Michigan basketball fans will be sweating it out for the next 24 hours. this week. They got two more wins in the Big Ten Tournament, including a thrilling signature win over top seeded Indiana. However their tournament chances remain 50/50.
It’s a weak bubble, in terms of the teams on it, but it’s an ever shrinking bubble, due to a fair amount of chaos in the conference tournaments this week.
You’ve had couple more bids get stolen this week, and today’s results brought a mixed bag. LSU not only lost, they got SLAUGHTERED by Texas A&M. That’s great for the Michigan basketball community. However, Selection Sunday might still favor the Tigers over the Wolverines due to the star power of Ben Simmons, the potential #1 overall NBA Draft pick. The NCAA might favor Simmons and LSU due to the ratings spike they could bring.
UConn defeating Temple was worse news for Michigan. The Huskies were squarely on the bubble yesterday, but getting those two huge wins has now punched their ticket.
If Michigan had picked up a third win in Indy today over Purdue, they would have been a lock, possibly as a #10 seed.
John Beilein was asked to make his case to the committee following his team’s loss in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals.
“We beat top-25 teams. We beat the champion of our league. If anybody here thought that was a home game for us yesterday, they’re crazy. That was not a home game against Indiana. This was not a home game today.”
“Our kids battled all year long. And when we’re playing like an SMU and we just go — we just go to North Carolina State and we played great. And all of a sudden we lose Derrick Walton.”
“There was all these adjustments all year long.”
Here’s your updated Michigan Basketball NCAA Tournament Resume:
Current Rankings:
RPI- 56, SoS- 50, Sagarin- 36, KenPom- 56 (it doesn’t get any more bubblicious than metrics registering numbers like these)
Best Wins: Texas (RPI 26), Maryland (13), Purdue (16), Indiana (22)
Bad Losses: None really. UM didn’t lose to anyone they weren’t supposed to this season. There are no NJITs to be found anywhere. On the flip side, they really could have used that non-conference win over UConn, the very team that could take their spot. A 4-12 top-100 record hardly makes for a sure bet. For now, it’s more like a 50-50 bet.
Similarly to LSU, the Wolverines could benefit from some brand name recognition themselves. They’re one of the biggest brands in college sports, and they just played in the national title game in 2013. After his Wildcats lost to this Michigan basketball team in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, Northwestern Coach Chris Collins implied that during his postgame press conference:
“I guess our name isn’t big enough yet, and that’s something that we have to do for ourselves. We don’t have the brand name yet, and to that’s something that we’re going to work on…We don’t have that brand name on our chest, but you know what? We play good basketball. I hope people take notice of that.”
Northwestern Guard Tre Demps also alluded to the Michigan basketball brand potentially doing the Wolverines some favors with the selection committee.
“Yeah, there’s this thing called politics,” he said. “They want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, that’s just reality.” (Read the full quote and story here)
Beilein disagrees with the idea that the Michigan basketball brand name will determine their postseason fate. He thinks it’ll call come down to the records and body of work.
“I don’t think they think about that at all,” he said. “I think they think about what are the best teams that are out there.”
“If you look at our schedule, there was a huge number of top-25 teams that we played, a huge number of them…And we won enough to show that if we played the teams in the 50s through 100s more, if we played more of the teams at the back end of the 25 that were 40, 45, 50, whatever they are, we can beat those teams.”
If they do get picked tomorrow, and then subsequently go on another deep March run, maybe famous Michigan basketball fan Kate Upton will show up?!
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram