Michigan basketball season preview, storylines for 2024-25 season

Michigan basketball is less than a month away from its Nov. 4 regular season opener against Cleveland State at Crisler Center. With almost an entirely new coaching staff and roster, the Wolverines will look to rebound off an 8-24 season and one of the worst performances from a Michigan basketball team ever.

The Wolverines were picked to finish ninth in a Big Ten conference that is arguably the most wide open it has been in years. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi also projected Michigan to be a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament in his latest Bracketology release.

Here are three major storylines to pay attention to as the new-look Wolverines inch closer to their season.

It feels like an eternity ago that Dusty May was hired away from Florida Atlantic, but the 47-year-old head coach is finally ready to begin his first season with the Maize and Blue in Ann Arbor. May was officially hired on March 24, and now, almost seven busy months later, the Wolverines are gearing up for a hopeful 2024-25 season.

One of May’s first tasks as head coach of the Michigan basketball program was to assemble his roster. (We’ll discuss that more in a moment.) With nearly all of last year’s players and coaches departing, May was left with an empty cupboard that needed to be restocked.

In the span of just a few short weeks, May had to decide what the team’s identity and style of play would look like, and he was tasked with building his roster and coaching staff around that identity.

May has made it very clear on multiple occasions that the Wolverines will play an uptempo style of basketball, and the team will largely be shaped around that identity.

“Our goal is for the defense to never stop and get set, to continue to put pressure as early and often,” May said in an August press conference.

The Michigan head coach echoed the same sentiment during last week’s Big Ten Media Days.

“We have to find a way to get the ball up the floor quickly enough before the defense gets set where we can generate a good shot, and we’re not having to get into a bunch of slugfests, because I’m not sure we’re built for those slugfests right now.”

This style of basketball will be interesting to watch, given the presumption that Michigan plans on starting two 7-footers in Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf. May said during Big Ten Media Days that Goldin and Wolf have found good rhythm offensively “90 percent of the time they’ve been on the court together” during practice.

At first glance, May’s hope of starting two 7-footers doesn’t necessarily blend with a fast-paced style of basketball, but it’s arguably the biggest storyline heading into the season. The team will make its first public appearance on the basketball court on Oct. 20 against Oakland in an exhibition game at Little Caesars Arena.

In his first month on the job, May had to essentially build a roster from the ground up. Will Tschetter, Nimari Burnett and Jace Howard were the only three scholarship players that returned from last season, and May’s job was to construct a team. Michigan added 11 newcomers to the 16-man roster, which included six from the Transfer Portal and four freshmen.

When May was looking for players in the Transfer Portal, his focus, he revealed during Media Days, was to get players from winning programs.

“What we try to do is identify players in the portal that come from winning programs, and they may not have been the star of the team, but one of the best players. … We just felt like winning would be important to those guys, and they’d represent Michigan the right way.”

May landed on the following six players:

– F/C Danny Wolf (Yale)

– G Tre Donaldson (Auburn)

– G Roddy Gayle Jr. (Ohio State)

– G Rubin Jones (North Texas)

– F Sam Walters (Alabama)

– C Vlad Goldin (Florida Atlantic)

A good chunk of Michigan’s 200 minutes per game will likely come from those six players. Freshman L.J. Cason has also earned a lot of hype heading into his first season of college basketball.

The big question, though, will be: Can a large group of newcomers be cohesive on the basketball court? There have been instances in which it has worked great (see 2023-24 NC State, 2022-23 Kansas State), but there have also been instances in which it has not.

As discussed earlier, Goldin and Wolf coexisting on the court is a major key for the team to be successful. May clearly has confidence in both players, and he trusts each of them and their unique skill sets enough to play them on the floor at the same time.

However, May said during Big Ten Media Days that Michigan will “put four shooters on the court at all times.” At 7 feet tall and 250 pounds, Wolf isn’t the most lethal threat from beyond the arc, although he can shoot it.

Last season at Yale, Wolf shot 34.5 percent from distance on 2.6 attempts per game. He made 29 3-pointers throughout the entire season. Does May see Wolf as a threat from beyond the arc? Has the Yale transfer improved his shooting to fit the billing of the fourth shooter on the court?

If the answer to either of the two questions above is no, how does May operate rotating players to get four shooters on the court at all times? Would he play Sam Walters, a career 39.4 percent sniper from deep, more? If so, shooting would improve, but the physicality down low would not be as effective — Wolf has two inches and 50 pounds on Walters.

It will be intriguing to see how May values length and shooting. The Michigan head coach predicts that the Wolverines won’t have any problem knocking down open shots. If the team is getting enough perimeter scoring from guards like Tre Donaldson, Rubin Jones, Nimari Burnett and Roddy Gayle Jr., perhaps leaving Wolf in the game for a longer period of time for the sake of length and physicality wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Regardless of whether May values length or shooting more, the Michigan coach has already revealed that rarely, if ever, will any player be on the court for 35 minutes or more.

“We play uptempo with a lot of possessions, so it’s difficult for our players to play 32 to 35 minutes a game if we’re playing the style that we like to play,” May said during his August press conference.

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