Michigan Basketball schedule
The Big Ten announced their full slate of games, which means we have a full 25-game 2020-21 Michigan basketball schedule with an entire week to spare. Click to embiggen.
A few thoughts before I get back to uh definitely not scrambling to write almost the entire season preview in a week.
A slow incline. Michigan doesn't leave the confines of Crisler until late December after playing their first six games at home. The non-conference opponents, in order of projected KenPom ranking (last year's final KenPom ranking in parentheses):
NC State, 55 (50)
UCF, 114 (117)
Ball State, 129 (116)
Bowling Green, 163 (168)
Oakland, 281 (239)
Not exactly a murderer's row. KenPom has Michigan 15th in his preseason projections, making them a 7-point (73%) favorite over their toughest non-conference foe, NC State. If you flipped the Bowling Green and Oakland games, the Wolverines would be taking on their opponents in order from worst to best. That's a nice way to ramp up while figuring out how best to replace starters at center and point guard.
That's a lot of basketball in not a lot of time. 25 games in 102 days, to be exact. Michigan's longest break is the 11 days between the conference opener against Penn State and their trip to Nebraska on Christmas—I'm sure they loved that gift from the schedule-makers.
There are some brutal stretches, particularly the one starting with a New Year's Eve road game at Maryland; the following seven games have no more than three days rest between any of them, and more often it's only two. Conditioning, depth, and health are going to play outsized roles this year.
Your one-offs. Each Big Ten team has six league opponents they only face once. Helpfully compiled by Orion Sang so I didn't have to do this myself:
Home: Illinois, Iowa, Rutgers
Road: Nebraska, Ohio State, Purdue
Given the Big Ten is a cluster up top and we have no clue what the NCAA tournament is going to look like yet, I'm not sure how to analyze the conference slate.
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