Michigan ranked #19 in new AP poll
https://www.si.com/college/2020/02/24/college-basketball-rankings-ap-top-25-kansas
Other teams of note:
3. Gonzaga
9. Maryland
10. Creighton
14. Oregon
16. Penn State
18. Iowa
19. Michigan
23. ohio state
24. michigan state
February 24th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
This should be a diary.
February 24th, 2020 at 2:01 PM ^
This should be a dairy. Moo moo. Free custard for all.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
ooohhh lower case rivals disssssssss yeahh!!
February 24th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
This is the appropriate level of excitement.
February 24th, 2020 at 5:37 PM ^
Scrolled down to find the right place to point this out in a comment. It’s gold, Jerry!
February 24th, 2020 at 1:05 PM ^
It woulda been way cooler if he did lower case AND dollar signs, to better announce to the world how they cheat.
ohio $tate
michigan $tate
February 24th, 2020 at 2:31 PM ^
I much prefer online state and staee, but to each their own.
February 24th, 2020 at 4:59 PM ^
He wasn't trying to slight them, just he ran out of capital letters.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:19 PM ^
I just assumed there was a patent pending on capital letter use for those two.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:23 PM ^
Where did "staee" for Michigan State originate?
February 24th, 2020 at 7:27 PM ^
It comes from the biggest graffiti fail in sports history. I forget the year this happened (I was at UM then) and the Staee game was in Ann Arbor. This was how a Staee student vandalized a UM student’s car.
February 27th, 2020 at 1:33 PM ^
to be fair, words with five letters, are, like complicated
February 24th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
Doesn't much matter, lot of hoops to be played. But looks like we are getting some national recognition that with Livers healthy and Wagner heating up, combined with great team ball movement and a stifling defense - this appears to truly be a legit Top 20 team.
Keep it going, boys - Go Blue!!!
February 24th, 2020 at 12:36 PM ^
nice touch on those teams ranked 23-24
February 24th, 2020 at 1:46 PM ^
Makes sense to me as they are NOT proper nouns (HIGHLY improper), so no need to capitalize the first letter!
February 24th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
Anybody else got 2 double digit Top 10 wins??? I'm waiting.
Go F'ing Blue
February 24th, 2020 at 4:34 PM ^
Eh, OSU.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
lol...OSU defeats Maryland and only goes up one spot. I hope we can knock them out of the top 25.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:49 PM ^
I mean they were literally 3 point favorites, plus they lost to Iowa earlier in the week
I was amazed how much respect we got for our week though, we had two massive wins and definitely got full credit for them by the pollsters
February 24th, 2020 at 1:06 PM ^
Full credit is because this is still a roster largely composed of guys who've played in the National Championship game, have had a LOT of success as a team, beat the doors off two top 10 teams this year, and haven't lost a bad game throughout the B1G season. Take away the Louisville fiasco, and nobody has laid a hurtin' on UM - even without Livers.
February 24th, 2020 at 2:31 PM ^
Sorry man. Sparty won by 18 in EL.
February 24th, 2020 at 2:36 PM ^
Well, poop. Thanks for re-animating a loss I had successfully excised.
February 24th, 2020 at 4:49 PM ^
We were the first team to come out of the RAC with a W this year and we hadn’t won in Mackey Arena since 2014...those were 2 huge wins.
February 24th, 2020 at 2:54 PM ^
It's not often you go up in the polls for going 1-1.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:49 PM ^
22 in Coaches Poll
https://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaab/polls/coaches-poll/
Maryland 8
Penn State 14
Iowa 17
OSU 23
Sparty 24
February 24th, 2020 at 1:13 PM ^
Our schedule was on the brutal side this year. Nice to see some of the out of conference work hold up.
February 24th, 2020 at 3:57 PM ^
The only non-conference win whose shine has worn off is the UNC beatdown. Their season has fallen off a cliff. But I don't think anyone expected Creighton to be a top-10 in late February, so that win is definitely looking much better now than it did then.
February 24th, 2020 at 4:21 PM ^
I would say that Iowa State win is not looking as good as I expected also. That said, Creighton and Gonzaga have made up for that.
February 24th, 2020 at 1:17 PM ^
It's good to be ranked! I watched a bit of the OSU-MD game yesterday, and I'm surprised OSU did not move up more. Going to be a tough game on Sunday!
February 24th, 2020 at 1:32 PM ^
If I knew how to <insert .gif> it would be of Mr. Burns saying, "That's it Burnsy, climb the ladder..."
February 24th, 2020 at 2:04 PM ^
The guy makes a simple request, and instead you post a gif with Mr. Burns saying something totally different? Rude.
(obligatory /s)
February 24th, 2020 at 1:54 PM ^
I thought we were a baseball school?
