Where Michigan basketball players are projected in latest NBA mock draft
ESPN.com analysts Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz released their latest 2022 NBA mock draft this week, with two Michigan Wolverines basketball players making an appearance. Freshman guard/forward Caleb Houstan checked in at No. 19 overall to the Chicago Bulls, while freshman forward Moussa Diabate was pegged at No. 37 overall in the second round to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Neither Michigan sophomore center Hunter Dickinson, who’s said he will depart the program after this season after testing the waters last offseason, nor fifth-year senior point guard DeVante’ Jones, who also went through the pre-draft process last summer, saw their names in the mock draft.
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Following a stellar summer at the FIBA U19 World Cup in Latvia, Houstan rose up to the top five in multiple mock drafts. At the event, he led Team Canada — which earned a bronze medal — with 17.0 points per game, adding 5.7 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 2.3 steals per outing. His stock has dipped since, however, after a start to his collegiate career that has been filled with ups and downs.
Houstan is averaging 10.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists per contest through 11 games. While he’s exploded for over 15 points in two games, he’s also had six nights in which he’s been held to single figures.
Known as a sharpshooter, Houstan connected on 40 percent of his three-point attempts during the 2020-21 season at Montverde (Fla.) Academy but is hitting on 36.5 percent of his triple tries so far at Michigan — and it’s important to note the competition will only get more intense, with Big Ten play set to get into full swing after the new year. Houstan is also shooting just 44.7 percent on two-pointers, the lowest mark among players in the team’s regular rotation.
There were five wings listed ahead of Houstan in the mock draft, including Milwaukee’s Patrick Baldwin Jr. at No. 8, Arizona’s Bennedict Mathurin at No. 11, G League Ignite’s MarJon Beauchamp at No. 15, Baylor’s Kendall Brown at No. 16 and New Zealand Breakers’ Ousmane Dieng at No. 17.
Though Diabate, also a former five-star recruit, has long been considered a potential one-and-done player, he hasn’t appeared on mock drafts because not many reputable outlets extended their projections to the second round until now.
After beginning the season as a bench player for Michigan, Diabate has moved into a starting role in his last four games (he did miss one contest during that stretch with an illness). He’s averaging 7.6 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, while shooting 60.8 percent from the field.
Diabate was the fourth player listed as a “PF/C” to come off the board in the mock, following Duke’s Paolo Banchero at No. 2, Auburn’s Jabari Smith at No. 3 and Kentucky’s Daimion Collins at No. 36.
