Exit: Hunter Dickinson and Kobe Bufkin
We didn't post the Dickinson news on Friday because at first it was not immediately clear that his entrance into the portal was indeed a final exit. Since then, the response from the program indicates the finality and warranted a post and as I was planning to make one up, we got news of Kobe Bufkin's departure. So, let's do them together. From Friday:
Michigan’s Hunter Dickinson has hit the transfer portal, he told @stadium.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) March 31, 2023
HUGE NEWS!!!
And from a few minutes ago:
🚨 Roster News 🚨
— Michigan Men's Basketball (@umichbball) April 2, 2023
G Kobe Bufkin has elected to forgo his remaining eligibility and enter the 2023 NBA Draft.#GoBlue ➡️ #ProBlue pic.twitter.com/Iayy9tghyl
The insiders were reporting a couple weeks ago that Juwan Howard was trying to push his players for earlier decisions this season after Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabate took their NBA conundrum down to the wire last season. It appears the players responded, but none of them gave him the answer he likely wanted. These two players join Jett Howard in departing Michigan Men's Basketball and in the process, it deprives the team of the three main engines of offense throughout the season.
The Dickinson exit is the most surprising, something that insiders (presumably from coaching sources) were vehemently dismissing the possibility of basically up until it happened. That it leaked out to a reporter and not from a player who has let the world know what he thinks about just about everything is doubly surprising. Over three seasons at Michigan, Dickinson was All-B1G every year, B1G Freshman of the Year in 2021, and a consensus All-American once. He was the face of the program over the past two seasons and never missed the opportunity to play the villain to opposing fans. Where Dickinson lands is unknown right now but presumably it will be a place that can offer a hefty NIL package and the chance to win big.
[Marc-Gregor Campredon]
Bufkin's departure had been suspected for some time. A highly touted recruit in the 2021 class, Bufkin struggled his first season in Ann Arbor, rarely seeing the floor for more than a few minutes at a time due to atrocious defense, something he acknowledged in the offseason. Bufkin put in plenty of work and made a sizable sophomore leap, all the way up to All-B1G honors. His MPG clip went from 10.8 to 34.0, his three point clip from 22.2% to 35.5%, and points per game from 3.0 to 14.0. As the season rolled along, Bufkin became a larger piece of the offense and while he did have some tough moments here and there, he was making his case to be recognized as the team's best player. This rapid improvement gained interest from NBA scouts, which left Bufkin with a choice: stay and go for the top 10 of the draft in 2024, or leave now and be a first rounder somewhere in the 20s. He has evidently opted for the latter.
In losing Howard, Dickinson, and Bufkin, Michigan has officially lost 60.3% of its points from last season. Joey Baker continues to pursue a waiver from the NCAA to play another season but the current reporting is that it is an uphill battle ($). If that is the case, Michigan could be looking at replacing 68% of its scoring. The true impact to the offense is even larger, though, as anyone who watched the team knows that the outputs of Baker and everyone else, be it Dug McDaniel or Terrance Williams II, revolved around the three departing players, who were the team's most important offensive pieces. Returning McDaniel and Tarris Reed Jr. gives Michigan a couple useful cogs in building a future defense, but with these three departures, they are essentially starting over on offense.
Michigan has now lost those three players, plus Isaiah Barnes, off the team. They added Nimari Burnett this week, an upgrade if viewed as a Barnes replacement, but much more portal hunting will be required. Michigan plans to bring in two recruits, George Washington III and Papa Kante, and then will fill the rest of the slots on the roster from the portal. It will not be the easiest endeavor in the world, both landing quality players out of the portal and then ensuring that those quality players fit together to produce a winning roster next season. It's going to be a fascinating next few weeks, a series of roster decisions and recruiting battles out of the portal that may well decide whether Juwan Howard survives as Michigan Men's Basketball coach. Stay tuned.
Not a world-beater, but a competent PG who would have (probably) run the point from day one, lessening the impact of losing Llewellyn, giving Dug more time to get up to speed, and probably eking out a few more wins when we just needed one more ball-handler.
Frankie Collins transferred 2x…in high school. In this day and age of the portal and immediate eligibility, I’m baffled as to why people are shocked he transferred from Michigan.
