Michigan basketball receives A+ grade for offseason: 'I don't know what else they could've done'

Michigan Wolverines basketball has had a productive offseason leading into head coach Dusty May‘s second year at the helm. Within days of the 2024-25 campaign concluding in the Sweet 16, U-M added to its roster, and continued to over the next three-plus months. Now, the team has concluded summer workouts and is looking forward to preseason practices beginning in September.

Michigan added four transfers this offseason in point guard Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina), forwards Morez Johnson Jr. (Illinois) and Yaxel Lendeborg (UAB) and center Aday Mara (UCLA). The Wolverines also brought in a star-studded freshman class, headlined by McDonald’s All-American Trey McKenney, a Flint native who prepped at Orchard Lake (Mich.) St. Mary’s.

In its ‘Offseason Grades’ series, the Field of 68 handed out high marks for Michigan.

“I gave them just a very firm ‘A,'” Big Ten Network analyst and former Illinois player Mike LaTulip said. “I think the reloading that they did with their front court … the more that the offseason rolls on, the more that I just really love the buy on Cadeau. I do. We know the tools that he has to be an impactful point guard and be an impactful point guard in this system in particular is what has me really excited about them. You add McKenney into that mix, and some of the freshmen.

“Honestly, the front court that they brought in is as good as any in America — and that’s why I have them, coming off of a Sweet 16 getting knocked off by Auburn — I think this Michigan team has all the reason to be hopeful to go beyond that this year.”

Analyst Rob Dauster, meanwhile, thinks even higher of what Michigan did this offseason.

“I went with an A+,” Dauster said. “I don’t know what else they could’ve done. Maybe you could’ve gotten a higher-rated point guard, but with how quickly that moved, it says to me that they targeted Elliot Cadeau when they were looking at him in the portal, with the number of point guards that were available.

“You’ve got a potential first-team All-American in Yaxel Lendeborg, who said no to being a top-20-ish pick in the NBA Draft. True story: Yaxel might’ve been picked before Danny Wolf, and he kept his name in the NBA Draft this year. There’s a very real chance that his name was called before Danny.

“You get him coming in, you get Trey McKenney coming in and you have some kind of retention and roster turnover with some of these guys coming back. I don’t know how you can realistically have asked for this to have been better. I’m going for an A+ for Michigan’s offseason.”

Michigan and Purdue are viewed as the top two teams in the Big Ten entering preseason practices.

“I have Michigan as a top-10 team,” Dauster said. “For me, when it comes to the big picture nationally, it’s Purdue, Houston and then it’s kinda everybody else. And you can go three through 12, you can put it all in a hat and shake it up and pick ‘em out and I can get the argument for anyone.

“I think Michigan is somewhere between the fifth and 12th best team in America in the preseason. I think the expectation should be that this is the second-best team in the Big Ten. I think the expectation should be that they’re gonna find a way to compete for the Big Ten championship.

“It’s Purdue’s league to lose, but Michigan to me is the team that I would have as the most likely contender and most likely to take the Boilermakers off of that perch.”