Michigan Wolverines basketball is 16-1 overall and 11-1 in Big Ten play. Bart Torvik's T-Rank has the Maize and Blue with a 98.3 percent chance to grab at least a share of the conference's regular-season title, with Illinois (4.7 percent), Ohio State (2.2) and Iowa (1.6) being the only other teams that have not been mathematically eliminated.

Assuming the Big Ten goes with winning percentage to determine the final conference standings (due to not every team playing the same amount of games this year), the Wolverines would need to post a 3-2 mark in the final five games to guarantee a share. Michigan has games versus Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan State (two contests) remaining before postseason play.

While the Wolverines are the favorite and can see a Big Ten title at the end of the tunnel, and it's the talk of fans and media, there haven't been many discussions inside the building about that prospect. As the old adage goes, they're taking it one game at a time.

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"That’s been a team approach," said freshman center Hunter Dickinson, who is averaging a team-high 15 points per game and adding 7.8 rebounds per tilt. "I literally just started thinking about the whole Big Ten championship stuff. The only reason why I’ve been thinking about it is because I see it on my Twitter feed. Every other tweet is about how Michigan can win the Big Ten or something like that.

"My approach has always been, one game at a time."

The most recent example of the team living in the moment was last week, when the Wolverines came off a 23-day pause due to COVID-19 concerns, then beat No. 21 Wisconsin in Madison Sunday, took care of Rutgers Thursday and notched a thrilling victory at No. 4 Ohio State the following Sunday.

Head coach Juwan Howard had his players ready to come back from a long layoff, then didn't allow them to get lured into losing a trap game against the Scarlet Knights, before capping off the eight-day stretch in what is being considered the game of the year in the sport.

"The most I’ve looked ahead at our schedule is, I think, three games," Dickinson said. "I usually keep it between a one- to three-game window. Of course, my main focus is on the game that we’re about to play.

"That really makes it easy on the team, it’s just keeping that next game approach, never looking ahead, because the Big Ten is so good this year that it’s really hard to look ahead. It feels like every team we play is ranked somewhere in the top 25, and so you always gotta treat every opponent for who they are, because every team that we play, it seems like, is really good.

"I think it’s a team mentality; nobody talks about, ‘Oh, we only gotta do this and this to win the Big Ten.’ The team is always just focused on whoever we play next, and I think that’s really helped us never take a team lightly or something like that."

Not many of the Wolverines have played on a team that is this connected and this balanced, but Dickinson has drawn back to his days on Team Takeover (AAU), when his 16U team was stacked and rated No. 1 nationally.

The 7-foot-1 freshman has had his personal moments, being named the Big Ten Freshman of the Week seven times already this year, tying Trey Burke for the most in program history despite a shortened season. But he doesn't look to force anything or pad his own stats, he said, knowing he has enough weapons around him to ease the pressure.

"That’s when the game is most fun, is when you’re on teams like that, because you’re not really focused on having to do so much for your team," Dickinson said. "You can really rely on guys every night. You’re not pressing to score 25, 30 points a game.

"If it’s your night, it’s your night. If it’s not, you’ve got guys like [senior forward] Isaiah [Livers], [sophomore wing] Franz [Wagner], even [senior guard] Eli [Brooks], [senior guard] Chaundee [Brown] and [fifth-year senior guard] Mike [Smith]. Anybody can score 15 points on any given night, and I think that’s special and a reason why we’re so dynamic and why our record is like that."

Dickinson has a tough challenge awaiting him Thursday night, when he'll go up against the nation's leading scorer in Iowa senior big man Luka Garza. The Wolverines and the Hawkeyes tip off at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.

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