Michigan Wolverines basketball picked up a 96-82 win over Bowling Green Wednesday night to tip off the season.
Here are five takeaways from the game:
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Hitting the transfer portal paid off for Juwan Howard
Coming into his second year as Michigan’s head coach, Juwan Howard was tasked with replacing the heartbeat of his team in Zavier Simpson, and looked to the transfer portal to do just that. No, Simpson isn’t replaceable, but the Wolverines added a good deal of talent in Columbia grad transfer Mike Smith and added some more in Wake Forest wing transfer Chaundee Brown.
There were questions all offseason on how Smith would adjust to Big Ten play. We’ll have to wait and see on that, but he impressed in his first outing for the Maize and Blue against a team favored to win the MAC. He finished his first game as Michigan’s starting point guard with 16 points, eight assists and one rebound, while shooting 4-for-6 from the field, 1-for-2 from long range and 7-for-8 from the free throw stripe.
Brown came off the bench, making a limited impact in the first half but exploding after the halftime break, posting 18 points, four rebounds and three assists in the stanza while going 6-of-7 from the field and 5-of-6 from three.
There’s still a lot to be learned about what the duo can give Howard and Co., but there couldn’t have been a better start than that.
