During the Michigan men’s basketball team’s first two games, Caleb Houstan looked every bit of the five-star sharpshooter he was made out to be. He knocked down five of his first 12 college 3-point attempts, displaying the pure shooting stroke that made the Canadian product such a highly-touted recruit.

But in the three games since, Houstan has struggled to find the same success. He’s missed 13 of his last 14 attempts from beyond the arc, and the rest of the Wolverines have followed suit. As a result, two of Michigan’s last three games have ended in losses to unranked competition.

Outside of the starting backcourt of DeVante’ Jones and Eli Brooks, the Wolverines are shooting just 21% from deep on the season.

To Michigan coach Juwan Howard, the solution is counterintuitive yet simple.

“Shooters shoot,” Howard said during a Zoom call with reporters Tuesday. “Keep shooting it. That’s how you get out of a shooting slump. Keep shooting it, keep letting it fly.”

Associate head coach Phil Martelli agrees. After Houstan’s 1-for-9 shooting performance in the Wolverines’ home loss to Seton Hall, Martelli approached him at practice the next day.

“You were 1-for-9, so do you know what that means?” Martelli recalled asking before last weekend’s trip to Las Vegas.

Caught off guard, Houstan looked up at the 67-year-old coach. Martelli saw in Houstan’s eyes that his feelings were hurt by a question that seemingly singled him out.

That is, until Martelli delivered the answer.

“There’s a game where you’re going to be 8-for-9,” Martelli said. “Somebody pays. When you’re as gifted as you are and you work at your craft the way that you do, somewhere along the line someone will pay. … Whenever it presents itself, you are to shoot the ball, and if it goes in, that’s really not that important. It’s the next shot that becomes important.

“… Caleb obviously has this stroke that is just beautiful and he has range and just on the shooting side of it. … I just think that stroke should be canned and admired for a very long time because it is a beautiful, beautiful release.

In the eyes of the Wolverines’ coaching staff, turning down open 3-pointers is even worse than missing them. Howard, Martelli and assistant coaches Howard Eisley and Saddi Washington don’t want to see low confidence give way to hesitation.

It doesn’t matter that Houstan is 6-for-26, or that Terrance Williams is 4-for-13 or that Brandon Johns Jr. is 1-for-8. The law of averages wins out in the end, and the only way to get there is by taking good shots.

“My dad always said if you’re a 40-percent guy, they’re going to start falling at some point,” Brooks said last week. “They’re all good shots. We tell (them) to shoot every single time. It’s going to fall eventually.”

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