Michigan Basketball: Juwan Howard turns focus to 2021 recruiting class

Michigan basketball might be looking to add a piece for next season still, but for the most part, Juwan Howard seems focused on 2021 after extending a slew of offers to key targets over the weekend.

While lots of Wolverines fans were following the progress of the NFL draft, Michigan basketball head coach Juwan Howard was busy recruiting and pushing ahead to the 2021 class.

To be clear, Howard and the Wolverines had already offered 10 players in 2021 heading into the weekend, but after handing out four more to Kobe Bufkin, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Warley and Isaiah Barnes, it’s now 14.

Bufkin should be a name Michigan basketball fans recognize as he is one of the top recruits in the state of Michigan. He’s a 6-foot-4 combo guard who ranks in the top 100 according to 247 sports.  He’s listed as the 20th shooting guard nationally but even though he’s not a superstar, Michigan was smart to offer when it did.

Michigan State just landed a commitment from Pierre Brooks, another top guard in the state of Michigan and the Spartans are pushing hard for Bufkin too. With zero in-state commitments in his first recruiting class, it’d also be a good get for Howard.

Yet, Bufkin should also find Michigan basketball appealing. For one, he could be walking into some minutes right away in the 2021-22 season as his main competition for the starting job at shooting guard could be Cole Bajema and Adrien Nunez.

At the very least, a player like Bufkin, who can legitimately play both guard positions and who can defend, should have a good chance of making the rotation. As another left-handed player, it would be interesting to see a backcourt duo of Bufkin and Zeb Jackson.

The offer to Holmgren, a five-star big man and the No. 2 overall prospect in the 2021 class shows that Howard won’t shy away from the five-star recruits, despite what happened with Isaiah Todd and Josh Christopher.

Howard knows how to recruit and while I don’t expect Michigan to have much chance with Holmgren, unless Juwan is able to appeal to him as a expert coaching bigs, it wouldn’t be shocking if he found a way to reel in a five-star in this class or 2022.

One player who’s on the cusp of being a five-star is Jalen Warley, a top-30 combo guard out of Pennsylvania. Outside of Michigan, Louisville is the other big name program to offer Warley, so it feels like the Wolverines could have a solid shot.

As with Bufkin, Warley would have a great chance to play early and since Hunter Dickinson was the No. 32 overall prospect in 2020, it’s realistic to think a kid like Warley could be the headliner of Michigan’s class.

Getting a five-star recruit will probably happen at some point, but the idea every year should be to get around three top-100 recruits. Those are guys who play 2-3 years in the Big Ten and they are players you can build a program around.

However, with possibly 6-7 scholarships available when things are all said and done, Michigan basketball needs to do its homework and it appears the Wolverines have with fast-rising Isaiah Barnes.

Barnes, who is from Illinois, has picked up a bunch of Big Ten offers recently and also has programs like Kansas in the mix as well as Michigan. Maryland, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois are all teams to watch in the Big Ten and Barnes would be the ideal wing for the Wolverines.

He’s a talented scorer and even though he’s not ranked by 247 sports, he’s a kid that’s been surging and it will be interesting to see if Howard’s connections to Chicago can help here. It didn’t with Nimari Burnett, so we’ll see but it’s a good recruitment for the Wolverines to get involved in, especially right now.

According to UMHoops ($), Howard also made contact with two other five-star recruits in Efton Reid and Jaden Hardy. Hardy has been offered and while Reid hasn’t yet, he has talked about visiting, which makes an offer seem inevitable.

Howard has extended 14 already and before long, it will be time to start expecting some commitments, which is why U-M needed to get to work.