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

How will the No.1 ranked freshman class play?

It is no secret as to how the talked-about freshman classes did last season.  Most of the attention going into the season was on the top two classes of Kentucky and Duke and as mentioned many times, once in this article already, neither made the tournament. In fact, when one takes the schools with the top five recruiting classes the total amount of victories in the tournament equals one.

This season the Michigan Wolverines will resemble  LSU and Tennessee as they had two freshmen that contributed heavily in their first year, as opposed to Kentucky, Duke, or North Carolina who had over half their starting line-up occupied by first-year players. For the Wolverines’ their two five-star players are Caleb Houston and Maussa Diabate who are ranked No.6 and No.11 respectively on the Recruiting Services Consensus Index.

At 6-8, Houston did it all in his most recent action in the U19 World Cup. The one aspect that stood out the most was how active he is as a defender by stepping into passing lanes to turn steals into baskets.

In addition, he is more than capable of handling the ball and taking perimeter defenders into the paint, usually after a ball fake that defenders need to respect. Starting at small forward for Coach Howard will create some interesting Big Ten match-ups with other small forwards like Justice Sueing, Miller Kopp, and Gabe Brown.

The No.11 ranked recruit Diabate will get his minutes and contribute off the bench. At 6-9, Diabte is in constant motion on the floor and uses his athleticism to get to the basket, whether it is with the ball or a teammate is getting him the ball there. This recruitment class will not be burdened with the responsibility of taking over games and will be a nice contrast to the responsibility the high-ranked classes had last season.