Michigan basketball vs. Western Kentucky: Preview and updates

Michigan basketball closes the 2024 calendar year by hosting Western Kentucky on Sunday night at the Crisler Center. Tip-off against the Hilltoppers is scheduled for 8 p.m., and the game will air on Big Ten Network.

The Wolverines are 9-3, and 2-0 in the Big Ten, and WKU represents the final non-conference game of the regular season. The Tops have an identical record and a top-125 ranking on KenPom, but their wins to date haven’t been spectacular; their victories feature opponents such as Kentucky Wesleyan and Campbellsville. Against the upper echelons of the sport, Western Kentucky has suffered narrow losses to Wichita State and Grand Canyon, and a 19-point road defeat to Kentucky.

WKU is led by guard Don McHenry, who has scored 28 or more points in three straight games. The Wisconsin native is a senior whose career has featured stops at Hawaii Hilo and Indian Hill Community College before transferring to the Tops ahead of the 2023-24 campaign. That up transfer was an immediate hit, as McHenry was the team’s leading scorer (15.1 points per game) last year and finished as the fourth-leading scorer in CUSA while charting the third-best field goal percentage in the conference. Appropriately, he does command high usage (28.5%, per KenPom) and is very efficient at the free throw line (84.8%).

McHenry paces an offense that plays fast (11th in adjusted tempo, per KenPom) and rarely turns the ball over. But, like many of Michigan’s opponents in non-conference, WKU is among the shorter teams in the nation, with a starting five featuring a 6-foot-8 center and a 6-foot-7 power forward. As a result, WKU doesn’t hit the offensive glass and was thoroughly out rebounded by Kentucky in that matchup.

Michigan will hope to avoid a late-December letdown that has recurred in recent years: A 2023 loss to McNeese St., a 2022 loss to Central Michigan and 2021 loss to Central Florida were harbingers of disappointing seasons.

KenPom predicts a 16-point win for the Wolverines and gives them a 92% chance of taking care of business against Western Kentucky on Sunday night at Crisler.

Michigan vs. Western Kentucky: Game notes

Via the two programs: 

– The Tops’ current six-game winning streak dates back over a month, with the team’s only other loss coming at the hands of No. 8 Kentucky on the road in Lexington on Nov. 26.

– WKU touts the top-scoring offense in CUSA with an average of 82.0 points per game, good for 54^th in the nation. The Tops rank sixth in the nation for defensive rebounding with 30.17 per game. They’re also 37^th in the nation in FG% defense, limiting opponents to 39.1% shooting from the field. 

– U-M’s battle with Western Kentucky is the finale of a quintuple of Sunday games on the Big Ten Network. After five men’s games, the Sunday slate of games will end with a Maize & Blue doubleheader as Kim Barnes Arico’s 23rd-ranked Wolverines take on fourth-ranked USC and JuJu Watkins at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST) from the Galen Center.

– Michigan and Western Kentucky are playing for the first time in 17 years. U-M is 3-2 all-time, but the Wolverines have lost the last two. 

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