Michigan Basketball from 1984 to 1998

Submitted by Maizen on

Here is the highest AP Top 25 regular season ranking Michigan achieved each season from 1984-1998. There has been much debate whether Michigan is performing at or below expecatations compared to their historical performance before sanctions cratered the program. Thought it was an interesting conversation. Thoughts?

84-85: #2

85-86: #2

86-87: NR

87-88: #7

88-89: #2

89-90: #3

90-91: NR

91-92: #11

92-93: #1

93-94: #3

94-95: #13

95-96: #16

96-97: #4

97-98: #12

During this time period Michigan lost in the first or second round 7 times, lost once in the sweet 16, once in the elite 8, made 3 final fours, and won 1 national championship.

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doggdetroit

February 21st, 2016 at 4:26 PM ^

Those rankings are a little misleading as someone else pointed out. However, your point stands. Most of these teams were among the most talented teams in the country. And that is the main problem Michigan has under Beilein. He either can't or won't recruit high level players that are going to lead to the consistency Michigan has had during the past.

Some of thse team underacheived, but Michigan missed the NCAA tournament just twice in 14 seasons. And Michigan won the NIT in one of the years. In reality, this is the type of program Michigan should have. Under Beilein, MIchigan is on the verge of missing it four times in 9 seasons.

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lilpenny1316

February 21st, 2016 at 4:40 PM ^

And we underachieved during the Taylor/Traylor years.  

To be fair to the 1995-96 team, they played that tournament game without a healthy Traylor.  That may have been the difference in that team making a run.  They had beaten a very good Duke team earlier that season with a full roster.  

People can fellate Izzo all they want, but that rollover accident completely changed both programs.  We basically gave MSU Cleaves and the rest of Flint after that incident and we haven't recovered yet.  

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lilpenny1316

February 21st, 2016 at 5:13 PM ^

Traylor was lost for the season, so we weren't the same team that beat Duke.

Fisher and Dutcher were fired and Goss promoted Ellerbee.  The biggest complaint Michigan H.S. coaches had was that he completely ignored the state.  It's not just the Flint kids that we didn't get, but Detroit, Benton Harbor and the rest of the state.  We almost lost Lavell Blanchard even though his H.S. coach was a former football player here and the kid played across the street from the campus.  

And Cleaves was good in college.  To say otherwise is false.

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