Detroit Sports: A 2017 Wishlist Item for Every Team
By Matt Snyder
Michigan Basketball
Matt Snyder: An NCAA Tournament Run
This year’s Michigan basketball team probably isn’t good enough to contend for a national title, but they’re the type of squad who could still make a rather fun run in the NCAA Tournament if they can get in.
ESPN’s bracketology expert, Joe Lunardi, projects the Wolverines as a potential number nine seed as they get set to begin Big Ten play. If they ultimately earn a trip to the dance, the program will have earned six tournament visits in a span of seven years. That would be the second-best stretch in school history and one topped only by the mid-80s to mid-90s that brought 11 tournaments in 12 years.
The biggest difference between those two stretches — besides the length (and the national championship) — was the number of runs to the sweet sixteen or beyond. John Beilein’s Wolverines reached the national final in 2013 and the elite eight in 2014 but have otherwise seen a mix of first and second round exits.
The Michigan programs of the late-80s and early-90s reached the sweet sixteen five times between 1988 and 1994. That can’t be the expectation, of course, as a confluence of events conspired to create that success (namely a national championship squad followed almost immediately by the Fab Five recruiting class), but it would be fun to see the program take the next step toward being a regular threat in the tournament’s second weekend.
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Michigan has become a tournament regular after they spent 10 years in the late-90s and early-2000s missing the dance entirely. The next step in the evolution of the program would be regular trips to the sweet sixteen.