As the NCAA basketball season rolls on, the Michigan Wolverines have slowly but surely found some traction, but they still have some questions that they need to answer. 

Michigan has played a very tough schedule this year, and the team has paid its dues for this. I am definitely not saying that a tough schedule is a bad thing, but a young Michigan team has had to learn quickly through some bad losses. The Wolverines play some of their best games against good opponents and seem to thrive as the underdog. However, the team played some of its worst games this season against the worst opponents, such as this past Sunday when almost losing to the worst team in the BIG 10: Minnesota. I also understand that the BIG 10 is the second best conference in the NCAA according to the KenPom rankings. With this information, Michigan needs to use all of this as fuel to play its best basketball coming down the stretch because the team is dangerously close to missing the NCAA tournament and becoming an NIT team. 

Kobe Bufkin, Hunter Dickinson and Jett Howard (when healthy) need to continue scoring double digit totals. Like I mentioned in my previous article, these pieces for the Wolverines are their best. Jett brings the heat from the three line, Kobe is a tough and gritty guard that will get his, and Hunter is the planet that the Wolverines revolve around. 

The biggest question going forward though is Jett Howard’s health. He injured his ankle in the win this past weekend against Minnesota and losing a key player for the Wolverines seriously hinders their game plan and is extremely detrimental to any hopes for an NCAA Tournament bid. A positive is that without Jet in the lineup, the Wolverines appeared to hold their own against the #1 Purdue Boilermakers this past Thursday despite the narrow loss. The next two games for the Wolverines consist of Penn State and Northwestern. The outcomes of these games can and probably will determine the result of their postseason.