Michigan freshman Winters Grady improving behind the scenes: 'We're going to need him'

Michigan Wolverines basketball freshman guard/forward Winters Grady is a talented former four-star, top-60 recruit that’s found himself out of a top-five team’s nine-man rotation.

The 6-foot-6, 210-pounder has appeared in nine games, logging 50 minutes, totaling 26 points, 10 rebounds and 2 assists while the Wolverines have blown out opponents. He’s fired 19 three-point shots, making 6 of them for a respectable 31.6 percent.

Three-point shooting prowess is perhaps Grady’s best attribute, but there’s more to his game that will be shown in the future.

“How’s he growing? Like the rest of our guys, he’s in the gym,” Michigan head coach Dusty May said Monday. “He was in the gym this morning. I walked past him, and he was dripping wet. But I didn’t watch to see what he got better at.”

But he is improving. One thing that May, Michigan’s second-year head coach, has made clear is that he doesn’t want his freshmen that are outside the rotation to “wait until next year” to form great habits and work toward improving. From the sounds of it, Grady is aligned with that line of thinking.

May and Co. are imploring him to use his experiences on the scout team to benefit his own game moving forward, for instance.

“In practice, we’ve moved him to the scout team some, to get up to speed defensively and to continue to learn different nuances,” the Michigan coach said. “For example, he’s an elite shooter, and Purdue, I think [guard Fletcher] Loyer is a great example of someone that has a lot of game off the ball, as far as getting open and being deceptive, so if he can mimic him for three or four days — and that’s just the first example that came to my mind, I know we have Washington and Oregon first — then he can learn a lot by going in part and being that guy for a few days.”

Loyer is an elite shooter, but in part because he uses the All-Americans around him (big man Zach Edey his first two years, now point guard Braden Smith) to generate open looks, as May alluded to. The 6-foot-5, 180-pound Loyer shot 44.4 percent from three-point range each of the previous two seasons, after making 32.6 percent of his triples as a freshman. His volume is way up this season, going 43-of-108 (39.8 percent) about halfway through the regular season (16 games).

Grady is grinding his way, and Michigan may use him at a crucial point in a game at some point. The Wolverines didn’t in their first loss of the season, a 91-88 setback to Wisconsin, but his time could be coming at some point.

“He’s doing all that. He loves the game. He loves ball,” May continued. “We’re going to need him sooner than later. I mean, we needed some shot-making last game. But, just the situation, we felt confident going with the vets.”

Michigan generating great three-point looks, but percentage has taken a dip last four games

Michigan ranks 70th nationally in three-point field goal shooting percentage (36) and 110th with a 43.3-percent three-point attempt rate. The Wolverines are dominant down low, leading the country by making 64.7 percent of their twos, but have proven to be a good jump shooting team, too.

Jump shooting is fickle — that’s why Michigan’s emphasis on defense, rebounding and dominating the paint is so high. The Wolverines have shot 25.7 percent from beyond the arc over the last four games, not making more than 8 in any of those outings.

“The ball didn’t go in the hole versus if it did?” May responded after a reporter asked his thoughts on the reasoning for the dip.

Michigan made 8 of its 25 attempts in the 91-88 loss to Wisconsin, in which graduate guard Nimari Burnett went 2-for-7 with some missed open looks toward the end.

“Did you see Nimari’s last three shots?” May continued, noting how open Burnett was. “The ball didn’t go in. They looked good, he said they felt great. There’s a defender 15 feet away. That’s what you do when you lose — you go back to resulting. And it’s like, freeze this shot. He’s standing there, he’s a very good shooter, he always has been.

“And so, you can’t put yourself in position where that ball … [Wisconsin] hit them and they pop in. Nimari has two great looks that don’t go in. Even on the one where his defender fell down and the big emergency switched, he had a lot of space, but the ball was low. At that point, we probably just needed to take the two, because [sophomore forward Morez Johnson Jr.‘s] guy rotated to him.”

May has been pleased with the shots Michigan is generating from deep but also understands that some nights they’ll fall and some they won’t.

“To answer your question, if Nimari Burnett has 10 feet of space on a corner three because [senior guard] Roddy Gayle [Jr. collapsed the defense] … that’s the thing. We went back yesterday and looked at the last four minutes, and other than a little bit of missed execution in the last minute, a little bit of panic, man, we played good ball. That thing was popping, we turned down good ones from great ones, and it didn’t go in.

“So, you sit here and say, ‘Do you over-analyze that?’ We don’t, because we’d love to play 82 possessions like that. The problem is everyone sees those possessions, and we’re more concerned with all the stuff that went on outside of the naked eye the other 82 possessions — the defensive lapses, the things we didn’t do well on that end, versus Nimari Burnett’s wide-open shots.

“They were playing good ball, man. Roddy Gayle, back screen, lob, kick-out, open three — man, I’ll take that. Give me 100 of those on this road trip, and we’ll take all 100 of them and feel good about where we are.”