Michigan’s freshman class is starting to look like more than a group of future pieces. At least one of them already sounds like a player the Wolverines can’t keep off the floor.
Quinn Costello, the 6-foot-10 freshman from Boston, turned heads on Michigan’s euro trip with a stretch that made his value pretty easy to see. He knocked down 45.8 percent of his 24 three-point attempts, showed off as a cutter, and finished with 11.7 points per game over the three-game trip. That scoring average tied him with Tennessee transfer JP Estrella for Michigan’s third-best mark on the trip.
“With Quinn’s size, I.Q., shooting ability, it’s a no-brainer, he’ll find time with us,” head coach Mike Boynton Jr. said at Big Ten Media Day in Chicago earlier this week.
The picture around Costello has only gotten clearer because of injuries elsewhere. Brandon McCoy Jr. and Lincoln Cosby are both rehabbing torn ACLs, with McCoy suffering his injury on that same euro trip and Cosby tearing his during the high school season.
That opens the door for Costello to take on a larger role than originally expected, and it only adds to the buzz around a player who was already viewed as a key part of Michigan’s future. The four-star forward is ranked 36th in his class and is expected to be a major rotation piece in 2026-27.
His teammates are already buying in.
“I think Quinn, if you give him an inch of space, he’s going to make it from three,” Trey McKenney said. “He’s a really good shooter, he’s improving on defense and he works at it a lot. He’s a hard worker and I can tell he wants to make a really big impact this year, and I believe he will.”
Elliot Cadeau went even further.
“For me, I’ll definitely say Quinn,” Cadeau said. “I feel like I’ve played with a lot of NBA players, seen a lot of NBA players and he’s for sure an NBA player.”
That kind of praise matters, but Michigan’s returning players weren’t stopping there. Cadeau said the rookie group is capable of giving the Wolverines a real lift right away.
“I think they will definitely make an impact this year,” Cadeau said of the freshman class. “They’re very confident, they’re very talented, I feel like they’ll surprise a lot of people.”
McKenney echoed that view.
“They’re going to be really good this year,” McKenney said of the freshman class. “They’ve been learning a lot from us returners telling them what to do in practice, how we go about things, I think they’ll have a big impact this year.”
Boynton, though, is still sorting out exactly how the rotation will settle. Asked how deep he expects to go, he gave the standard coach’s answer, though he did narrow it down a bit.
“It’s hard to say with certainty at this point,” Boynton replied, when asked how deep he sees the team being this season. “In a perfect world you get to nine…it just depends, but 8-9 is kind of the sweet spot.”
If the starting five lines up the way it appears it might - Cadeau, McKenney, Roddy Gayle Jr., Estrella and Moustapha Thiam - that leaves a handful of spots for bench players to carve out minutes. Costello looks like one of the clearest candidates. Boynton also pointed to Ricky Liburd as someone who sits higher than the usual 8-9 range.
“Ricky (Liburd) is higher than 8-9 in the rotation,” Boynton said. “Shot making, rebounding, physicality, versatility, he’s a really good athlete so he can play in transition with us. Just a really good two-way, all-around guard.”
Beyond that, Michigan has more options to sort through. Columbia transfer Kenny Noland could back up at point guard, while Oscar Goodman could fill a similar kind of multi-position forward role to the one Will Tschetter handled. Freshmen Joseph Hartman and Malachi Brown are also in the mix, though Boynton made clear he sees both as longer-term bets.
“Young guys are always guys where if you evaluate them well with their high school situation, you take those guys with the optimism that they’re going to develop and you get enough guys to help you long-term, which we think they’re both long-term guys,” Boynton said of the pair. “They got different skill sets, Joseph’s is more of a shooting-scoring-minded guy right now, and Malachi is more of a defensive, disruptive guy right now. I don’t think we’ll count on either one of them to win the Big Ten this year, but we defintely believe that they’re both guys that are capable of helping us win in the Big Ten long term.”
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