Film Study: What Moustapha Thiam brings to Michigan Basketball

After the Michigan Wolverines won the National Championship, head coach Dusty May and his staff had little time to waste before jumping into the transfer portal to replenish their roster for next season. With the transfer portal opening minutes after the final buzzer, May had to quickly come up with a plan for how he was going to construct a roster that had major question marks surrounding his best players’ futures in college.

The biggest revolved around 7-foot-3 center Aday Mara, but he is currently projected to go in the first round of the NBA Draft, with many believing he will be a lottery pick. Because of this, May looked to the portal to get his next big man.

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“I mean, obviously every big guy that went in the portal became our list,” May said last Wednesday. “Like, literally 100 percent of the big guys that were high major players became our list because we didn’t know what (Mara and Morez Johnson Jr.) were going to do. And you just have to put yourself in as many positions as you can to be successful.”

After a few weeks passed by, May found his guy — a 7-foot-2 giant from Cincinnati in Moustapha Thiam. He is making his third stop in three seasons, starting his career at UCF before transferring to Cincinnati last season. A former four-star recruit, Thiam started 34 games as a freshman at UCF and averaged 10.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game.

Building off that, the Senegal native earned All-Big 12 honorable mention last season after starting 31 games for the Bearcats. He ranked second on the team in both scoring (12.8 per game) and rebounding (7.1 per game) while leading Cincinnati with 50 blocks, marking his second straight season with 50 or more blocks.

On film, Thiam is a well-balanced player that will make immediate contributions on both ends of the floor. He is a versatile rim protector that scares opponents away from attacking inside. Thiam had a 6.8 block rate for the 2025-26 season, where opponents shot 7.9 percent worse at…

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Publish date : 2026-05-05 14:00:00

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