February 24th, 2020 at 3:41 PM ^
Is there a bigger waste of time than caring about basketball rankings? By midnight on April 6th, you'll know who is number one. Every year unranked teams make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Being in my late seventies, I appreciate how limited time is becoming. Youngsters take heed, debating where your team is ranked is a foolish activity better left to those striving to reach a three-figure IQ.
February 24th, 2020 at 3:50 PM ^
Is there a bigger waste of time than caring about basketball rankings?
Of course there is.
EDIT:
Every year unranked teams make it to the Sweet Sixteen.
While unranked teams can have success in the NCAA tournament, i think there were maybe two teams since 1985 - both in the 80s' - which were unranked going into the tournament and won the national championship.
At the very least, being ranked is an indication that the team is doing well and is recognized for its current level of play.
Also, I don't think anyone was "debating" anything - i.e., that we should be ranked higher or lower - just recognizing that one particular service saw fit to rank Michigan this week.
February 24th, 2020 at 4:05 PM ^
I'd say it's a bigger waste of time caring about people caring about basketball rankings. How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?!
February 24th, 2020 at 4:11 PM ^
Those 2 teams from the 1980s ... were Villanova 1985 and Kansas 1988.
But even though those teams were unranked immediately prior to the tournament, they still were ranked fairly well at some point during the regular season. Villanova was once 14th, and Kansas was once 7th.
For the last 35 NCAA Champions:
1. ALL of them were ranked at least 14th at one point in the season.
2. All but 1 were ranked at least 11th at one point in the season (Villanova 1985).
3. All but 2 were ranked at least 9th at one point in the season (add Syracuse 2003).
4. All but 3 were ranked at least 7th at one point in the season (add UConn 2014).
5. All but 7 were ranked at least 5th at one point in the season.
6. 15 of the 35 were ranked 1st at one point in the season.
Point being, I agree with you - rankings have value. Teams invariably bounce around a bit, sometimes falling simply due to injuries or a tough stretch in the schedule. But the Final Four and Championship teams rarely come out of completely nowhere.
February 24th, 2020 at 5:03 PM ^
+1 Informative
February 24th, 2020 at 3:53 PM ^
I don't think the rankings are completely irrelevant. They're a good bellwether of how a team might be perceived by those who matter the most (i.e., the selection committee). They also affect things like recruiting (e.g., the more visible a program is, the more recruits pay attention to it) and, over the long haul, overall program strength. If nothing else, it's nice to see your team's games on the first page that shows up when you click 'Scores' on espn.com instead of having to click on the drop-down and select 'Division 1-A' or 'Big Ten' or whatever. Yes, rankings in basketball are not quite as relevant as rankings in football, but I think Michigan's return to the rankings after a prolonged absence is worth a post on the board.
February 25th, 2020 at 8:49 AM ^
I'd say it's a bigger waste of time to comment about people discussing b-ball rankings in February by saying it's a waste of time.
February 24th, 2020 at 5:00 PM ^
XM do I get a complimentary side of beef for my SWAG in your prediction thread? : )
February 24th, 2020 at 6:31 PM ^
How big is your freezer??
A side of beef weighs about 300 lbs. That's a lot of meat...
February 24th, 2020 at 7:05 PM ^
It was a good SWAG and deserves 300 lbs of meat...I'm a Wolverine after all!
February 24th, 2020 at 9:11 PM ^
grass fed steers finish at around 8-900 lbs on the hoof. 60% of that is the hanging weight. i have never weighed an animal after we packaged it once we'd hung it.
i thought your #19 call was right about where i'd have put us, too. so come visit and bring a cooler, we'll give you a farm 'care package'. i have done so for more than on mgoblogger, you could be next.
but for the negative nellies in my thread of yesterday, rankings don't matter!!!
February 25th, 2020 at 7:34 AM ^
❤ u bro ?
February 24th, 2020 at 6:27 PM ^
Realistically, this team is outperforming most of our expectations, given all of the change in the last year. JH has quieted many of his doubters and mitigated the team's growing pains. I like where this team is heading. Go Blue!
February 24th, 2020 at 7:05 PM ^
Which of our expectations has the past few JH teams outperformed?
Also which doubter has he quieted?
I'll hang up and listen.
February 24th, 2020 at 9:56 PM ^
Apologies. I assumed everyone would know JH = Juwan Howard here since it's a basketball thread. I should've just spelled out his name. Not the first time I've been foiled by name abbreviations!
I think Howard has done a fantastic job this season. I, for one, thought we'd be rebuilding this year, but the team seems to have transitioned quite nicely. Not sure where this year's ceiling is, but it's higher than I anticipated, for sure.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:32 PM ^
The amount of respect Gonzaga receives is just insane to me. They have one good win in the Bahamas over Oregon, and then one pretty good road win @Arizona, but outside of that their two toughest games, they have lost, to Michigan and @BYU. It's time for the committee to recognize that literally any top 15 team could be a 1 seed playing the zags schedule every year