For sure. But I don't have to shocked by it happening to also recognize that it had a significant negative impact on this season.
Sure there's way more movement in CBB these days, but you don't lose your top 3 players from an NIT team if the program culture isn't broken. This is Juwan's Harbaugh 2020 moment and we at least need a wholesale change of the staff behind him.
This seems a bit unfair considering two of the players have significant draft prospects and the third player likely doesn't want to be used in a rebuild.
Kentucky lost a freshman the the NBA yesterday to the draft who averaged 11 ppg this year. Pretty pedestrian numbers.
Every coach should probably ask themselves two questions:
1. Are we recruiting to be a quick stop on a player's long term development/NBA/G League goals?
2. Or, are we recruiting to win the modern college basketball?
It is really starting to look like it is one or the other. Black and white.
KSU did not have a single player on its roster recruited by them. Miami bought half a team. It's the modern era. Pls don't give Juwan the benefit of the doubt if he doesn't portal correctly and field a competitive team. Like B10 middle of the pack. We have a solid college PG and a "Rodman lite" in Reed (hope he can develop into a guy who can take 4-5 shots a game that derive from him vs cleaning up the glass) and need to find 4 in the portal who can contribute to a Big 10 team.
On the "positive" side we do not have a single NBA talent on the roster going into next year so the only guys leaving will be due to not performing or graduating.
Congrats to Kobe - loved watching him and this year over year growth was fantastic. No one could have predicted him being a NBA draft entrant a year ago at this time.
Do we know a hefty NIL had an impact as the article alluded to? I thought our NIL issues were with new recruits, but the pay was good once you earned it. Did I read too much into that statement? It sounds like our NIL for current players isn't all that good if I'm not incorrect in my interpretation.
It's conjecture, but the inside word is that Hunter made good NIL, and that he left bc he didn't think the team could be competitive/wasn't getting along with the team and staff.
I am Jack’s utter lack of surprise. Both departures were pretty inevitable since Kobe blew up in January.
Last year was NIT-Tommy redux. This year will be Brellerbe-ball 2, Electric Boogaloo.
I'm a stats type guy and losing 60.3% of the points scored by Hunter and Kobe as Alex points out, is a big deal. Maybe it's darkest before dawn but Juwan and staff has their work cut out for them this offseason.
The one thing this coaching staff hoped for was to keep as much of roster as possible but that isn't happening so it's on to Plan B; replacing these guys.
Good luck to Juwan and his staff as they'll be earning their money this offseason.
Like many other couches, Howard has to deal with the new reality of college BB. Unfortunately, it seems Howard does not have the coaching and roster management experience/skills to deal with this.
To adapt, he needs to replace a couple of his assistants. He needs to bring specialists from the college rank and people who can help him with roster management. I do not think Phil Martelli or Howard Eisley know how to navigate this new landscape. Also, bringing specialists (similar to what JB did) can help him with game planning.
I hope he succeeds, but the evidence is not there that he can.
Does that include the couches in East Lansing that are now only charred remains?
We're a football school.
This obviously isn't a great situation, but I'm also not a doomsayer. In terms of Howard's coaching ability, I don't buy that consecutive elite 8 and sweet 16 seasons (before this year) were somehow all the residual Beilein effect. There were significant contributors on those teams who never played under Beilein (Wagner, Dickinson, Smith, Brown etc.).
That said, what happens in portal this off-season is huge. We can clearly offer significant playing time at most spots at a school with as much or more basketball success in the last 10 years than 95% of DI. If we can't bring guys who look like they can help right away that will cause me to hit the panic button.
As said by Alex, I at least appreciate that they (and Jett) made their decisions quickly. The dragged out processes from Houstan and Diabate last year were really painful, maybe even detrimental. This gives the staff more time and known scholarship flexibility to try and reshape the roster via the portal or late-breaking recruitments. Now whether I think that is a winning formula within our circumstances is another matter, but I’m not going to get into that right now!
Agreed, this is the one positive that could have come about in this situation. The coaches have time to recruit the portal starting now, not 2 months from now
Somehow lose all 3 of the guys, fucking hell.
