Michigan's Morez Johnson Jr. waiting game and 'fluid situation' with roster

Michigan Wolverines basketball is waiting on a final decision by forward Morez Johnson Jr., a projected first-round pick who’s going through the NBA Draft process. The 6-foot-9, 250-pounder has until 11:59 p.m. ET May 27 to choose between staying in the draft or coming back to college.

Johnson is one of three Michigan players that entered the draft with remaining eligibility, joined by center Aday Mara and point guard Elliot Cadeau. Mara hasn’t left the door open on a return to college, but Cadeau has already withdrawn from the draft, as was his plan at the beginning of the process.

“Every situation is specific to the individual that’s involved, so we have those conversations very candidly with them,” Michigan assistant coach Mike Boynton Jr. said on the ‘Defend The Block’ podcast with Brian Boesch. “We support each and every one of these kids’ decisions to do whatever they feel is best for their careers.

“Elliot Cadeau, for example, this is good for him to be going through this process. A year from now, we’re hopeful and we feel confident he’s going to be back for us next year, even after he goes through this process. But it’ll be good for him to experience what this looks like, no different than what [forward] Yax[el Lendeborg] did last year.

“Same for Morez, regardless of what decision he makes for him individually, this is a good process. If it results in him playing for the Chicago Bulls next year, we’ll go to watch the Chicago Bulls play the Pistons when they come to Detroit next season. If it results in him playing for Michigan next year, then certainly we’ll do everything we can to help him be in a better position a year from now, because our job is to help them achieve their goals also, while trying to accomplish the goals that the program has in mind.

“But, at the same time, you have to be prepared for the reality that a few of them may not come back and how do you then put together a roster that can still be very competitive and give you a chance to compete at the highest level of college basketball.”

Michigan has already reloaded its frontcourt with the additions of center Moustapha Thiam (Cincinnati) and forwards J.P. Estrella (Tennessee) and Jalen Reed (LSU). Johnson would be icing on the cake.

“Obviously we’ve done that at a few different positions with the signings that we have, and I think we’re going to have the chance to have a team that looks a little bit different because we’re going to be younger than we’ve been next year but still very, very talented,” Boynton continued. “We’ll look forward to seeing how we can put the team together to be the best version of itself.”

Putting the roster together is different than putting the team together, Boynton alluded. A lot of the offseason work has to do with filling out the team, but it gets forged once they all get to Michigan and start working.

“It’s a fluid situation, always,” Boynton said. “Until you get the guys here and you’re about ready to play, you’re still kind of uneasy about how it looks.”

Last season, the Wolverines won the national championship, but that was far from a given. They lost a home exhibition game to Cincinnati (without Johnson and Mara), went to overtime in a second exhibition against St. John’s, which started the season slow, and barely escaped in regular-season games against Wake Forest and Texas Christian.

“The reality is, even once the season starts, it takes some time,” the Michigan assistant said. “I save random pictures on my phone, and I’ve shown it to probably about 10 people. There’s a picture of I think it was posted by Cincinnati, but the final score of our exhibition game against Cincinnati. And this isn’t about Cincinnati — it’s about us. We became one of the most dominant college basketball teams in the history of college basketball — 37-3, 19-1, 10-0 [on the road] in conference play — but we gave up 100 points to Cincinnati on our home court in October. Now, there were some factors in there. Aday and Morez don’t play, Yax is out there for the first time in front of our people. 

“It gives you an opportunity to say we will evolve depending on the roster completion, how that looks — whether we add somebody or not.

“We don’t know how this team’s going to need to play to be successful. I mean, coming out of the exhibition game, then we play three real games. The Oakland game was a blowout from beginning to end, and then we played two games against high-major competition where it’s like, ‘Hmm. We’ve got some things to figure out.’ We won them both, but there were some questions coming out of those games that needed to be kind of massaged and figured out, whether it was the lineup construction, whether it was the style of play. Yax got benched in the game against Wake Forest for a significant part of the second half.

“Hindsight, right? This is why we try to have the same temperature, because if you get too low in that moment and you bury Yaxel, we don’t do what we did. If we panic and we don’t think we can play the three bigs because it’s clunky for two or three games to start the season, maybe we figure out a different way to win, but I don’t know if we dominate the way we did throughout the season.”

Similarly to last year at this time, Michigan is waiting on a decision. It was Lendeborg in 2025 and Johnson in 2026. If the latter decides to come back to Ann Arbor, it could put the Wolverines over the top come next March and April. However, there will still be a lot to figure out.

“There’s a small chance we add a piece, yeah,” Boynton said. “But there’s also a chance that this is the roster, and either way I think our staff has shown that we can figure out how to massage it throughout a year to get really positive and not always excellent but really good results at the end.”