Michigan Basketball: 5 things we learned against Wayne State

Michigan basketball opened its season with an exhibition against Wayne State on Friday and here’s a breakdown as well as five things we learned. 

If you weren’t able to catch Michigan basketball‘s exhibition game yesterday night against Wayne State, don’t worry, we got ya covered!

Before we get to the coverage, I first must shout out Wayne State and their new fieldhouse. It’s beautiful and if you weren’t able to see Michigan play Wayne State at the fieldhouse, hopefully, you can check out a different event there in the near future.

If you’ve ever been to Oakland University and know what their court looks and feels like, Wayne State’s new arena feels pretty similar except it’s completely brand new and just looks so much more aesthetically pleasing. It’s really surprising that a college of Wayne State’s magnitude took this long to get their own court, but it is what it is.

Anyways, time to get into what we learned.

Michigan seemed a little star-struck for a chunk of the first half

Again, we can’t take too much away from this game because it was only an exhibition against a supremely inferior opponent, but right out of the gate, you could tell that Michigan was figuring out how to adjust to a new environment.

The Wayne State Warriors came out firing on all cylinders. You wouldn’t think this from the final score, but Wayne State was only trailing Michigan 20-16 with 9:25 left in the first half.

It looked for a few minutes like Michigan basketball might actually have a decent game on their hands, but it didn’t happen.

I personally didn’t put too much stock into Michigan’s slow start, as they aren’t going to come out red-hot right away in every game.

Again, Michigan basketball had to adjust to a new environment (in a new facility), this was their first televised game, and this was their only exhibition game.

The players are still figuring things out and getting used to each other. The sloppiness and turnovers will average out more as the players get more comfortable as the season goes along.