When Oklahoma City made Aday Mara the 12th pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, it marked the end of a run that had defined Michigan’s title season. Mara was the last piece of the Wolverines’ “Big Three” to leave, following former forwards Morez Johnson Jr. and Yaxel Lendeborg out of Ann Arbor after they powered the most overwhelming frontcourt in Michigan history.
That group was as dominant as it was brief. All three played in all 40 games, and in every one of those games, at least one of them scored at least 10 points. From the opening stretch to the final celebration, they were the engine behind the national championship.
Now the Wolverines are trying to defend that title with a very different group, and coach Mike Boynton Jr. knows the target on their backs is real.
“We’ve got to understand that we’re going to hear this messaging about defending a national championship all year long,” Boynton said Oct. 8 at Big Ten Media Days. “ … Our opponents are probably going to be talking to their teams as they prepare, about playing the defending national championship team.”
Michigan is still ranked 16th, and the pressure that comes with that label is unavoidable. But the roster no longer looks like the one that bulldozed its way through last season.
Graduate forward J.P. Estrella and junior center Moustapha Thiam now handle the four and five spots, with graduate forward Jalen Reed also in the mix.
On paper, the frontcourt still looks sturdy. In practice, it’s not the same machine.
The biggest difference shows up on defense. That has been the preseason concern, especially after a tight win over Oregon State and a lopsided loss to No.
10 Houston, both of which exposed mistakes from the bigs. Thiam is carrying most of the defensive load right now, and when he sits, Michigan has had trouble stopping runs.
Last season, the Wolverines could lean on multiple bigs to cover for one another. That kind of depth is gone.
Trying to recreate the old three-big setup doesn’t make sense, either. The previous group wasn’t just big. It was loaded with uncommon athleticism and skill, the kind of combination that made them impossible to duplicate.
“We thought about (a three-big rotation),” Boynton said Oct. 22 at Michigan Media Day. “ … It’s not a part of the plan right now.”
That’s the right call. Michigan already cashed in on that formula once. This season, the burden shifts somewhere else.
The backcourt has to carry more of the offense, and senior guard Elliot Cadeau is the headliner there. He returns after his electric March run, when he was named Final Four Most Outstanding Player. He’s already shown what he can do this season, scoring 27 points against the Beavers, and when he isn’t hunting his own shot, he’s still playing to his pass-first instincts.
Boynton expects a lot of the offense to come from beyond the arc.
“We shoot a lot of threes,” Boynton said. “We’ll probably shoot more threes even than we have the last couple years.”
That’s a shift from last season, when Mara’s first made 3-pointer didn’t come until Feb. 8 against Ohio State, and Michigan was usually better off using him as a screener and interior threat. This year, Thiam has already made two threes in preseason play, and Estrella has hit three. They may not overwhelm teams in the paint the way the old frontcourt did, but they can still stretch the floor.
The perimeter group gives Michigan even more reason to lean that way. Sophomore guard Trey McKenney is shooting 35% from three, and freshman forward Quinn Costello has flashed real scoring punch. The roster has enough shooting to make the three-point line a central part of the plan, and it should embrace that instead of trying to relive last year’s bruising identity.
Not everyone on the roster is a pure shooter, either. McKenney has been strong from midrange, and Thiam has shown he can create for others, recording at least two assists in every preseason game.
Thiam may be the most intriguing piece of all. At 7-foot-3, he brings the kind of size that naturally draws attention, but his game has layers. Boynton sees pieces of Michigan’s recent big-man history in him.
“He’s a combination in some ways of all of (previous bigs), a mixture,” Boynton said Oct. 8.
“He’s a rim protector in the mode of Aday, but he moves laterally a little bit better. He runs faster.
He’s got like (Danny Wolf’s) playmaking capability in terms of being able to push it on the break.”
Even with that upside, Michigan no longer has the kind of frontcourt that can dominate on its own. Thiam is the main paint presence, but he doesn’t have the same kind of backup or the same level of collective force behind him. The Wolverines don’t have a three-headed monster this time.
What they do have is a group of guards and wings who can create, plus bigs who can feed them. Thiam has been strong on the glass, and Estrella ranks eighth nationally with a 17.3 offensive rebounding rate. That gives Michigan a way to generate second chances and keep the ball moving to its shot-makers.
The lesson is simple: this isn’t last year’s team, and it shouldn’t try to be. The Wolverines don’t have three lottery-level bigs to run the whole operation again. They have a different roster, a different balance, and a different path.
The frontcourt can still matter. It just doesn’t need to carry everything this time.
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The defense did enough to keep Rutgers from stringing together much through the air, but two explosive plays still flipped field position and kept the game uncomfortable deep into the afternoon. Add in the continuing issues with scoring and kicking, and the broader picture is hard to miss: Michigan keeps finding itself in tight games, and the margin for error is shrinking. [Read more 🡒]