Michigan Basketball will head into the B1G Tournament as the No. 9 seed in the conference, but in reality, they are closer to being the No. 9 team in the nation. They will have a chance to prove it starting Thursday afternoon against Rutgers, as they look to make it to their fourth consecutive Big Ten title game.

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First the bad news

Michigan finished the regular season unranked after climbing as high a No. 4 in the AP Poll back in their November to remember, which included a 7-0 start to the season and a neutral-court beatdown of Gonzaga, arguably the best team in the country. They finished .500 in conference play, their worst mark in the last five years. They head into the B1G Tournament losing 3 of their last 4 games, allowing 30 made threes in those losses (OSU, WISC, MARY). Michigan is a combined 1-8 against the top-7 seeds in the Big Ten, their only win coming against Michigan State over a month ago.

No team has ever won the B1G Tournament Championship as a No. 9 seed or higher, and only one 9-seed has ever been to the title game. In fact, 9-seeds have the worst winning percentage (.290) of any seed 1 through 10 in the history of the tournament. CBSSportsLine’s computer simulations give the Wolverines a 6.0% chance of winning the Big Ten Tournament title.

Bright Side Time

Only one team has ever won the B1G Tournament as anything higher than a 6-seed. That would be your 2017 Michigan Wolverines. Remember when they almost didn’t make it to the tournament to begin with after their team plane crashed during takeoff, but then they became America’s team and rode a wave of feel-good momentum to the conference championship?

That was awesome.

Michigan entered that tourney as the No. 8 seed and kicked off a three-year run of consecutive Big Ten title game appearances, which they will look to extend this weekend. Until last season’s 65-60 loss to Michigan State in the final, Michigan had ripped off ten consecutive tournament wins, including the 2017 and 2018 tournament championships. But their historical success doesn’t stop there…

John Beilein, former Michigan head coach and current BTN analyst (ya shoulda stuck with us, kid), logged a .667 tournament winning percentage across his 12 seasons at Michigan from 2007-2019. That’s better than one Tom Izzo, who has six tournament titles under his belt in his MSU tenure.

Fun fact: Michigan did not lose a tournament opener under John Beilein. You need to go all the way back to 2006 to find Michigan’s last opening-game loss, when Brent Petway’s six big boards weren’t enough to knock off Minnesota.

Check out this Petway banger I stumbled upon, with a fitting set of bloopers as the backdrop. He was a man of many talents…

Neutral Court = Home Court

Michigan has made a killing recently in neutral-court settings, which all of their remaining games will be. They are 30-5 in neutral-court games in the last four years, which adds up to a lot of postseason experience and success for upperclassmen like Zavier Simpson, Jon Teske, and Isaiah Livers.

In addition to their Battle 4 Atlantis title run, which featured neutral-court wins over the likes of Iowa State, North Carolina, and the aforementioned Gonzaga, Michigan also sacrificed a home game to play Rutgers at Madison Square Garden back in February. Scheduling as many neutral site games – against quality opponents – as possible is really smart in terms of postseason preparation. The fact that Michigan has already knocked off Rutgers twice – on the road and on a neutral site (both without Isaiah Livers) – leads me to believe that opening round winning streak won’t be ending on Thursday. 

Unless, of course, you are a believer in one of the more illogical and annoying cliches in sports….

It’s tough to beat a team three times

This pearl of wisdom comes up this time of year in college basketball, and it has always driven me nuts. Logically, this notion is only valid before any of the games have been played, not between matchups 2 and 3. If you were to go back to the preseason and say “what are the odds Michigan goes 3-0 against [insert any team] this season?”, of course, you would expect that to be a tall order. But when two of the wins are already banked, getting one more to complete the set can’t be described as “tough”. To imply that the loser of the first two matchups has some sort of mystical advantage based on some bogus law of averages (not applicable) discounts actual things like momentum, confidence, or simply the in-game factors that led to Michigan winning the first two games to begin with.

The numbers support the logic here, which makes me smile. According to STATS LLC over the last decade in Division I college basketball the team who wins the first two matchups completes the sweep 72% of the time. A similar trend surfaces in the NFL, where (in a much smaller sample) the odds of a third victory are 65%. Logic and data, the perfect couple.

To bring it back to these two teams specifically, Michigan held Rutgers to a putrid .335/.214/.571 shooting line across the first two matchups and had a 28-8 free throw advantage, all without leading scorer Isaiah Livers. He’ll be back for the third matchup on Thursday, as Michigan comes in with a clean bill of health, which is the single most important factor for any team with title aspirations. Rutgers went undefeated at home this season against everyone not named Michigan, so perhaps the Wolverines occupy a unique space in the head of the Scarlet Knights.

Things generally get a bit tighter come tournament time. For a team that shot as poorly as Rutgers did in the first two matchups, I don’t expect the ball to magically start falling for a team that went just 2-8 on the road in conference play. Michigan’s postseason experience, combined with their success against Rutgers so far this season, leads me to believe there is a whole lot of faulty “tough to beat a team three times” reasoning baked into the spread of this game (Michigan -2.5). 

Highway to hell

We could look ahead to Michigan’s other potential matchups assuming they get past Rutgers, but I’ll make it short and sweet (for a change): It doesn’t matter who they play next. The Big Ten is a murderers row, and it has been all season. KenPom has 10 (!) Big Ten teams ranked in the top-30 in the nation in terms of overall efficiency this season. Every game is a landmine – one misstep and you can be blown to smithereens. Instant death waits around every corner.

Whoever emerges from this gauntlet will have earned it, and will be battle-hardened more than any team headed into the big dance. That being said, I think Michigan has just as good a shot (if not better) as any team outside the top-4, who all have the advantage of playing one fewer game to win it all. But Michigan didn’t have that luxury in either of their 2017 or 2018 title runs. Michigan has already been through the wringer this year – as evidenced by their No.1 strength of schedule ranking (according to KenPom efficiency) – and is better for it. They are undeniably good enough to win this tournament, as they have proven that great regular-season records are not required to make a postseason splash.

Can you imagine – after Maryland, Michigan State, and Wisconsin split a share of the Big Ten regular-season title – a fourth team emerging to win the B1G Tournament? Four different Big Ten champions headed into the NCAA Tournament – with a wave of minions behind them – is the stuff of nightmares for other title hopefuls. A Lovecraftian monstrosity waiting to devour any and all teams that stand in their wake. 

How about we go ahead and make Michigan that fourth Big Ten champion? Hey, three years out of four ain’t too shabby. 

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