Big Ten Basketball: 10 key questions for the league entering 2021-22 season

Can the Wolverines’ frontcourt get to the foul line?

Things will look a lot different in Ann Arbor to the 12,707 fans that will hopefully be able to fill the Crisler Center when the Michigan Wolverines take on the Seton Hall Pirates on Nov. 16, 2021. Entering his third year with the Wolverines, Head Coach Juwan Howard knows he will be faced with the challenge of defending the Big Ten Regular Season Championship despite his seniors to the NBA Draft as well as an important piece leaving early.

Losing starters Isaiah Livers (13.1 ppg), and Mike Smith (9.0 ppg) along with rotational players Chaundree Brown ( 8 ppg) and Austin Davis (5.4 ppg) were expected as the four were playing in their senior years during the 2020-21 season. The loss of starting forward Franz Wagner (12.5 ppg) to the NBA is only going to compound the Wolverines’ woes from the charity stripe.

The Wolverines will now be without three of their four most accomplished players at getting to the free-throw line. This is when they averaged just 16.3 free-throw attempts in Big Ten play, which was the tenth most in the conference. When all their games are taken into consideration they come in at No.225 in the nation in attempted free throws.

Aside from Hunter Dickinson who averaged four attempts per game, Livers, Smith, and Wagner are the other players who average over two attempts per game. The importance of free throws to the Wolverines cannot be underestimated after the 2020-21 season. The Wolverines lost three of the five games in which they attempted fewer than fifteen free throws, most notably was the six for eleven performance in their 51-49 loss to UCLA in the East Regional Final.