After losing to Indiana in its first Big Ten Tournament game on Thursday, this year’s Selection Sunday was a stressful experience for the Michigan men’s basketball team.
But as the selection show revealed the Wolverines as a No. 11 seed, a collective sigh of relief left Crisler Center. Michigan will face sixth-seeded Colorado State in the round of 64 in Indianapolis, and after weeks of speculation the Wolverines would be in the first four, they avoided the play-in altogether. The winner advances to face either No. 3 Tennessee or No. 14 seed Longwood.
“It’s a new season now,” Juwan Howard said. “This is the postseason. So, we're looking forward to Monday practice. We have a few days to prepare and we’re going to work on some things that we feel that we can improve on to prepare us to now face our opponent on Thursday.”
This result on Selection Sunday seemed far-fetched a few short months ago. From November to January, Michigan took a handful of losses that jeopardized its NCAA Tournament fate.
It didn’t matter that the Wolverines were the reigning Big Ten champions. Last year’s No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament was in the distant past, as was Michigan’s Elite Eight run. In January, a dismal 7-7 record with losses to Minnesota, Rutgers and Central Florida erased any memory of the Wolverines’ preseason No. 6 national ranking. At the same time, it made Michigan’s road to the 2022 NCAA Tournament a steep uphill climb.
An NCAA Tournament berth appeared unlikely, but never out of the question. The Wolverines regrouped after a COVID-19 outbreak and willed their season back on track, picking up crucial wins against Purdue, Ohio State, Iowa and Michigan State and weathering Howard’s five-game suspension.
“We just didn’t know (if we’d get in),” DeVante’ Jones said Sunday night. “That’s what I think our reaction was what it was and it was so exciting just because we've been through so much all year. You know, with coach, he was unable to coach us for five games. Just everything. We’re playing games without Hunter, without Moussa, without T-Will. You’ve got Zeb and things going on of that nature. That’s why this team, we’re going to be a very scary team in March.”
They had a chance to move themselves completely off the bubble with a Big Ten Tournament victory over the Hoosiers earlier this week but fell short. Michigan once again fell victim to inconsistency, continuing an exact trend of alternating wins and losses that now dates back more than a month. The Wolverines have the talent to play with some of the country’s top teams, but long stretches of offensive lulls and defensive breakdowns have held them back throughout the season — almost costing them a tournament bid in the process.
Nonetheless, after a few days of waiting on pins and needles, Michigan can now exhale and begin preparing for a tournament it wasn’t a certainty to make.
“We’re not the team that everybody thought we were gonna be at the start of the season,” Hunter Dickinson said. “But I feel like we still have that talent that everybody saw from the beginning of the season, and just raw natural talent, you know, that really makes us a dangerous team in the tournament.”
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