We’re into the Top 5 of our offseason series ranking the best players from the Michigan Wolverines championship in 1989 to the team that just won it in April of this year. We’ve had a bunch of Michigan Men to this point, but in the new era of college sports, we have the first guy on this list who didn’t finish his career in Ann Arbor. He was the face of the program for a few years and an elite multi-year performer. It’s the polarizing Hunter Dickinson.
No. 5 – C Hunter Dickinson – Score: 184.4
Our scoring model had Dickinson and the next tier of Michigan basketball players a considerable distance away from the others in the Top 10. For reference, our No. 6 Nik Stauskas‘ score was 142.2; Dickinson starts this elite tier a full 40+ points higher.
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Dickinson was the first premier recruit of the Juwan Howard era, and gave fans a lot of hope that Michigan wouldn’t lose a step post-John Beilein. Right out of the gates, the DeMatha Catholic product was a starter who quickly developed into a superstar for the Wolverines. He scored double digits in each of his first 11 career games as the Wolverines started the year undefeated in that stretch. Quickly, the Wolverines realized they had something special, and a big man that they could operate the offense through.
In an era of elite Big Ten big men – Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn, Purdue’s Zach Edey, Iowa’s Luka Garza, Ohio State’s E.J. Liddell, and Indiana‘s Trayce Jackson-Davis– Dickinson held his own and received multiple Big Ten and national accolades for his performance. While Garza was named Big Ten Player of the Year in his true freshman season, Dickinson was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year, a member of the All-Big Ten First Team, and a consensus Second Team All-American.
The Wolverines were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament after a 14-3 Big Ten regular season, winning their first Big Ten title since 2014. They clinched on their home court in late March as Dickinson recorded the fifth double-double of his freshman campaign in a 69-50 drubbing of the Michigan State Spartans. That season, Michigan went on a run all the way to the Elite Eight, where they were bounced by future conference opponent and No. 11 seed UCLA.
Despite some roster turnover, expectations remained high for Dickinson and Michigan heading into year two as the No. 6 team in the AP’s Preseason Poll. At the same time, the Wolverines had the No. 3 SOS in the country that included non-conference losses to Seton Hall, Arizona, and North Carolina. Tacking that onto a deep conference schedule saw the Wolverines go just 17-15 during the regular season.
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Dickinson’s performance, however, took another step forward. He started to show some touch shooting the ball from beyond the interior, and even began to stretch beyond the arc, shooting 32.8% from deep. In his sophomore season, the 7-foot-1 tyrant scored a career-high 18.6 points per game while also bringing down 8.6 rebounds per contest.
To the shock of many, Michigan snuck into the NCAA Tournament despite a near-.500 record. The committee received massive scrutiny because the Wolverines weren’t even a play-in team, when many thought they weren’t even going to make the tournament. But the committee proved to be right, and that was largely because of the Michigan big man. Dickinson erupted for 21 points in a double-digit opening-round win over Colorado State. But his career-defining moment happened in the second round when the Wolverines faced the No. 3-seeded Tennessee Volunteers. The Vols were the SEC Champs, and were the No. 5 overall team in the final AP Poll of the season. But Dickinson dropped 27 points and 11 rebounds in a second-half comeback win for the Wolverines to make an unlikely run to the Sweet 16.
The impressive streak for the Wolverines ended with a 63-55 loss to Villanova, the evenu
