As collegiate football ends and collegiate basketball gets underway the 2022 Michigan basketball squad has some important questions to answer. 

The Wolverines have started off their season with some shaky moments, almost losing to Lipscomb and Ohio University and losing to Central Michigan. They seem to start the game slow and this really affects the final score in the fourth quarter. Hunter Dickinson is a force and will continue to be, but Michigan’s real problem is the bad guard play. 

Terrence Williams hasn’t been the player that the Wolves need, and the rest of the Wolverines guards are young and inexperienced. Jett Howard will become a very good player in the future but at the moment he seems to play too fast. Dug McDaneil is a shifty and fast point guard but he also plays too fast sometimes and rushes almost all of his shots. Kobe Bufkin is another young sophomore that has some very promising future ahead of him. He plays fierce and with grit every game and even seems to be the backbone of the Wolverines some nights. All in all, the future looks promising for Michigan.

Michigan has played very tough opponents in the first games of the season including Kentucky, Virginia, and UNC. All of these games the Wolverines unfortunately lost in very close fashion, but it all goes back to what I said earlier. Michigan struggles in the first half of basketball games, then when they start to make a comeback it falls just short because of the rough start they created for themselves. As the Wolves entered Big Ten play this was not the case. Michigan started hot and on chunk runs of 10 and more. The first game of Big Ten play included playing a tough Maryland at home. Michigan started on a 17-0 run and Maryland never recovered, losing 81-46. Michigan then played Penn State in a good matchup at Crisler, Michigan played with confidence and Hunter Dickinson could not be stopped. They ended up winning by 10, 79-69. 

The third game of conference play entailed a heated rival matchup versus Michigan State. As usual Breslin was rocking and also as usual Michigan was slow. They really never could get a footing at the Breslin Center losing the game by 5, 50-55. Michigan needs to work on coming out of the gates firing on all cylinders like they did against Maryland. They also need to get the ball to Kobe Bufkin, when he is involved he changes the course of a game with his energy and fire power. 

Michigan will play their next game away at Iowa on Thursday, January 12 at 7:00 ET. Hopefully they come out throwing the ball down inside to Hunter and finding Kobe when possible.