Michigan Basketball: 3 things we learned in loss to North Carolina

2. This team seems to lack passion and grit unlike last year

Last season was a movie, the Wolverines came out of nowhere and absolutely dominated everyone in the Big Ten — but that’s not the case this year.

The Wolverines seem to not have as much passion this season. I am not including Eli Brooks in this though, Eli stayed his fifth year, and is putting the team on his back at times, he’s playing the best he’s ever played.

What’s going on with everyone else? What’s happened to the culture of Michigan basketball? Michigan needs to find an identity. Last year, the team’s identity was that they were going to play lockdown defense and be bigger and better, this team we’ve yet to see anyone other than Eli Brooks and Moussa Diabate really step up.

Juwan Howard is a fantastic coach from what we all assumed, but like Jim Harbaugh said last week about Ryan Day, “Sometimes people standing on third base think they hit a triple, but they didn’t”

Could that same logic apply to Juwan Howard? Did he just inherit insane talent from Beilein and all of his success is fugazi? To me, this is faulty logic but you could make an argument.

He’s recruiting most of the players on the team, while his recruiting has technically been better rankings-wise — has it actually been better? I’ll leave you to answer that question for yourself.