Michigan Basketball: 3 Predictions for Wolverines at Maryland

Wagner builds on his best effort

In the Nebraska game, Franz Wagner had a breakout game of sorts, scoring 20 points for the first time this season and breaking out of a little funk.

Coming into tonight’s game, Franz is scoring 11 points, averaging 7.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists. He’s also shooting 51 percent from the field and considering he’s just making 26 percent of his 3-pointers, it shows how far he’s come as a finisher.

If Maryland focuses much of its defense on Dickinson and throws doubles at him, Wagner and Livers will get plenty of open looks just like they did against the Huskers. Wagner was just 2-of-7 in that game from deep, but the best thing about his performance was the 16 shot attempts.

Prior to Nebraska, Wagner was averaging less than seven attempts per game — a number far too low for a player of his caliber. So hopefully, that’s been corrected because Wagner has got to hunt his shot like Isaiah Livers will do.

Even if Livers misses a few to start, as he did against the Huskers, he never wavers and ended up making three huge triples in Lincoln. Simply put, he’s one of the best spot-up 3-point shooters in the Big Ten and he will make Maryland play with 3-4 makes tonight.

Wagner may not resolve his 3-point struggles tonight, but I think he will make a couple from deep, while using his size inside to score between 15-20.