoing issue for Michigan’s floor general in 2019-20. This is a strange new development for a player with 130 games of experience that will soon become Michigan’s all-time assist leader.

Though Simpson’s minutes are actually down a touch from last season, his turnovers have skyrocketed from 2.0 to 3.5 per game in 2019-20. Simpson has at least four turnovers in over half of Michigan’s games this season. This is minimizing the impact of all of the improvements he has made to his game this season. He is averaging career-highs in points (11.4) and assists (8.9) and has become a serviceable three-point shooter (36.1%), an area where he had been a liability in previous years. 

Michigan desperately needs Simpson to rediscover his ball control and decision making prowess from last season, or they will struggle to tread water in the wake of… 

Bonus Ugly: Isaiah Livers’ groin injury

This one hurts literally and figuratively. In a “get your mojo back” game against Presbyterian, Livers came up lame on a fast break and hasn’t been seen since. He remains out indefinitely, and his absence looms large. 

The trio of leaders on this team – Simpson, Livers, and center Jon Teske – form a dangerous triumvirate of weapons that all have unique and disparate skill sets. Simpson is the facilitator, Teske punishes opponents in the paint with his power and touch around the rim, and Livers is the slasher and floor spacer. Missing any one of the three limits the effectiveness of the other two, and could be a death sentence for Michigan’s championship hopes, conference or otherwise, depending on the length of the absence.  

It takes a team effort to replace Livers’ 50% shooting from distance (on 4.8 attempts per game), and it will be imperative for guys like Franz Wagner (32%) and Brandon Johns Jr. (21%) to accelerate their development if Michigan hopes to win even half of their games without Livers. 

Which is exactly what they’ve done so far in his absence. After taking care of business against outmatched UMass Lowell 86-60, Michigan was beaten soundly by their rivals in East Lansing, the first game of the Izzo-Howard era. Let’s go ahead and get the rest of the bad out of the way.

The Bad: Losing fourth straight game against Michigan State

We don’t need to spend too much time being critical of Michigan for dropping this game 87-69. It was always going to be a tall order to go into the consensus preseason No. 1 team’s house at less than 100% and pull off an upset. Despite shooting poorly from, well, pretty much everywhere (FG 36.2%, 3PT 21.7%, FT 63.6%), Michigan found a way to keep this game right around the 9 point spread against the nation’s top offensive squad for most of the way, before finally running out of counterpunches late in the second half. They will need Livers back to have any chance at taking the rematch in February.

One concerning development from this game is the repeated dominance MSU star point guard Cassius Winston displays in his matchup against Zavier Simpson, who is nationally heralded for his defensive capabilities. At the risk of venturing into hot take territory, I have to point out that Simpson has gone a combined 19-55 (34.5%) from the field the last two seasons against MSU, as opposed to Winston’s 30-62 (48.4 %). Winston posted a career-high 32 points in this year’s edition.

Interestingly, despite attempting nearly 300 fewer 3s in his college career than Winston, Simpson sure does fall into a trap of jacking them up against MSU, to the tune of 3-19 over the previous four matchups. Winston has only attempted 16 threes in those games, despite that being a strength of his game (42.2% career). I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Zavier Simpson attempting five 3s per game isn’t exactly what Beilein and Howard were drawing up on the whiteboard in pregame.

What I’m getting at is, at what point do we question whether Simpson is pressing in an attempt to not be outdueled by Winston, who is a national player of the year candidate? Simpson just doesn’t play to his potential against MSU, and the gap between he and Winston has never seemed larger than it was in this game. I’ll be interested to see how Simpson responds on Feb. 8 in Ann Arbor. He’s had too good of a Michigan career to not be given the benefit of the doubt.

All told, Michigan’s crazy November run has put them in a position where, despite losing three of their last five games, they are in no imminent danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. They are at risk of falling out of regular-season Big Ten contention in the absence of Livers, considering they are currently looking up at nine teams in the conference standings after their 1-2 start. But Michigan has always been a team that shines come tournament time, and they have banked enough quality wins to not rush Livers back, and will hopefully go into the post-season at full-strength.

The analytics say that Michigan is a well-balanced team featuring a top 30 offense and defense (per Kenpom), and they have played one of the most difficult schedules in the country among power conference teams. Michigan seems appropriately ranked as the current No. 19 team in the country, while flashing legit top-ten potential when playing their best. 

The Good: The future under Juwan Howard

For all of the ups and downs of the 2019-20 season thus far, Michigan appears to be in good hands with Juwan Howard at the helm. The ultimate success of this season was always going to hinge upon the play of the holdovers from the John Beilein era, and how well Howard could maintain the well-oiled machine that Beilein built before leaving for the NBA. So far he has done a good job of letting his veteran leaders be who they are without trying to reinvent the wheel.

Howard seems to be playing more of an emotional leader type of role rather than an Xs and Os strategist, leaning on his balanced group of assistants to handle the finer details that Howard is still learning. This piece from MLive highlights just how critical retaining assistant coach Saddi Washington from John Beilein’s staff was for bringing Howard up to speed with his new team. Howard appears to have surrounded himself with a diverse group of assistants that fill all the gaps needed for Howard to learn on the job without sacrificing immediate team success.

The biggest reason to be hopeful for the future: Juwan Howard went fishing for some recruits, and they were biting. According to 247Sports Michigan’s upcoming 2020 class is the fourth-best in the country and is the only Big Ten school to crack the top-ten. Barring any pulled commitments, Howard’s first haul will include 5-star PF Isaiah Todd, the 12th ranked player in the country, along with three 4-stars in C Hunter Dickinson (No. 34), SG Zeb Jackson (No. 61), and PF Terrance Williams (No. 84).

They are also in the final mix for 5-star SG Josh Christopher, the 11th ranked player in the class. Landing Christopher would take what is already shaping up to be one of the best UM classes since the fab five and put them right alongside Duke and Kentucky for the top class in the nation. 

Apparently there have been whispers that Christopher is indeed beginning to lean Michigan…

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As anyone familiar with Michigan football can attest, recruiting rankings don’t win games. But basketball is a star-driven game where individuals have a greater impact over the result than most team sports. Locking up this level of talent would be an exciting new frontier for Michigan, who didn’t do a whole lot of whale watching under John Beilein, as he tended to target less hyped kids and develop them into stars. He was damn good at it too. I can only imagine what he would have done with a class like this. 

But is it any real surprise kids are lining up to play for Juwan Howard? John Beilein couldn’t do this…

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