On ski masks, silly t-shirts and a struggle to connect this to Juwan Howard

Hunter Dickinson wore a ski mask because he said he wanted to steal a win from Wisconsin, and Jett Howard wore a 'Free Juwan' t-shirt as a callback to what happened the last time the Wolverines faced the Badgers at the Kohl Center, an event he wasn't even there for.

Somehow, this is all being linked back to Howard losing control of his team, which seems to be an awfully weird assumption to make.

Pregame props are part of sports these days. You have the San Francisco 49ers walking out with a boombox every game. They even have someone hired specifically to hold it. You have turnover props, and you have pregame special shoes or cleats players wear for specific causes or to send a message.

I am struggling to see how any form of a pregame prop is on the head coach for not having control of his team.

For the Wolverines' sake, it's easy to place blame on Howard as he is the leader of a team that has played some bad basketball this season. But to say that he has lost control of players that wear a certain piece of clothing before a game is a reach I can't even meet halfway.

Let's discuss Dickinson's idea to wear a ski mask.

Were the optics of that move not great considering what happened the night before? Obviously not but to suggest he was making light of a situation that was tragic and rocked the state to its very core is just wrong.

Again, a reach I fail to meet halfway.

Is Dickinson thinking about how some people would react to the ski mask? Probably not and that's the likely root issue there. However, the mask wasn't intended to offend, it was a prop used to motivate a team that was desperate to get a win against a team that had some bad blood between one another.

That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

That obviously didn't work out as the Wolverines ended up losing the game in a frustrating fashion.

If the opposite were to happen, people would be praising Dickinson for his "swag" and finding other ways to motivate this team when the normal ways aren't working.

Now, let's discuss Jett Howard's innocent t-shirt.

I say innocent because no one would've noticed it if it weren't pointed out during pregame. A son making light of a situation that happened last season, when he wasn't part of the team.

Again, does this show that Howard has lost control of his team of because of an innocuous shirt?

Absolutely not.

Again, if this team was winning, people would be praising Howard for allowing his players to have fun and be loose before games.

But it's easy to criticize when things are going bad and Howard has made himself out to be an easy target, whether he wants to be or not.

It doesn't work only when it doesn't.

It's akin to Jim Harbaugh making a risky call on a crucial fourth down play. A genius when it works, an idiot by some when it doesn't.

That comes with the territory.

When it comes to the overall evaluation of the basketball program, it's impossible to ignore that it's not in a good place right now. However, judge a team on what it does on the court not what it does off it, especially when the actions were inoffensive and innocent.

Should optics sometimes be kept in mind? Sure, but there could've been fare much worse to be done.

At the end of the day, you're either going to love what Howard is doing as a head coach or was never in his corner to begin with and nothing can be done to change that opinion.

What happened pregame has no reflection on what happened on the court in Madison.

All things fall on the head coach's shoulders and Howard is the easy target. Which makes me struggle to see how this has anything to do with a cultural issue inside the program.

It's a reach I fail to meet halfway.

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