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Caleb Love will get every chance to be a star at Michigan.
Long after he suits up in the Maize and Blue, Love will still be a hot-button basketball player from Ann Arbor to Chapel Hill, trading one big brand for another.
Just like Hubert Davis stuck with Love while much of the fan base wanted him to be benched and replaced by some other reputed 3-pointer shooters, the Wolverines will be in a similar position in giving Caleb the rock with the freedom to fire it up.
Michigan lost its three top scorers to the transfer portal or the NBA draft, and without 7-foot-1 center Hunter Dickinson the Wolverines will be more of a run-and-shoot team. Juwan Howard’s club made 45 percent from the field and 36 percent from the 3-point line in 2022-23.
Both of those statistics have to do with Dickinson, who commanded a lot of double-team attention that allowed outside shooters to get open. This coming season, the Wolverines won’t have a returning player who averaged better than 8.6 points per game since their top three scorers are gone.
Jett Howard, the coach’s son who will enter the NBA Draft, had the highest 3-point percentage among the starters while taking nearly 100 more long shots than anyone else. Kobe Bufkin, a 6-4 small forward who will also test the NBA Draft, was easily the best shooter not named Dickinson and shot 48 percent while draining 35.5 percent of his 3-pointers.
Those losses will leave Love as the primary threat from the arc, and it will be up to Howard to get him better shots than Caleb took at Carolina, many with the 30-second clock winding down when he got the ball and had to make a move of some kind. If that happens, look for Love to regain his shooting touch and pump up his confidence.
Howard, who was suspended in 2022 for slapping an opposing coach during a late-game confrontation, likes physical basketball and got a bird’s eye view of Love’s willingness to mix it up during a short scrum in Carolina’s win over Michigan in the Jumpman Invitational last December.
Chances are Howard sold Love on stepping in as a team leader with the option of entering the NBA Draft or using his COVID season as a fifth-year player. Even if Caleb flourishes in his new uniform, that doesn’t necessarily mean he could have done the same thing at UNC.
After his 2022 heroics, he figured to be the leading scorer and pick up some of the slack from Brady Manek’s departure. When that didn’t happen, the pressure grew to the point where both parties needed a change.
Featured image via Todd Melet
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