Positive and negative trends for Michigan basketball recruiting

Michigan basketball is trending in the right direction with one top target in 2023 and trending in a negative direction for another. We break it all down. 

The 2023 recruiting class has been an interesting one for Michigan basketball. One thing about it is that we still don’t know how many scholarship spots the Wolverines are going to have.

It seems safe to assume that Joey Baker will be gone, along with Hunter Dickinson and Jaelin Llewellyn. Technically, Dickinson and Llewellyn have two years of eligibility (at least in the case of Dickinson) and could use it if they choose.

There’s always the chance for other departures but it seems like three is a conservative estimate. Michigan is definitely after at least one big man, while it also seems interested in point guards and combo guards, as well as wings.

In a bit of good news, Michigan basketball is emerging as the favorite for four-star center Papa Kante again. The 6-foot-10 center is ranked 76th overall in the On3 consensus rankings, as well as 32nd overall in their own rankings.

The Wolverines have taken over as the favorite according to the On3 prediction machine and Jamie Shaw of On3 recently wrote this on Michigan basketball:

"“As things stand, this one is looking like Michigan has been able to stand tall on top of this recruitment. There has been some fluidity involved with schools making pushes, and there might still be more of that to come. But with the intel gathered, when pressing ‘publish’ on this article, Juwan Howard’s Wolverines are trending to land this top-five center in the 2023 class.”"

Kante also got a crystal ball projection from a 247 sports recruiting expert that hasn’t been wrong on a projection yet, so these are all good signs.

Still, I’d rather be talking about a commitment than trending up in a recruitment, because Michigan seemed to be trending in the right direction over the summer, so the Wolverines still need to get across the finish line.

The negative trend for Michigan basketball

Another top target in the 2023 class for Michigan is 6-foot-10 forward Zayden High. He’s listed as a power forward but he’s more of a combo forward in my opinion. He can shoot the ball and his skills are pretty developed.

The Wolverines did a good job on his visit but most official visits are positive. Michigan isn’t out of this one yet but Shaw wrote in another post that North Carolina is the team to beat.

You can never count out Juwan Howard and I have complete confidence he’ll get the kind of players needed in 2023, but North Carolina might be too much to overcome in this one.