Quick Analysis: What Michigan is getting in 2021 point guard Frankie Collins

The Michigan Wolverines have officially found the first point guard pledge of the Juwan Howard era in the form of four-star Frankie Collins, who committed to the program late Wednesday night.

Collins is the No. 57 overall player in the country and ranks as the No. 8 point guard per the 247Sports Composite Rankings. His pledge gives Michigan its fourth commitment out of four in the 2021 class that is ranked inside of the top 150 players in the nation. His high school career has seen him transfer out of Las Vegas to Arizona and then back to Las Vegas, where he will play this year alongside five-star combo guard Jaden Hardy.

He is not the biggest player at 6-foot-1, but he is extremely athletic point guard prospect that excels in both creating for himself and also working in a ball screen offense. If Jalen Warley packed the biggest offensive punch of the prospects that Michigan was in on and Carter Whitt was the best passer, I think you’re getting a nice hybrid of those two things in Collins’ commitment.

Collins is a traditional point guard that shows a strong ability to get his teammates involved, but also create for himself and take over games when he has to. He wants the ball in his hands and he’ll make sure that it stays there until an opportunity to make a play is there, whether it be by taking it on himself or getting teammates involved.

The way he is able to get downhill and finish around the rim is impressive for a player of his size and he does have the ability to stretch a defense with his perimeter shooting, although there are plenty of questions about his efficiency in his jump shots and selection. What he lacks in his size he more than makes up for in athleticism and his wingspan and he has shown himself plenty capable of getting after it on the defensive end of the court.

Michigan is going to need Collins to be ready to play early on, as the 2021-22 roster will see only Zeb Jackson as someone there that may be handle point guard duties. There’s plenty of basketball to be played until we see what he will be ready for as a true freshman, but one does not need to look hard at the scholarship chart to see that he’s going to play a factor.

Overall, I like his fit in this class and he is another foundational player for Howard as he tries to build the program in his image. Collins, wings Kobe Bufkin and Isaiah Barnes and forward Will Tschetter are all nice pieces to build around that project to spend more than a few seasons in Ann Arbor. With at least one and potentially as many as three scholarship spots still open in this cycle, Howard and his staff can turn their attention to the prospects higher on the board — such as five-stars Efton Reid (big), Harrison Ingram (wing) and Trevor Keels (wing) and four-star forwards Brandon Weston and Bryce Hopkins.