Is Michigan the Big Ten's best team since its last national title in 2000? Let's get into the pecking order
March is a time when college basketball teams, even the very best of them, aren’t supposed to survive a three-point barrage like the one Michigan withstood in a 68-65 win against Wisconsin in a Big Ten men’s tournament semifinal.
Then again, we’re taking liberties just a little here, because how many times before have we — has anyone — witnessed a display of shooting quite like what the Badgers’ Austin Rapp threw at the “superteam” Wolverines (31-2) down the stretch Saturday at the United Center? Maybe never, at least not in the 29 years of this Big Ten event.
Though guards Nick Boyd and John Blackwell had been the scoring stars of the tournament, it was Rapp, an Aussie forward, who nailed six straight threes during a massive, wildly unexpected blitz that took the Badgers (24-10) from 15 points down to four points ahead with under four minutes left against a Michigan team viewed by many as the best bet to win the national championship.
“It felt like I was throwing it in the ocean by the end of it,” Rapp said. “It was kind of cool.”
Not so much for the powerhouse squad whose only Big Ten loss all season came to the same Badgers, though without Rapp available for that 91-88 January upset in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“It’s like, ‘What are we doing right now? What happened?’ ” said Wolverines forward Yaxel Lendeborg, the conference’s player of the year. “You just feel helpless. Hopeless, honestly.”
Michigan led 65-62 before a Boyd three tied it with 29 seconds to go. To the rescue came Lendeborg, whose own three from the right wing splashed in with 0.3 seconds on the clock.
Of the top four teams in this 18-team tournament, each of which received a triple-bye into the quarterfinals, only top-seeded Michigan won even one game. Second-seeded Nebraska didn’t come close against seventh-seeded Purdue, third-seeded Michigan State trailed just about the entire way against sixth-seeded UCLA and fourth-seeded Illinois blew a 15-point second-half lead against fifth-seeded Wisconsin.
It might just be that the Wolverines — with the nation’s premier frontcourt and its fastest-rising coach, Dusty May — are the only truly elite team in the league. They’ve already made history by going 19-1 in the Big Ten, one more win than Indiana had in back-to-back 18-0 seasons in the mid-1970s, and finished four games clear of a trio tied for second in the standings. On Sunday against Purdue, they’ll try to make it two Big Ten tournament titles in a row. Beyond that, they’ll see if they can go where no Big Ten team has gone since Michigan State in 2000 — all the way to a natty.
A question for which there is no definitive answer, certainly not yet: Are these Wolverines the Big Ten’s best team since 2000? If they win the whole thing, they’ll have an argument that’s as close to airtight as it gets. Move over, 2004-05 Illinois and everybody else.
Old heads will agree that the best college teams were stronger back in the day, when players stayed and grew together and even NBA-bound stars played in college as sophomores and juniors and sometimes even seniors. What’s happening now, with everyone on the move so constantly that May has recruited 18 new players over the last two seasons, is a lesser, and harder to fully appreciate, version of the college game.
But the Wolverines are demanding our effort to at least put them in historical perspective. They have the record. Their scoring differential in league play was a vast 15.1 points, outdone by only four Big Ten teams this century. They have Lendeborg and 7-3 Aday Mara, the league’s defensive player of the year, whose offensive game seems to be improving by the outing.
“I think just many people are scared as soon as they get [near the lane] against us,” Mara said. “You see that they keep dribbling the ball around the zone. They try to find something else.”
The Badgers scored 34 points in the lane against Illinois — the tallest team in the land — but only 10 against Michigan. Mara blocked five shots. The 6-9, 240-pound Lendeborg had a chase-down block on a fastbreak that looked like something an NBA All-Star might do.
Two years ago, after Purdue and Zach Edey lost the national title game to UConn, I put out a column on the top 10 teams in the Big Ten since 2000 and placed those Boilermakers third. At the top were the Illini who reached the national final in 2005. Second was the Ohio State team of 2006-07 that lost to Florida — coached by Billy Donovan — in the final.
At this point, I would slot in these Wolverines even further down the list. Wisconsin went to the Final Four in 2014 and 2015, reaching the title game that second year by knocking off undefeated Kentucky. Those Badgers, I ranked fourth. Ohio State won the regular-season and conference tournament titles and had the best offense in the country in 2010-11. Michigan State brought back an absolute banger of a team in 2000-01, with big-time NBA talent. Those were my Nos. 5 and 6.
Somewhere around there, this Michigan team belongs. It’s in the top 10, comfortably. On Sunday, it can more than solidify that. After that, it can move up — maybe all the way up.