Hunter Dickinson on a running joke in the locker room, why Michigan is 'dangerous,' more

After Michigan lost to Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament last Thursday, head coach Juwan Howard said he was going to pray his team made the NCAA Tournament. Some in the facility were “stressing” about being on the bubble — players were watching every key game and managers turned into bracketologists, sophomore center Hunter Dickinson said.

Not exactly what you’d expect out of a preseason top-five team. But here the Wolverines are, in the NCAA Tournament field, safe of playing a First Four game in Dayton, with a chance to make a run. Michigan went 17-14 overall and 11-9 in Big Ten play, with seven wins over NCAA Tournament teams. They did enough to do some dancing this march, even if there was some sweating involved.

“I was pretty confident,” Dickinson said of Michigan’s chances heading into Sunday’s selection show. “I felt like what we did throughout the season, the quality of wins that we had, I felt like we had done enough to where we were in a good spot to get our name called.”

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Michigan is a No. 11 seed and will take on No. 6 seed Colorado Thursday in Indianapolis at 12:15 p.m. ET on CBS, with the winner to face either No. 3 seed Tennessee or No. 14 seed Longwood.

The Wolverines have been wildly consistent over the last month-plus. They haven’t won two-straight games since Feb. 8 and Feb. 10, and have alternated between wins and losses for 10 consecutive contests. That, of course, is not a recipe to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament, but the Big Dance doesn’t always go according to script.

“It’s a joke in the locker room, talking about the past however many games it’s win-loss, win-loss, win-loss,” Dickinson said. “We just ended on a loss, so it’s only right to continue that streak at least for one more game, and see where things go from there.”

Michigan has underwhelmed to this point this season. The three goals at the beginning of the year to win the Big Ten regular season, the conference tournament and the national championship. While the first two have come and gone, the third one is technically still within reach. While many believe it’s not attainable, Michigan can still do some damage over the next three weeks.

“These last four months have definitely been not the way people thought they were going to go from the start,” Dickinson noted. “But you can just see the growth from where we started to where we are now. The improvement that individuals have made and the improvement the team has made as a whole.

“We’re not the team that everybody thought we were going to be at the start of the season, but we still have that talent that everybody saw from the beginning of the season — that raw, natural talent that really makes us a dangerous team in the tournament.”

The talent isn’t what media and fans expected it to be, but the Wolverines, who were 7-7 and in deep trouble in January, have improved throughout the course of the year. The end of the year was rocky, too, but a lot of that had to do with the tough schedule. In its final 14 games, Michigan played just two teams that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament (it went 7-7).

The Big Ten is known for its high-level scouting, and the teams are so familiar with each other. Michigan is viewing the NCAA Tournament as a chance to have a clean slate.

“That’s the one good thing about the NCAA Tournament — you’re not playing against any other Big Ten teams for at least a couple games,” Dickinson said. “For me, that’ll be a good thing. Not a good thing, but fun, I’d say, because you’re playing against somebody new for once. You’re not playing against Rutgers or Michigan State or Iowa — you get to play somebody fresh, somebody that doesn’t know you, and you don’t know them. You get to learn a whole new team and get to scout them. That’s fun for me. playing against an opponent from another conference.

“I feel like we’ve got a good shot to do what we do.”