Could DJ Wilson Be The Starting Center By B1G Season?

Michigan Basketball
1

A few reasons to think Wilson could be the starting center later in the year:
-Wilson has looked better than Doyle and Donnal overall.
-Donnal and Doyle combined for 7 fouls in 25 minutes against NMU and 4 fouls in 29 minutes against LeMoyne.
-The coaching staff burned Wagner’s redshirt in game 1 and in a game where Wilson played at the center – seems they are not particularly encouraged by the 5s so far.
-When Irvin slides into the starting lineup, where do the minutes come from for Wilson and Chatman, who overall have looked sharper than Donnal and Doyle?

The question could be whether Wilson can guard opposing 5s and box out on D and set good screens on O. I wouldn’t bet that he’s the starting center, but I wouldn’t be shocked either.

2

I liked the activity from Wilson in game 1 but at this point I think it’s a stretch to talk about being the starting 5. He grabbed 1 rebound in 23 minutes against NMU a team with very little height. If I am starting a guy at the 5 he better be battling for boards.

3

Well, Donnal and Doyle had 1 and 2 rebounds respectively, so it’s not like they were cleaning up the boards. But I agree that if Wilson wants to see minutes at the 5 he’s going to need to ratchet up the rebounding – and probably if he wants to see time at the 4 too.

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4

I really liked seeing Wilson at the 5.

Really liked it.

5

I agree. In general I just don’t like the rebounding bigs that Michigan has. I thought the team was ok against NMU but on the other hand they have Elon tonight which probably will tell us nothing about the prospects when they face Xavier/UConn unless they take Elon for granted.

6

Guess this probably would have made sense to post here… but Xavier is going to rebound – big test for Michigan.

7

Don’t think that any of our bigs has looked consistently good…not for anything like a whole game, certainly. Wilson is the guy I have the most hopes for, but not ready to hand him the job quite yet…

8

I agree with need more rebounding from our bigs. But again, isn’t our whole defensive strategy to have our bigs box out, and let our guards rebound? I think a better metric would be to check how many times this happened successfully, but there are no real stats for it.
But even so, I do agree that 1 or 2 rebounds per game is pathetic.

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9

Yes that’s part of the strategy… but you can box out and still be a good rebounder.

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