Michigan Basketball: Why Isaiah Livers could win Big Ten POY in 2019-20
By Adam Childs
Cassius Winston seemed to come out of nowhere to win the Big Ten player of the year last year. Could Isaiah Livers from Michigan Basketball do the same thing in 2019-20?
Michigan State looks to be loaded going into next year with Cassius Winston and a healthy Joshua Langford coming back. Maryland looks to keep building to the top with Jalen Smith returning and Ohio State still has the Wesson brothers. Purdue lost their top two scorers but they look ready to stay near the top and teams like Illinois look to be improving. Then there’s Michigan Basketball, who looks completely different after losing several key players to leave guys such as Zavier Simpson and Isaiah Livers remaining.
Lost in all of this talk about the Big Ten have been the Wolverines. First, they lost three of their top players to the NBA draft in Charles Matthews, Ignas Brazdeikis, and Jordan Poole. Then they lost their head coach in John Beilein when he left to take the Cleveland Cavaliers job.
They did go out and hire former Fab Five member Juwan Howard but even with that Michigan went from a possible preseason top-five team to not even being ranked in the top 25 anymore. The experts don’t quite know what to make off the Wolverines yet, but the one thing we do know is they will be led by arguably the best true point guard in the Big Ten in Simpson.
Simpson is joined by big man Jon Teske, who may have been the most overlooked player in the Big Ten last year. But they are the only two starters returning from last years team. Even with the big losses, they do return a player that could vault himself to the top of the Big Ten and that is their sixth-man from a year ago in Livers.
Livers started just three games last year after starting 22 the year before. But he did average more minutes this past year even without starting. So why can he make the jump from super sixth-man to Big Ten POY? Here are three reasons why.