What's next for Michigan after a Big Ten Tournament collapse for the ages?
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Michigan’s start to tournament play in March looked like it was off to a good start early in the afternoon on Thursday. The Wolverines were playing excellent on both sides of the ball, holding a 17-point lead over an Indiana team firmly on the bubble and desperate for a win with about 10 minutes left in the game.
Then that happened.
It was the most 2021-2022 Michigan basketball game imaginable — a matchup that took fans through the same emotions they’ve experienced over the course of the entire season and just condensed it into a nice, convenient 40-minute roller coaster ride.
When Michigan was good, it was really good. DeVante’ Jones was getting to the rim with ease, either getting good looks at the hoops, drawing fouls or distributing the ball to teammates who found ways to finish the possession themselves. The Wolverine defense was forcing turnovers while the offense was avoiding making their own. Role players were stepping up and doing their part. Michigan didn’t just look like a tournament team. It looked like a team that could do damage in said tournament.
But when it mattered the most, it was bad. Really bad. There was no penetration. No shot creating. No shot finishing. In fact, from the 12:52 mark to the 1:42 mark in the 2nd half, Michigan made a grand total of zero shots from the field. None. Nada. Zilch. The turnovers the Wolverines were forcing in the first half disappeared, and the ones the team was avoiding making on offense were manifesting in crunch time. Ugly is an understatement. Sure, it was a punch to the gut. But it was followed by a kick to the groin. And that was followed by a wedgie. And that was followed by a poke in the eyeball, Captain Insano style.
I really could spend this entire newsletter overanalyzing the final 10 minutes and where/how/why everything went wrong. But for the sake of everyone’s sanity, it can be summed up just as clearly in eight words as it can be in 8,000:
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
The end.
But just because I don’t think there’s a ton of value sifting through the worst 10-minute stretch of Michigan basketball in years with a fine-tooth comb doesn’t there aren’t a lot of other things to talk about when it comes to the Michigan men’s basketball team — namely, its NCAA tourney hopes leading up to Selection Sunday.
So here’s a one-stop shop of all things NCAA tournament and Michigan as we head into Saturday’s conference tournament action across the country, and near the 24-hour mark when it comes to the NCAA tournament bracket reveal.
Michigan should still be in — and avoiding the First Four
Michigan’s resume is absolutely good enough to get into the field. In fact, it’s that much better than the vast majority of others bubble teams’ resumes that I was confident enough to make matter-of-fact statements like this one after Michigan’s loss:
But make no mistake about it: if Michigan doesn’t make the tournament, it wasn’t “screwed.” I firmly believe that if you’re looking to qualify for a 68-team(!) tournament and there’s any doubt over whether you’re qualified to play in it or not, then you forfeit any right to complain about being left out on the spot. Michigan went 17-14 this season. That’s not far away from being .500. If you lose almost as much as you win, you can’t play the victim if you’re not given the right to play for a national title after a 30-plus game season.
With that caveat aside, this is a team that belongs in the tournament when you look at the other teams it’s competing with for the final few handfuls of at-large spots. Let’s take a deeper look into those bubbles teams.
Here’s a chart of what I consider to be the 15 true “bubble” teams as we enter Selection Sunday weekend. I tried to make this exercise as objective as possible. The 15 teams in this table are the 15 teams on BracketMatrix.com that fit the following criteria:
They have an average seed that’s greater than 10 — in fact, this chart is ordered in terms of best average seed (Miami (FL) has an average seed of 10.37, SMU is the final at-large school "in" with an 11.82 average seed.)
They appeared on at least five projected brackets (Mississippi State and Washington State eached appeared on two brackets for some strange reason and had average seeds of 11.5, which would have made them very annoying outliers to account for.)
(For those curious, the three schools that had an average seed in the 9-9.99 range that just missed the cut on the "good" side of things were San Francisco, Creighton and Memphis — so that’s the bubble cut off above these 15.)
The top 8 teams in this group of 15 will make the tournament in an at-large capacity. That number could shrink if there’s a bid steal in another conference tournament, but candidates to assume that bid-steal role are shrinking by the day, and there really aren’t many bid steal opportunities left.
Do you really see eight teams on that list with a better resume than Michigan? Hell, do you see any teams on that list with a better resume than Michigan?
A couple other things to keep in mind when looking at this chart:
Michigan is in the top 3 of every category. No. 1 in strength of schedule. No. 2 in NET rating and Q1 wins. No. 3 in both KenPom and Torvik.
Last season, every team in the top 40 of NET made the tournament field. Michigan is No. 34. That’s a sizeable cushion.
Deep runs by teams like Texas A&M may seem impactful in the moment, but if you take a step back and look at their resume, it’s hard to bump them over teams who have a considerably better body of work over the course of the season just because of a good 2-3 game stretch during a conference tournament.
Michigan’s loss to Indiana was an ugly loss based on how it happened. But it won’t be a “bad loss” on paper. And while the Hoosiers’ win over Illinois hurts Michigan in the sense that Indiana is a fellow bubble team and another bubble team moving up the ranks hurts Michigan by extension, that Friday win over top-seeded Illinois most certainly helps the perception of Michigan’s Thursday loss.
Michigan certainly had to do its part in blowing a 17-point lead on Thursday. But that doesn’t happen if Indiana wasn’t playing out of its mind on both ends of the floor in the last 10 minutes of that game.
I’m not ready to call the 2022 Big Ten Tournament a “positive” for Michigan anytime soon — I envision this loss is going to have some PTSD attached to it for quite a while, if we’re being honest here — but it could end up creating some positives when it comes to Michigan’s resume.
For example: Michigan has wins over all four teams still left in the Big Ten Tournament, with the majority of those wins coming by 17 or more points.
24-point win over Purdue
18-point win over Indiana (at Indiana)
17-point win over Michigan State
5-point win over Iowa (at Iowa)
As a fan, it can make Thursday’s loss sting more because of the “what if” factor. But from a tournament resume standpoint, that sends a pretty impressive message when it comes to telling the story that Michigan belongs in the field.