On Saturday, for probably the only time this season, the Michigan men’s basketball team will face off against a more youthful squad.

The South Carolina Upstate roster lists 10 players new to the team, including eight true freshmen — making the Spartans the third youngest college basketball team in the country.

Picked to finish dead last in the Atlantic Sun Conference, USC Upstate is coming off a 6-23 season. The Spartans return two four-year starters in seniors Mezie Uzochukwu and Josh Chavis.

The Wolverines (1-0 overall) shook off their first game jitters in a nine-point win over Saginaw Valley State last weekend, so USC Upstate should prove to be a good benchmark as to where the team stands against other young teams.

On the offensive end, the Wolverines will need to improve on last weekend’s 35.2 percent shooting in order to prove that they are as good of a shooting team in games as they say they are in practice.

Also, more players will have to step up to round out the team's scoring — especially without a Manny Harris-like output coming from any single player. In the SVSU game, only two players scored in double digits: freshman Evan Smotrycz and sophomore Darius Morris.

“We have to make shots,” Michigan coach John Beilein said after last Saturday’s win. “We’d have those games when we’d get leverage from Deshawn Sims for 15 to 20 points a game. There’s not a lot of that right now. It’s developing.”

Playing against such an inexperienced team will give the Wolverines a chance to run the fast-break offense that Beilein installed this year. He said during Big Ten Media Day on Oct. 28 that this year’s team has picked up the fast break better than any team in recent memory.

But that wasn’t on display against the Cardinals, as Michigan didn’t score a single fast-break point.

“We have to push tempo,” Beilein said at Big Ten Media Day. “Even though we might not shoot it, depending on our depth, walking the ball up the court, we gotta only do that when we’re up by 10 with two minutes left.”

After an impressive first game in which he pulled down 15 boards, freshman Jordan Morgan will also have his hands full in the post.

“Fifteen rebounds was a good number against anybody," Beilein said after the SVSU game. "We like the fact that he’s getting traffic rebounds. It’s not the ones that came to him, he went up and got some balls. He looked like Deshawn Sims at times.”

Morgan, who scored nine points against the Cardinals, will most likely match up with the 6-foot-5 Uzochukwu, who averaged nearly nine points per game shooting 48-percent from the field last year.

This first regular-season game will be a building block for the Wolverines, as the team looks forward to the Legends Classic in Atlantic City where the team will square off against Syracuse and the winner of Georgia Tech/UTEP over Thanksgiving break.