Significantly improved after a big win over Purdue. Adding another win over a ranked team makes us looks much more attractive, even if we only scratch out one more win and end up 10-8 in the conference. Beating OSU would just about lock things up. They have been playing a lot like us…beating the teams they should, and not doing so well against better teams, but they’ve had even less success getting signature wins, and have none in the BT. A very winnable game, especially if LeVert can contribute more.
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You were wrong… pessimistic chump. Now takrme your pom poms with you.
“Purdue struggles on the road”
“Purdue goes long stretches without scoring”
“We need Purdue to have an off night”
I would say I was 3 for 3 in my prediction of things that needed to happen for us to have a chance.
What I was wrong about is us out rebounding them. I don’t think there was a single person on earth who would have thrown money on Michigan out rebounding Purdue. It was very encouraging watching Michigan grind out a win. I hope that kind of effort on the glass continues. I hope that kind of one on one defense in the post continues.
Signed- Chump
One thing that makes me feel very good about our tournament resume is the fact that as of right now we have zero losses against teams outside of the top 50 rpi and we have 3 wins against top 25 teams. I did not have time to go through the whole top 25 but it became clear pretty quickly as I looked at the top 10 rpi that there are only a few teams that can say that. Iowa is the only team in the big ten that meets those two criteria.
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oops, Iowa is the only other team in the big ten that meets those two criteria. If we can at least stay in that category by beating Northwestern and Wisconsin, then I think that would be an impressive data point that would be really easy for a selection committee to digest and would really help us get a decent seeding.
In the last decade only 3 teams have made the ncaa tourney as an at large with 3 or fewer wins against RPI top 100 teams. Of course Michigan can change that by going out and getting a couple more wins but as of this time it isn’t exactly a “strong” resume.
That does not make me feel good, Albrechtshotfake.
Good point. The Texas win is looking much better than originally thought too, and they have a handful of nice home game opportunities.
Texas + Purdue + Maryland + no “bad” losses is a good position.
I feel confident, as most do, that if we were to win 2 more and get to 11 B1G wins, we’re in regardless.
The only way we are in any real danger (in my opinion) is if we were to finish 1-4 and lose first round of B1G tourney.
I am curious how the committee will handle the Caris injury…they’ve been transparent in the past that they do take injuries into account. We didn’t suffer any bad losses without Caris, but its hard for the committee to make an argument “Michigan would have beaten Iowa/MSU/Purdue/Indiana with Caris”…
Just a really odd season, but some of the losses around the country that we avoided really have me feeling comfortable when we’re compared against other bubble teams.
I’ve seen that stat about the 4 top 100 wins and it doesn’t really worry me. NCSt (current RPI 106), PSU (113), NU (111 - and assuming we get that win), are all pretty close to being in the top-100 and one or more could jump a few spots. And the stat is more a function of the kind of resumes at large teams tend to have. If you play in a good conference and play a decent out of conference schedule, you’re going to likely wind up with more than 3 top 100 wins if you win 20 games and have a winning conference record. The committee isn’t going to leave out teams who happen to have several wins against teams right outside the top 100. I think we’re in even if we just beat NU and win one in the B1G tourney – although it’d be nice not to test that theory.
On the other side, we’re still not that far away from a pretty decent seed. If we were to win @OSU, NU, and Iowa (and really any three regular season wins), we’d probably be looking at a 6 seed entering the B1G tourney, which would be a good place to be. Still a lot of room both ways, especially with two real toss-up games, the first being tonight.
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