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Let's tip this off with a timely query:

Hi Ace,

Juwan clearly is in the "shoot your shot" mindset when it comes to recruiting. Do you think that will be frustrating for Michigan fans who during the Beilein era accepted they weren't even in the running for five stars? Thanks!

CDB

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) April 28, 2020

To a certain extent, yes. While I expect Michigan will fare better with five-star prospects now that Juwan Howard isn't picking up recruiting a class in the middle of a cycle—five-star recruitments tend to be years-long processes—there'll always be the occasional cruel twist. Those will be frustrating to various degrees; the Josh Christopher pivot to ASU felt like more of a gut punch than Isaiah Todd's decision to take the G League route in part because the staff seemed to have planned for Christopher to be on the roster and start at a position of need.

The good news: Howard did a remarkable job to be so close with those recruitments in the first place, caught a bad break when the NBA opened up a new professional route when it otherwise appeared Todd's best option was college, and will be able to pitch immediate and ample playing time to elite 2021 guards. He also still managed to pull in the Big Ten's best 2020 recruiting class despite the late drama.

People are going to complain about recruiting no matter what. Beilein's on-court success didn't stop the recruiting complaints—some of them legitimate, even!—during his time at Michigan. As long as Howard is bringing in solid multi-year program guys like he did with Hunter Dickinson, Terrance Williams, and Zeb Jackson, he can afford to shoot for the stars, and I suspect we'll see more success with this approach down the road.

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