Michigan Basketball: 3 things we learned in blowout of Wisconsin

The goals are clear

When Juwan Howard was asked about the achievement of winning three straight games over ranked teams by 19 points or more, he responded that his team didn’t care about records and that the goal was winning a national championship. Here’s his quote:

So after another dominant win, the goals for Michigan basketball are clear: win the Big Ten championship and the national title.

It’s not going to be easy and this team, at some point, is going to struggle, maybe even this Saturday at Minnesota, but it’s capable of achieving both of those goals.

Offensively, Dickinson is as good as any freshman in the country and he will give Michigan two First-Team All-Big Ten performers along with Wagner. Livers gives them three NBA-caliber players because he will be in the league and that doesn’t even count Brown, Brooks and Mike Smith.

With Johns playing better and Austin Davis back, depth is less of an issue too. Seemingly every button pushed by the coaching staff is working and when you have essentially two head coaches assisting Juwan, since we know Saddi Washington will be one soon, it’s not hard to see why.

The schedule is still incredibly tough but as I’ve been saying, when you think about how to guard this team, it’s quite the conundrum.

If left one-on-one, Dickinson is going to score. It’s as simple as that and it doesn’t matter who you put on him. Smith’s confidence is only growing and his ability to create and score out of ball screens is sensational.

Wagner, Dickinson and basically the entire team has been dominant in the paint and on 2-point shots as every key rotation player is at 50 percent or above on 2-point attempts.

Then, you have six guys in the rotation who play at least 11 minutes who are shooting better than 37 percent from beyond the arc. Outside of turning the ball over too many times, this offense doesn’t have a weakness and unless U-M just shoots poorly, you aren’t going to stop it.

So all the pieces are there for a championship run and Juwan isn’t backing away from it. But aiming for championships and winning them are two very different things.