Interesting debate! The fully weaponized version of the 2012-13 team (i.e. the tourney version with beastmode McGary) is hard to beat but that team did have some struggles in Big Ten season. The numbers would clearly put the 2013-14 team a step behind but that team was incredible and my sneaky pick for best team in the Beilein era. Donât forget they won the Big Ten regular season by three games that year and thatâs a Big Ten that included a final four team (Wisky) and an absolutely loaded MSU team. I still sometimes think about what that team could have looked like with a healthy McGary- I suspect they would have won it all.
That 2012-2013 team was great - you list so many good players but if I recall wasnât Tom Hardway Jr on that team as well? 1st team all big ten that year, I believe? I think the 2012-2013 is still the best in the modern era.
- Tim Hardaway Jr.
I canât wait to see how many players from the 20-21 team end up in the NBA. 12-13 was so stacked that their 6 man Caris made the league and is thriving in it. Maybe the 20-21 6th man Chaundee has a shot as well, who knows!? (I guess Duncan was a 6th man too haha)
I think the 2013-14 team also deserves a shout outâfinishing strong, winning the B10 by 3 games, before bowing out in the Regional Finals on a contested 3.
Yeah, probably an oversight to leave them off tbh. They actually had a better pure offensive efficiency than the '12-â13 team â the defense was really an Achillesâ heel in a way none of these other teams had.
I had this thought, too, because the others here were not exactly brimming with obvious NBA talent. Feels like the '20-'21 group is a little more like '12-'13 in that way. Have to think Franz, Isaiah, Hunter, and Chaundee will all get a shot, at minimum.
I do think this team is the best of the bunch, but I will admit we need to see the rest of the season play out.
One big takeaway for me is the age of this yearâs main contributors is largely thanks to two transfers. I think the new transfer rule (if it remains) will allow top-tier schools to build complete teams, unlike the previous model where year-to-year rosters were unpredictable, causing nearly every team to have flaws.
In the shadow of the 12-13 team youâre right about 13-14. However, in a head-to-head match or relative to the sum of their parts I might even argue 13-14 over the other two teams you compared. That offense was lethal and it is hard to even imagine them with a healthy McGary.
I think the 12-13 team still gets the nod just because top-to-bottom they were so talented and deep. Not to mention that they rolled through most of the tournament and played a tough game in the final in a game that had crazy bad luck (block that was a foul, Burke foul trouble, etc.) against a team that later had to vacate their title for recruiting violations.
Burke, Hardaway, and Levert are regular rotation players in the NBA. Robinson is a half-step behind that but still a consistent rotation piece. Stauskas and McGary were first round picks. Morgan played forever overseas and set a bunch of Michigan records. Horford would have started for a lot of teams and yet was our third center and was the 9th man on the team. Spike scored 17 points in that game as the 8th man on the roster. That team wasnât great at defense, but there were no holes on offense and they could go 9 deep with minimal drop-off.
As good as the 2013 team was, if Elijah Johnson makes a free throw, we probably view it as an underachieving season, which it certainly did seem like until the VCU beatdown in the tourney. If someone bothers to box out on a free throw against Oregon, then maybe the 2017 team is a subject in Maxâs article. That team was the definition of peaking at the right time. Max mentioned the unlikely Poole shot against Houston as a factor in how we view the 2018 team. It is amazing how a bounce here or there can colour the perception of a team on a look back.
Unless (until?) this team proves otherwise, Iâm with @AC1997 re: the 2013 team being the best. The talent sticks out, and Iâll never forget watching the pre-Christmas games that season and thinking that nobody could keep pace. The Big Ten Elite episode on that team that Iâve watched about a hundred times features at least one player/coach talking about how the team just felt kind of bored as the season went on, waiting for the tourney. Thatâs a mark of arrogance, to an extent, but also the mark of an extremely talented group that knew just how great it was.
I was thinking the same thing about the 2014 team. Special. Nearly made the final four. And, oh what would they have been with Mitch!
This is true. But the gauntlet of VCU, Kansas, Florida, Syracuse, Louisville has to be one of the tougher tournament paths of the decade. I remember plenty of talking heads saying Syracuse was a worse matchup for Michigan (especially in a tournament setting) than Indiana - which Syracuse beat in the Elite 8.
McGary is really the great wildcard in this discussion, IMO. He was largely responsible for the 2013 tournament run, but just imagine if he peaked midway through the conference season. Also hard to imagine anything but a 1 seed and Final Four trip in 2014 if he was healthy. The Matthews injury is also an unfortunate asterisk for the 2019 team. Id hope a healthy CM could be good for at least 1 win out of 3 games against MSU
Yeah, the 2019 being so defensive focused is weird in the context of Beileinâs career. Those MSU losses were frustrating - that we could never crack that code. But that team was still pretty flawed.
The 2014 team makes me think about how well they were playing when that fluke Kentucky shot fellâŚeven without McGary. That was the team I thought could make a run even more than the one that did!
Imagine 2019 Michigan with 2018 Michiganâs NCAA Tournament draw 
I donât really think any results would be different? Bigger margins vs the early teams sans A&M and maybe only a 10 point loss to Nova? I donât think 2019 Michigan would take them down either.
Yeah â my point was just that theyâd be remembered differently if they had such an easy NCAA Tournament draw. The 2018 teamâs draw was extraordinarily easy (highest rated team was 18th on KenPom).
The 17 and 19 teams would probably be looked at completely differently if they had that sort of draw. Instead, they are âflawedâ.
Just the crazy part of college hoops.
Honestly thereâs a good argument the 13, 14, 17, and 19 teams all would have made the national title with 18âs draw. No disrespect to that team whatsoever but it really was a historically easy path, which made the run all the more fun because I truly couldnât believe it was happening the entire way.
I think 2019 is remembered as âlesserâ by some due to the MSU results moreso than the tourney. People are still in agony over those games. Just one. We just needed one of them. Iâm still haunted by those games. You might notice that the 2019 team actually ended higher on Kenpom (by one spot, but still).
I am not arguing for this viewpoint btw