UM basketball has a chance to move up rankings nicely with win tonight....
Lots of upsets....
MONDAY
#6 West Virginia lost
TUESDAY
#20 Clemson lost
#4 Oklahoma lost (that freshmen is overrated IMO - look at his TO's and shooting percentage in recent game logs)
#18 Kentucky Lost
WEDNSESDAY
#17 Auburn Lost
#7 Witchita State lost
#8 Texas Tech lost (TEXAS WON!)
#19 Seton Hall lost
#21 Tennessee lost
#16 Arizona State lost
And there will be more upsets next few days. So far....
4, 6, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 lost!!!
If we get our win tonight, i think we move up to at least 16 not inluding whatever other upsets happen next few days.
January 18th, 2018 at 12:57 PM ^
You do understand how sample sizes work, right? You're judging his entire season off one (for him crappy) game that you happened to see. As others have repeatedly pointed out, his stats are top notch across the board and he's taken Oklahoma from "at home in March" to a top tier team pretty much singlehandedly. By pretty much any objective measure, he's had a fantastic season, is and will be a star, and is deserving of all the hype he gets.
January 18th, 2018 at 2:40 PM ^
It took Trae Young 14 games to tie the assist record and break the CAREER record for most 25 point 10 assist games. He's ridiculous and the best college player I've seen in a long time, so much so that I go out of my way to watch Oklahoma games just to see what ridiculousness he'll pull off next when normally I couldn't care less about any game not involving Michigan.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:41 AM ^
And "That Freshman" is leading the country in scoring and assists. I think he's the goods and should get all of the hype. Not sure what the OP means by he's overrated.
January 18th, 2018 at 12:02 PM ^
the K-State game and jumped to all these conclusions.
The kid has been incredible given the load he has to bear on a team without much talent.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:29 AM ^
Maybe we should do this first, then discuss rankings.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:36 AM ^
At home. Lost to Kansas by 1 point.
Not an easy win.
Let's do this. Go Blue.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:39 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 10:41 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 10:43 AM ^
Have the boys win the game tonight and on Saturday before we start talking about moving up in the rankings. I like our chances in this stretch, but playing in Lincoln is a tough task.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:47 AM ^
"Just win" is the starting point. More than that, improve. I'd love to see Michigan use the next couple games to see improvement in several areas.
- Simpson foul shots
- Matthews foul shots
- Matthews playing within himself
- Livers offense (not bad, but still improve)
- Poole on defense
- Poole on shot selection and playing in the flow of the offense.
- Teske on offense
- Tinkering with the lineup a bit
- Give starters as much rest as possible
- Prep for all the switching Purdue does
Yeah, we'll go up a few spots winning tonight and Sunday. But the hugest thing, bar none, in the balance of the season, would be to beat Purdue on the road. Do that, and we get closer to getting a 3 seed in the tourney. Do that, and the team will have beaten two very good teams on the road. That would gain positive attention that's worth something. Do that and the team would believe it could beat anyone, anytime. Do that, and we'd have a real shot at making it to the Final 4. Yeah, that's a tremendous amount of speculation. Just win the games in front of you right now, one by one.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:22 AM ^
Make the bunny shots.....please!!!
January 18th, 2018 at 12:25 PM ^
I think our ultimate ceiling is a two-seed. That means winning every remaining game including the Big Ten tournament. The Big 10 champion is not going to get a 1 seed because of how bad the Big 10 crapped the bed in the Big 10-ACC challenge, but a Purdue/OSU/UofM/MSU regular season and Big 10 tournament champion could get a 2 seed.
Realistically, we lose at Purdue and another game somewhere along the way and get a 4/5 seed. This is better than an 8/9 seed that had us playing a 1 seed during the first weekend, but I'd still rather see us avoid the 1 seeds as long as possible and see if maybe someone else can pull the upset, making our path a little less treacherous.
