A ton of supposedly elite, head and shoulders above everyone else type teams loosing or struggling to win with regularity that you didn’t see last year. Maybe those who took the Charlotte loss to heart should maybe put this into perspective…
For comparison sake, we beat Coppin St at a better margin than #11 Gonzaga did today. We are a good team, not understanding the NIT or super low seed, 5th place B1G, unranked talk that I see on some of these UM NCAAMBB forums.
I will wait till we play Duke and Arizona before I pass judgment. Comparing margin of blowout isn’t really a good indicator of who’s better than who. If we can beat those two teams, or even be competitive with them, then I’ll be convinced that this team is a legitimate contender. The big time teams may have close victories over teams that they should blowout, but more often than not, they show up and win in the marquee matchups.
but more often than not, they show up and win in the marquee matchups.
Like Kansas, Louisville, UNC, OK St, etc?
Reality is that it doesn’t really matter who’s elite in November, December, or even January. Unlike college football, preseason rankings in college basketball are essentially moot. In college football, the preseason ranking does have a heavy influence on a given team’s upward mobility, and hence chances at winning a championship. Basically, a team that starts the season ranked #24 can go undefeated and yet be on the outside looking in if 2 other undefeated teams are ranked higher in the preseason polls. College basketball, on the other hand, requires that you actually beat 6 teams to win a championship regardless of current rank and/or seeding.
All this to say, we don’t really know who is/isn’t elite as of right now, and I think to a certain extent, that may be Guestavo’s point here. As it relates to Michigan, I think most people would concede we aren’t elite RIGHT NOW, but in fairness to Guestavo’s point, can we really say that about any team? I guess the point is, elite is a relative term, does it mean a given team has no flaws? Does it mean you have limited flaws? Or does it simply mean you have less flaws relative to the pool of competition? In college basketball, it usually translates to having less flaws than the competition in my opinion.
Agree with MattD on preseason rankings. Also want to point out that basketball gives coaches more of a chance to show how they can develop a player over the course of a season. What the team (and fans) should focus on for now is seeing if the team is getting better from game to game and that everyone is getting healthy. Then, whichever high seeds in the NCAA tourney make good runs will be remembered as “elite” this season.
I’d like to bring this back up. If Arizona loses to UNLV, there’s a great chance OSU is ranked number one. The same OSU whose best win is against an unranked Marquette team that was down to Wisconsin for 95 % of their game. No way any of us know who will be elite at the end of the year but I can guarantee OSU is not an elite team.
Kansas and Kentucky with multiple losses
MSU and Duke looking shakey multiple times
UCLA loses
Purdue beat CCST by significantly higher margin than OSU LOL
Has anyone watched Syracuse? They look scary. Other than Baylor and Indiana (who they obliterated in the 2nd half), they haven’t played much competition, but they have uber athletic forwards, and Tyler Ennis, who is only a freshman, is playing really well as their PG.
They need more shooters.
Has anyone watched Syracuse? They look scary. Other than Baylor and Indiana (who they obliterated in the 2nd half), they haven't played much competition, but they have uber athletic forwards, and Tyler Ennis, who is only a freshman, is playing really well as their PG.
The per 36 min stats say Ennis and Walton are very similar, outside of Ennis being better in the passing lanes so keep that in mind.
No one needs to worry about being “elite.” Michigan just needs to get better over the course of the season. Improve every single day. That should be our goal, and if we accomplish that we will be one of the best teams by the end of the year.
We are very young, but we are also very talented. Too talented to be kept down for long. We’ll be a death machine by year’s end.
GuaranSheed.
No one needs to worry about being "elite." Michigan just needs to get better over the course of the season. Improve every single day. That should be our goal, and if we accomplish that we will be one of the best teams by the end of the year.We are very young, but we are also very talented. Too talented to be kept down for long. We’ll be a death machine by year’s end.
GuaranSheed.
No, no, no. Our goal for this season is a B1G championship. If we’re not able to do that, then this season is a failure.
Hard to measure one blowout against another, really. 25, 30, 40…not that big a difference in the big picture. If you want to pick out teams that are “elite” (or at least what can pass for it at this point in the season), look for teams that have shown the ability and the toughness to beat a high quality opponent. A closer than should have been win, or even a loss, is not so bad if balanced by a win against a tough team.
Hard to measure one blowout against another, really. 25, 30, 40…not that big a difference in the big picture. If you want to pick out teams that are "elite" (or at least what can pass for it at this point in the season), look for teams that have shown the ability and the toughness to beat a high quality opponent. A closer than should have been win, or even a loss, is not so bad if balanced by a win against a tough team.
And what teams are those, besides Arizona and maybe MSU?
I wouldn’t categorize MSU as elite, they have a quality victory against UK (althoug that is slightly less impressive at this point), but have largely struggled against inferior competition for most of the season. MSU doesn’t have the upside/ceiling that UK has, simply beecause the majority of their key players are upperclassmen, which means they have probably hit, or are close to, their ceilings.
In my opinion, MSU has a very nice starting 5, but they are really lacking depth this year in comparsion to last year’s team. Losing Nix bascially gives them a 6 man rotation of impact players. They really lose a lot when they go to the bench.