Good thing we've always been a football school!
All joking aside, for real. I can dispassionately be glad for Kobe (although I wished he stayed!) and think about how it will be a tough season but also an interesting test of Juwan's coaching and GM skills.
Whereas if football was facing the same 2023-24 season...
Like many of Michigans professional sports franchises Michigan basketball has become 'check back in another year to see if the tire fire has gone down.'
It sure was nice when we had a good basketball team to look forward to watching after the new year started. It may be time to start paying closer attention to regular season hockey.
Wishing Bufkin and Dickinson well.
Go Blue!
Yohan Traore is available in the portal. ‘member him?
Oh yeah. He was the player everyone wanted. A human highlight reel.
Going to be an interesting season
Hmmm...well...the 2023-24 basketball season, thankfully, ain't right around the corner. So...I'll choose to focus on football for the time being, and worry about this later.
But the football season isn't right around the corner, either.
Dickinson never gave a statement. Is it plausible he's entering portal only to determine NIL value and then have Michigan match it?
If not, then get Traore. Onward and upward.
Seems unlikely. I'm sure you can have those conversations without officially entering the portal. The fact that Howard/the program did give a statement seems to indicate they think he's gone.
This season definitely had a 2020 Harbaugh feeling to it - at least as regards the locker room. Were players all-in for the season? Was this a bunch of people trying to help themselves individually vs. a team goal? Were the fans even into it? Who COULD have been the Aidan and Josh Ross to lead this team out of the dark ages in 2023-24?
About the only games I really saw a strong team effort and performance were the Maryland game after the CMU debacle and the MSU game after the campus shooting.
Just like the 2020 FB season, when the only games I would ever watch again were the Minny opener and 2nd half and OTs at Rutgers.
For those who feel that Hunter wasn't all-in at times this year, I tend to agree. He didn't dog it all along but his post game interview demeanor seemed to indicate that both he and the locker room were not a happy place.
I'm more than willing to give Juwan a freebie this round. Hoops have really changed with the portal, perhaps even more than FB, since one or two guys coming or going can really break/help a team. I watch SDSU and FAU and see two teams that have great chemistry w/o the NIL dough that Miami got. And both teams have transfers.
Hey - low expectations for next year. I'll gladly take a hungry team like JB's team that broke the long losing streak to MSU in 2010-11 and swept the series. This team's choke at Vandy made me feel that the time is right for two good young assistants to come in and reboot the locker room attitude.
Meanwhile, I've move on and Frozen Four baby!
How do I tell my 4 year old and 6 year old that their basketball hero chose to go to another team?
Absolutely sucks
I hope Juwan uses this moment to reset everything
ugh , this is going to be interesting to see play out
Good luck to you all, gentlemen. This off-season and next season will be...interesting.
he and frankie will be a great backcourt in the turkish league.
I guess the upside of the mediocre season is that it’s easy to not care. Either JH will figure it out, or he won’t. Either we will plug some roster holes or we won’t. One of our top players didn’t bother to rebound or play defense, and our veteran center would check out at times. Now both are leaving. Would love to have Kobe back, but he’s striking while the iron is hot.
Win or lose next season, I hope the team is consistently fun to watch, which is more than I can say about this season.
Ok. So the Michigan Basketball team is pretty well gutted. Now what? The 2022-2023 roster was questionable to begin with. Who gets to replace Howard & start over. Can you say, “Hot mess?”
Apparently Zack Shaw tweeted something about Tamar Bates and George Washington coming in June and then deleted it shortly after. That would be interesting for two reasons, one, that he mistakenly uncovered the Bates transfer and two, why no Kante mention for depth. The rumors about his grades true?
I’m just waiting to see how Hunter leaving for another school can be spun into a testament to the coaches’ ability to recruit and develop players.
You're right - Howard didn't recruit Dickinson or see him turn in at least all-conference performances for 3 years. He simply existed in an Interstellar-esc Tesseract-enabled space between realities on the court. It was all Martelli's doing.
I mentioned the coaches, not Howard, so it (sarcastically) being Martelli’s doing wouldn’t change anything, but go ahead, dude.
