From the moment you watched him play on the euro trip
, most Michigan fans knew that Quinn Costello was going to have an impact this season.The 6-foot-10 freshman was red-hot from deep, making 45.8 percent of his 24 attempts from three while also proving to be a stellar cutter. Costello scored 11.7 points per game over the three-game trip, a mark that tied him with Tennessee transfer JP Estrella as Michigan’s third leading scorer.
“With Quinn’s size, I.Q., shooting ability, it’s a no-brainer, he’ll
find time with us,” head coach Mike Boynton Jr. said of Costello at Big Ten Media Day in Chicago earlier this week.
Quinn’s role with Michigan will be even bigger than what was expected a few months ago, with both Brandon McCoy Jr. and Lincoln Cosby undergoing rehab for torn ACLs. McCoy tore his ACL on that same euro trip, while Cosby tore his during the high school season.
You don’t find many players who are a few inches away from seven feet tall that shoot the ball as well as Costello. That’s part of why the Boston native — a four-star forward ranked 36th in his class — is expected to be a key part of Michigan’s rotation in 2026-27.
The returners on this Michigan team have noticed Quinn’s talent, with both sophomore Trey McKenney and senior Elliot Cadeau speaking highly of the freshman at Media Day.
“I think Quinn, if you give him an inch of space, he’s going to make it from three,” McKenney said. “He’s a really good shooter, he’s improving on defense and he works at it a lot. He’s a hard worker and I can tell he wants to make a really big impact this year, and I believe he will.”
“For me, I’ll definitely say Quinn,” Cadeau said. “I feel like I’ve played with a lot of NBA players, seen a lot of NBA players and he’s for sure an NBA player.”
Even with the injuries to McCoy and Cosby, there’s a lot to like about Michigan’s freshman class, who will be expected to play a role in this team’s success.
“I think they will definitely make an impact this year,” Cadeau said of the freshman class. “They’re very confident, they’re very talented, I feel like they’ll surprise a lot of people.”
“They’re going to be really good this year,” McKenney said of the freshman class. “They’ve been learning a lot from us returners telling them what to do in practice, how we go about things, I think they’ll have a big impact this year.”
When asked about how many guys he expect to be in the rotation, Boynton stuck with the answer you typically hear from college basketball coaches.
“It’s hard to say with certainty at this point,” Boynton replied, when asked how deep he sees the team being this season. “In a perfect world you get to nine…it just depends, but 8-9 is kind of the sweet spot.”
With the starting lineup presumably being Cadeau, McKenney, Roddy Gayle Jr., Estrella and Moustapha Thiam, that leaves spots for three or four guys to make an impact off the bench. Costello clearly seems like one of those guys, and a returning player may join him as two of the first guys off the bench.
“Ricky (Liburd) is higher than 8-9 in the rotation,” Boynton said. “Shot making, rebounding, physicality, versatility, he’s a really good athlete so he can play in transition with us. Just a really good two-way, all-around guard.”
There’s plenty of other options for those last two rotation spots, with two of the most notable being Columbia transfer Kenny Noland as a backup point guard and Oscar Goodman sliding into the Will Tschetter role as a forward who can guard multiple positions.
Freshman guards Joseph Hartman and Malachi Brown also have the chance to crack that rotation. But when it comes to that duo, Boynton appears to be focusing on long-term success over short term.
“Young guys are always guys where if you evaluate them well with their high school situation, you take those guys with the optimism that they’re going to develop and you get enough guys to help you long-term, which we think they’re both long-term guys,” Boynton said of the pair. “They got different skill sets, Joseph’s is more of a shooting-scoring-minded guy right now, and Malachi is more of a defensive, disruptive guy right now. I don’t think we’ll count on either one of them to win the Big Ten this year, but we defintely believe that they’re both guys that are capable of helping us win in the Big Ten long term.”
