Michigan gets Rutgers in 8-9 game, will play Purdue with a win. Thoughts on the draw ...
Michigan missed a golden opportunity — again — to boost its NCAA Tournament resume. The Wolverines were a solid finish away from being the Big Ten’s overall No. 2 seed, but will now play No. 9 Rutgers as the No. 8 seed Thursday in Chicago.
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Thoughts on the draw, the bracket, and Michigan’s latest failure to finish …
• Michigan will play the early game Thursday (Noon, 11 central), and it’s likely to have the atmosphere of a Monday 8 a.m. weekday mass during an ice storm. U-M basketball fans don’t travel well to this tournament unless their team is a favorite or really good — that’s been our experience covering this event since 1998 — and the handful of Rutgers fans in attendance probably won’t make much noise, either.
This is probably the best draw for Michigan in terms of a winnable game against a Quad 1 opponent (Rutgers will still be that, top 50 on a neutral court, even after a home loss to Northwestern). And if they win and beat Purdue Friday in the noon game, that would give them the huge win that’s missing from the resume.
• At the same time, the committee hasn’t put a lot of stock into Quad 1 wins in tournament games recently when it comes to bolstering the resume. Texas A&M last year is an example. They picked up three big wins and lost in the SEC title game but were still the fourth team out.
In short, Michigan probably needs to win the Big Ten Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. And with its failure to close out games this year, there’s no indication they’ll be able to do that.
• If Michigan were to get by Rutgers and Purdue, the Wolverines would probably play Michigan State. The Spartans are one of the hottest teams in the conference right now and might be playing as well as anyone. They’re shooting the lights out from three-point range over the last three or four games, and only a once-in-two-decade collapse at Iowa prevents them from being the hottest team entering the tournament.
Ohio State or Wisconsin will play Iowa, the five seed, Thursday. The winner plays MSU Friday. We like the Spartans to get to Saturday. If Michigan gets past Purdue (assuming win over Rutgers, which is no gimme), that’s a tough one.
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• All due respect to Northwestern, the Wildcats are probably the weakest two seed in the history of this tournament. No. 7 Illinois will likely beat Penn State, and the Illini would be favored to beat Northwestern. Of course, If Michigan had somehow hung on to beat Illinois, we’d have called the Wolverines the weakest No. 2 seed in the tourney’s history, too. It’s been that kind of year.
• The bottom half of the bracket is much easier. At this point, Indiana is as good a bet as anyone to emerge and play on Sunday, though Illinois could have a say. Maryland can’t win away from home … we wouldn’t bet on them to make it to Saturday.
• Bottom line — this Michigan team is talented enough to be in the field, but hasn’t done enough to get there. Late, inexplicable turnovers in games (how the bench wasn’t screaming during a late shot clock violation down the stretch at Indiana is beyond us), crazy scoring droughts … something’s off and needs to be fixed.
To believe that’s going to happen this week when it hasn’t all year … well, only the most optimistic Michigan fan is probably on board with that.
But stranger things have happened, and we’ll be there this week to cover it.
