The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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APRIL 2023 ❱ THE WOLVERINE 37 BY CLAYTON SAYFIE J unior center Hunter Dickinson is used to playing meaningful basket- ball at this time of year. The 2021 second-team All-American helped his team to the Elite Eight as a freshman and the Sweet 16 as a sophomore in 2022, averaging 16.6 points per game and serv- ing as a key piece in all seven career NCAA Tournament outings for fourth-year head coach Juwan Howard. This year has been different, though, an uphill battle all the way through. It was a roller coaster ride with too many dips and not enough peaks. Not only did the Wol- verines' Big Ten-record Sweet 16 streak end at five, they didn't even make the Big Dance for the first time since 2016 and second time since 2010. They've won 23 NCAA Tournament games over the last 10 years, tied for sec- ond with North Carolina and behind only Gonzaga, but didn't do enough to earn the opportunity to add to the total. Instead, Michi- gan found itself in the NIT — unfamil- iar territory — with the college basketball world questioning whether or not it would even accept the invite. After arriving back in Ann Arbor from the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, where Howard's crew laid an egg in a 62- 50 loss to Rutgers, the team got together and discussed what it wanted to do. No- body hesitated. Michigan's three goals it set at the be- ginning of the season were to win the Big Ten regular-season title, the conference tournament and the national champion- ship. They'd finish 0-for-3 regardless of what happened in a potential NIT run, but the program's mantra is "for competitors only," and Howard brought in the types of players who wanted to give it a go. Dickinson probably wouldn't have known what to do with himself in mid- March anyway — he certainly wasn't planning on being in this spot when he decided last spring to return for his junior season in Ann Arbor. "I try to think of it as, we owe the guys who came before us, the people that put on the Michigan jersey before us, to try to represent them and all the stuff they did," Dickinson said. "Me personally, and the rest of the team, tried to go out there and play our best for ourselves, but also for the people who came before us." Michigan performed admirably in the first round, beating a high-scoring To- ledo team from just down US-23 by a 90- 80 score at Crisler Center, a place where U-M didn't want to be playing a game during the postseason but made the most of it anyway. Then, they blew an 8-point lead with less than a minute left in the second round at Vanderbilt, falling 66- 65. Dickinson said it was an "extremely" difficult ending to a challenging season. Michigan was a young team plagued by injury, with graduate point guard Jae- lin Llewellyn, a Princeton transfer, going down with a season-ending ACL tear Dec. 4, forcing freshman Dug McDaniel into the starting lineup. The 5-foot-11, 160-pounder had to find his way as part of a roster with almost no continuity, with Dickinson being the only returning starter. McDaniel improved as the season went on, and so did the Wol- verines, who were 11-10 at one point but got back on the NCAA Tournament bubble heading into the final week of the regular season,. Of the 30 most-experienced teams in Division I, per Ken Pomeroy, 16 made the NCAA Tournament (and 31 of the top 73). Michigan ranked 310th, and only one less-experienced team, Princeton (313th), earned a bid. That lack of experience played a part in the Wolverines losing close games, including two overtime road tilts in the regular season's final week, at Illinois (91-87) and Indiana (75-73). They posted a 4-13 record in games decided by two possessions or fewer and/or in overtime, with that .235 win- n i n g p e rc e n ta ge checking in 336th in the country. Ac- cording to Bart Torvik, Michigan lost more of those outings than any team in America. THE SHOT Michigan was on a bit of a tear com- ing out of February. The Wolverines went 6-2 that month and were riding a three- game winning streak, with victories over Michigan State, Rutgers and Wisconsin. The team's big man provided some magic as March approached, too. Dick- inson's 30-foot heave at the horn tied up the Feb. 26 game against the Badgers and UNFULFILLED EXPECTATIONS Despite His Excellent Play And Leadership For One Of The Nation's Youngest Teams, Hunter Dickinson Wasn't Able To Carry The Team To Its Goals Dickinson raised his level of play down the stretch, averaging 23.7 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in the final six games. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL Head coach Juwan Howard on Dickinson "He's shown so much great leadership, he's shown that he's a true Michigan man, and you've seen how he's dialed into representing what this team is all about."