After all of that -- who would have figured it? As only a #4 seed going in, Michigan is the only Big 10 team still left standing in the NCAA hoops tournament. If they beat Florida (no walk in the park) they'll make the Final Four. And who knows? They could even win the whole thing. Stranger things have happened. Well, maybe.
All season long the Big Ten was touted as the best in the country by many folks. After all, it featured 5 teams in the Top 25 preseason poll. Indiana was #1, Ohio State #3, Michigan #5, Wisconsin #17, and Michigan State #22. Throw in Illinois and Minnesota, no slouches, and that shaped up to be some mighty tough in-conference competition. At that, all 7 of them qualified for the NCAA tournament.
Like yo-yos, up and down they went during the season. Indiana got toppled, only to retake the throne a couple times. Michigan flirted with being ranked #1 here and there, if they could only win their next game before the new polls came out. But they'd always seem to crash and burn when presented the opportunity in those contests, only to fall back again.
Idle thought: Why does everybody get so caught up in the polls during the regular season? When the tournament starts, none of it ever mattered anyway. Yet people do it year after year. It's like the Lotto. The people that don't think a $50 million jackpot is worth spending a couple bucks to take a chance on -- are the same folks that will stand in line waiting to shell out everything they can get their hands on, including their kids' lunch money, when the pot gets up to $300 million. Hey, if 50 mil won't tide you over for life -- you're too stupid to be playing anyway.
Sure enough, the quality Big 10 teams beat each other up during the regular season. A beat B, B beat C, C beat D, D beat A, etc., and round and round they went. Michigan even lost a game to cellar dwelling Penn State, which would be Penn State's first and only conference win of the entire year. That was a big deal at the time -- but how important does it seem now? Same thing with all the hype over which team would win the Big 10 conference and it's mini-tournament. Trophies went into showcases and banners will be hoisted into rafters somewhere, but once the brackets of the Big Dance came out and the music started, how many really cared about all that?
Likely few considered Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin serious threats to go deep in the NCAA tourney. Yet Indiana entered it as a #1 seed, OSU as a #2, MSU as a #3, and UM as a #4. Indiana got beat fair and square by #4 Syracuse, same thing for MSU by #2 Duke. I dare say few thought the Shockers of #9 seed Wichita State would indeed zap OSU in the western regional final. But they thoroughly dominated the Buckeyes throughout. Who ARE these brutes from Wichita, and why were they only a #9?
Michigan wasn't supposed to beat #1 seed Kansas either -- but they did. Over the year, Michigan has been called a lot of things. Young, extremely talented but prone to ups and downs, can't win a tough game on the road, and certainly soft. They earned all of that. But here's the deal. UM won it's first 2 tournament games against much lesser teams basically at home. Now they've squeaked by Kansas at a neutral site. Was the latter an anomaly where the stars just happened to be perfectly aligned -- or are they really as good as their maize and blue koolaiders would have had us think all along? Hard to say.
But they're the only Big 10 team still left. That has to count for something -- I think.
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