January 18th, 2018 at 10:48 AM ^
double post
January 18th, 2018 at 10:58 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 12:30 PM ^
Back in the day, teams played every Thursday night and every Saturday. That's 4 games over 10 days. 4 games over 9 days or even 8 days is not that much different. These are young adults who live to play basketball. If they didn't have games, they would be in the gym playing 8 days a week.
January 18th, 2018 at 1:49 PM ^
You realize Michigan and Michigan State are still going to play the same number of games, within the same overall time period, right? While we have a shorter rest now, we will have a longer rest later.
If anything we should complain about the BIG tourney being moved up a week, and all of the BIG teams playing games on short rest and having an extra week off before the dance.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:00 AM ^
Nice Trae Young hot take. He's the best player in the country. If you are leading the COUNTRY in Points and assists I think you're allowed a few extra turnovers. I'm not kidding, his usage on offense is the highest of the KenPom era IIRC.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:06 AM ^
Don't much care about poll rankings. They're nice, I susppose, but meaningless. If Michigan performs well they'll take care of themselves, right up until the tournament when nobody cares what the polls say.
Win the Game(s).
January 18th, 2018 at 11:11 AM ^
Just win baby
January 18th, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^
Echoing everyone else: Win the games first / "that freshman" is realllllllllllly good.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:14 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 11:34 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 11:16 AM ^
Sweet Trae Young hawt take dude.
I'll bite and look at his Shooting % in recent games...
against Top-10 TCU two games ago: 55% from the field, 55% (10-18) from three.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:29 AM ^
nice job cherry picking 1 single stat from 1 single game.
Last 5 games TO's:
12, 9, 4, 8, 6 (i cant recall a guard with more TO's than that in recent memory).
against unranked K-State - 38% from field, 20 pct from 3
against #8 TT - 30% from field 40 from 3
against #6 WV - 36% from field 25 pct from 3
against unranked Okie State - 41% from field, 17% from 3
January 18th, 2018 at 11:20 AM ^
Now that we're in full swing of the BIG play, each win is gonna come hard. As long as we come out with a W, the stats and the score do not matter. Looking ahead, it'd be really nice to get a win in Nebraska, and against Rutgers at home before going to Purdue for a grudge match. All things the same though, I think we are in a good position to make a decent run at the BIG title this year. We just have to get it done on the court. Hell, if we hadn't had the ref's rip away the W against Purdue, we would have 2 top 5 victories within a week and be 1 game out of first with a home visit from OSU stil ahead.
Go Blue!!
January 18th, 2018 at 11:25 AM ^
WORRIES Me...ALOT
January 18th, 2018 at 11:30 AM ^
I care more about getting wins than getting a nice ranking.
Conference road games, even against bad teams, are extremely difficult to win. We have an annoying habit of NOT putting teams away and opponents shooting lights out against us in the final minutes
Plus, we're the only B1G team Nebraska hasn't beaten since joining the conference. I sense another close, VERY stressful game tonight.
January 18th, 2018 at 11:32 AM ^
The rankings don't come out until Monday so we have win these next two to get a considerable boost up in the rankings
January 18th, 2018 at 11:40 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 11:55 AM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 12:07 PM ^
I guess that's cool, if basketball rankings meant anything. They're not meaningful in basketball like they are in football.
January 18th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 2:42 PM ^
They play Sunday, FYI.
January 18th, 2018 at 4:16 PM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
Just win, baby. The rest will sort itself out.
January 18th, 2018 at 12:20 PM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 12:38 PM ^
January 18th, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^
If you go into the game with the mentality that you will lose, you avoid disappointment.
/s
January 18th, 2018 at 1:41 PM ^
If we can just win this game, prefarably in a comfortable fashion, That would be great.
January 18th, 2018 at 3:13 PM ^
Wasn't Nebraska undefeated at home 2 seasons ago (their first tourney appearance in a long time) and we went in at the end of the season and beat them?
Edit: Nevermind, it was back in '13-'14 (holy cow)...and we were their only home loss all season (we played there early-January)
January 19th, 2018 at 7:44 AM ^