How will Michigan Basketball replace Frankie Collins?

Michigan Basketball received a bit of a shock on Saturday as rising sophomore Frankie Collins entered his name into the Transfer Portal.

Juwan Howard and Co. landed a highly-talented graduate transfer combo guard in former 2022 1st-Team All-Ivy League member Jaelin Llewellyn within this past week.

Just as the transfer portal has given so much to Michigan basketball over the past three seasons, it has now taken away as well.

Collins is the third Wolverine to transfer out of the program since the end of the 2022 college basketball season, joining guard Zeb Jackson and forward Brandon Johns Jr. who both committed to VCU shortly after entering the portal.

This is simply the price of doing business in the transfer portal and Name, Image, and Likeness era.

Whether Collins was right to feel like he was “recruited over” after the addition of Llewellyn or not is an interesting and controversial topic on Michigan Twitter right now.

My interpretation of the moves made over the past week is that Llewellyn was brought in to play a combo guard role, taking the responsibility as a lead ball-handler when Collins would be on the bench, but playing off-ball while Collins ran the point.

Collins must have seen it another way, feeling as though Head Coach Juwan Howard was bringing in his replacement, and he would have been relegated to bench minutes for another season.

But, what if there was another reason for Collins’ unexpected departure?

The former Top-50 recruit was offered fairly late in his recruiting cycle by the Wolverines, not because of his talent level, but partially because there was some concern about his nomadic nature in high school.

His 247Sports profile lists three high schools on his profile, Compass Prep HS in Chandler, Arizona, Ed W. Clark HS in Clark, Nevada, and Coronado HS in Henderson, Nevada.

Around the time there was reported mutual interest between the Wolverines and Collins, there were some rumors about a potential admissions roadblock (something Michigan fans know all too well) due to how often Collins moved around in high school.

Obviously, that issue never materialized and Collins went on to provide valuable minutes primarily from the bench this past season and flashed his potential in the NCAA Tournament when Devante Jones went down with an injury.

So, how might the Wolverines attempt to replace Collins’ projected minutes for the ’22-’23 season and beyond?