Michigan basketball should feel 'reasonably confident' about NCAA Tournament chances
Michigan basketball held a 17-point lead but collapsed to lose to Indiana, 74-69 Thursday afternoon in Indianapolis. The Maize and Blue are no longer in the Big Ten Tournament, and thus have left their fate in the hands of the selection committee and other bubble teams across the country who could steal bids. Head coach Juwan Howard said he’d be praying that his team hears its name called on Selection Sunday, and they’ll be sweating it out over the next three days.
So where does Michigan stand? How hard should Howard be praying?
The answer, for now: Not a ton has changed. The Wolverines’ big win at Ohio State last Sunday, which many experts said all but put them in the tournament, still carries a lot of weight. It’s early, with high-major conference tournaments just getting going, but it hasn’t been a chaos-filled week just yet. That helps Michigan’s hopes.
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Indiana moved up and to the right side of the bubble, but it wasn’t the play-in game that some were making it up to be. Michigan is still in a good spot.
The Wolverines are 17-14 — doesn’t look great — but still have five Quad 1 wins and three Quad 2 victories and dropped just three spots to No. 34 in the NET. The tilt against the Hoosiers qualified as Quad 1 on a neutral floor.
“For all of the good work Indiana did in the second half against Michigan, and we do give the Hoosiers more credit than the Wolverines blame, there is no getting around it — that was also a collapse of pretty epic proportions,” The Athletic‘s Eamonn Brennan wrote. Here’s the good news: We don’t think Michigan will miss the tournament. The Wolverines’ sheer record looks ugly at the very first, most cursory, most (dare we say it) basic glance, but a simple look at the team sheet helps understand why it is the way it is — because Michigan has played a lot of good teams this season.
“Fifteen of its 31 games have come against Quadrant 1 opposition. You’d love if it they’d won more than five of those 15 games, but the wins they do have (Purdue, at Iowa, at Ohio State, San Diego State, at Indiana) are really quality relative to a lot of what else is on the bubble (particularly a lot of the teams in the ACC).
“Anyone who brings up ’17-14′ as though it’s a helpful data point or historical reference probably needs to stop; Michigan adding another cupcake game or two on its schedule to get to 19 wins, or whatever, wouldn’t have changed the calculus here. The Wolverines started the day toward the higher end of the double-digit seeds, and we don’t think one more defeat will cause them to fall all the way down to the cut line.
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“But they’re also not so safe that we’re going to say they should be in right now, especially before we see what else happens along the bubble. For now, they’ll wait — reasonably confident, but still unsure.”
And that’s the key. None of this is happening in a vacuum. There are plenty of bubble teams still alive in their respective conference tournaments and, depending on the team and the resume, can punch their tickets with either a deep enough run or a championship and automatic bid. Oklahoma beating Baylor Thursday evening doesn’t help, but the Sooners still have work to do and take on the winner of Texas Tech vs. Iowa State Friday. Virginia Tech and Texas A&M — both of which won Thursday — are two more teams to watch (and root against, if you’re a Michigan fan). Virginia falling to North Carolina, meanwhile, is a positive development for Michigan and other bubble teams.
The bottom line: Michigan has to fall pretty far to miss the tournament, and according to ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi, still have a few spots between it and the First Four in Dayton.
Stay tuned at TheWolverine.com for more on Michigan’s NCAA Tournament chances as we’ll provide updates throughout the weekend.
