Michigan opened its season on Monday night and while Mike Boynton Jr. doesn't want his team to think about being the defending national champions — the Wolverines are. Every team is going to give Michigan their best shot, and despite Oakland being severely undersized, the Golden Grizzlies gave the Wolverines their best shot.

Michigan would win the game 84-68, but it wasn't as pretty as many had hoped. For starters, the Wolverines were without arguably their third-best player, Moustapha Thiam, who sat out with an illness. Boynton Jr. hopes to get him back when Michigan plays UConn on Friday.

One area that must get cleaned up

The Wolverines shot poorly behind the three-point line and that's the third game in a row we've seen the Wolverines shoot the three that bad. In their first regular-season game, the Wolverines shot just 21% from deep, and Boynton Jr. has said a few times that Michigan will shoot more threes this season. We expect the Wolverines to start knocking down their jumpers and while that is a concern — it's not the biggest.

Michigan was out-rebounded 44-42 in the win over Oakland and the Wolverines' defense gave up 21 offensive rebounds to the Golden Grizzlies. Obviously, having Thiam back will help that out, but Boynton Jr. needs to see more from his guards. Trey McKenney, Elliot Cadeau, and Roddy Gayle Jr. combined for just seven rebounds on Monday.

“Our guards have to rebound better,” Boynton said. “Roddy had one defensive rebound. That’s not going to be good enough. Trey had four. We need both of those guys in the 5-6 rebound range, particularly as you look ahead. UConn has always been one of the best rebounding teams, and that’s what we’ve got next. We've got the film.We're going to understand that it's something that we've not been as good at so far.

“It's like we have two really good rebounding bigs. Our guards haven’t really understood yet how important it is that they get in the fight.”

UConn will crash the boards

UConn also played on Monday night and the Huskies took down Gardner-Webb 86-46. UConn had non issues rebounding against a lesser opponent, either. The Huskies grabbed 46 rebounds to Gardner-Webb's 28.

The Huskies' big man Na'jai Hines grabbed 12 boards, but UConn's guards did a good job of rebounding the basketball as well. Boynton Jr. said it's going to come down to which set of guards rebounds better and that could be the deciding factor in Friday's heavyweight contest.

"Na'jai Hines and J.P. Estrella are going to be wrestling for rebounds on Friday," said Boynton Jr. "And so between their guards and our guards, the guys who get in there the most will probably give their team the edge. Tonight, it was [Oakland's] guards to get in there. They were rebounding better than our guards. And so we've got to address that. So it's always a concern rebounding because it's one of the big factors in basketball. Everybody knows it."

The Wolverines and Huskies will play at 8:00 p.m. ET on TNT.

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