It’s clear from this and the Bufkin thread that my posts are just a blank canvas for you to project whatever hatred for Howard that you’d like to imagine fans have, so, sure, pretend I said or implied that Howard didn’t develop Hunter.
No you're right, Howard isn't a coach on the team and anyone who believed that was part of your statement is just projecting. Nailed it my dude.
Your posts are largely pedantic arguments about how someone not explicitly name-checked means they weren't included in a group that any sane person would consider them a part of, like a tortured SAT question. It's fine - argue whatever you want but also stop acting like you're some incredibly clever person who's finding "gotchas" everywhere.
Again, you seem like someone who doesn't want to shitcan Howard tomorrow, which I agree with. I also agree he should be held to necessary changes next season, and have been saying that for months now. Maybe we're just arguing past each other or think the other is saying something they aren't intending but it's getting to the point where nothing productive is coming out of it.
Howard’s program has had significant losses the past few offseason, which raises the question of whether this is just (1) the new NIL and portal happy NCAA, (2) an unlucky consequence of being too good at developing first round picks quickly, or (3) evidence of some problems in the locker room.
It’s probably all three to some degree. Collins leaving might seem like mostly (1); Bufkin leaving seems like mostly (2). I think some folks have been way too confident that all of the early NBA departures were cases of (2). Hunter’s departure is almost certainly a case of (3), so I was needling those aforementioned folks. The post wasn’t saying shit about whether Juwan develops players. It was suggesting that Hunter leaving points to a real problem: it looks like dead cannery in the fucking coal mine when it comes to the locker room. But there’s nothing reasonable left to do but see how it plays out next year.
I hope that’s clear enough; don’t think the joke was much of a SAT question, and apparently some other people got it. But it is critical of Howard, which apparently triggers you.
I just don't understand who coaches are supposed to try and recruit. "Try and recruit, you know ... average players. Not-so-good players. You know, averaging, like, 8 points a night."
It's bizarre. Juwan gets blasted for recruiting incredibly talented players who end up moving on quickly, and he gets blasted because the incoming class isn't so great. Talk about a no-win situation!
Hell ... maybe the fact that this incoming recruiting class is widely described as "average at best" is, then, perfect!
This really is bizarre. I kind of like the idea of a hard reset, honestly. I wouldn't even mind seeing a hard handshake for some of the remaining players. Let's get players with hustle and energy in, even if they're raw and not at the moment ready for prime time, and focus on having fun on the court.
I sure didn't see that much this year, and honestly, that was probably my biggest take-away. The energy, the enthusiasm, the fun was noticeably absent. Let's get that back, and hell, whatever happens, happens.
A hard reset, akin to RR reset of the football team ? That would be beyond idiotic...a huge risk.
We need to see what transfers we get, but next year the outlook just looks grim. I have gut feeling the young/inexperienced excuse will be used next year though too.
Good for Kobe and I hope he does well, I was really hoping we'd get 2 years of production from him, but oh well. The Dickinson loss just tanks a lot of the good feelings around the team and the talent level just plummets. I can't imagine an even less talented team than this year doing better, when one of the problems were they only had like 4.5 pretty consistently productive players the whole year and 3 of them are gone.
UConn’s entire team is built from the portal. It’s how great college basketball 🏀 teams come together nowadays. Get used to it.
Are they? Didn't realize that. Feels like they totally flew under the radar this year. Kind of crazy that they already have the most championships of any program since the Fab Five played. UNC has 3, Duke has 3, Kentucky has 3, and Kansas has 2. UConn will have FIVE if they win this year.
No, they're not. Per Torvik's numbers the only guy playing more than 50% of available minutes that UConn brought in from somewhere else is Newton.
I think where one stands on Juwan as a coach hinges as much on how you view 21-22 as much as 22-23. One side says “hey another sweet 16, making this past season a freebie.” The other side suggest that 21-22 was the beginning of a steep decline, masked by a couple of tournament wins at the end and that we are now a full two years into the decline phase. Think everyone realizes he will be the coach in 23-24, and that prospects are sketchy at best. My view continues to be that we will struggle to compete (our best hopes left with Kobe) and that attendance and recruiting will crater. Juwan will leave and the rebuild begins in 24-25.
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