Michigan moves up to #7 in final season AP Poll

Submitted by Wolverine Devotee on

Loving the respect for this team. Oddly enough, they began the season ranked at #7.

This is the final poll of the season meaning Michigan will take the #7 ranking into the tournament.

The final AP Poll is released the day after the NCAA Tournament. Michigan will move up six spots in that poll.

 

GoWings2008

March 17th, 2014 at 2:17 PM ^

Even after dropping one, this makes the most sense.  If you'd have told me three months ago that UM would go 4 of 5 in games against our biggest rivals, I'd have jumped at it.  I'm so impressed with this team.

JHendo

March 17th, 2014 at 3:14 PM ^

It really is pathetic.  I've seen the the committee make some boneheaded decisions, but this honestly takes the cake.  No reason for that region to be so top heavy and no reason whatsoever for Louisville to be anything less than a 2 seed.  Whoever makes it out of the midwest will be too battered and bruised to put up a fight in the National Semis.

StephenRKass

March 17th, 2014 at 4:31 PM ^

Actually, the balance is odd, and skewed in an interesting way. There is a link over at umhoops which comments specifically on the balance among the four regions and in the Midwest region in particular. The question is twofold:

  1. What metric do you use to measure "difficulty."
  2. How deep do you measure a region? Top 4 teams? Top 6? Entire region?

The KenPom ratings shake out differently than the NCAA ratings. I don't know all about BPI and RPI, but the rating system you use makes a difference.

It also matters how "deep" you measure a region. If you measure all the teams in a region, the Midwest is "weaker" than the other four regions!! In other words, the difference between the first four and the last four in the Midwest is greater than in the other regions.

The upshot is that the Midwest Region is the one MOST likely to have a sweet sixteen of the top four seeds. That is to say, Wichita State, Michigan, Duke & Louisville are all extremely likely to proceed to the Sweet Sixteen (the one possible exception and wildcard is UK vs. Wichita State, a matchup that is a bit hard to predict.)

I'm kind of with Beilein, and his thought that while the fans love to obsess about seeds, in the end, the top 10 - 20 seeds are all pretty good, and can all win on a given day.

From my perspective, let's be honest:  who of us wouldn't have been happy at the beginning of the year with a Michigan team that made it to the second weekend? My personal thought is that Michigan has "improved" much more over the course of the season, which will allow us to beat Duke. And I think we match up well against Wichita State.

We've already shown that we can play with Arizona. And I think that if we play MSU again, we'll be much more rested, which will help out Michigan. I also personally think that by that time, if we make it that far, who knows, maybe Mitch comes back for 5 minutes a half, enough to make a huge difference with our bigs.

LSAClassOf2000

March 17th, 2014 at 2:46 PM ^

The national votes were pretty diverse actually Seth Davis had us at #7 on his ballot, John Feinstein put us down at #11 and Dick Vitale went with #9. A great majority of voters had Michigan in the 6-9 range, it seems, although not all of the AP ballots are uploaded yet. 

As was mentioned, we started as a preseason #7, so it's been an interesting journey indeed. Indeed, it is looking like the vote distribution is pretty similar too.

alum96

March 17th, 2014 at 2:52 PM ^

If you said Mitch would have been out the entire Big 10 season back in preseason you'd have said we'd be happy to be top 25.  Coaching job was extraordinary, working around a major issue.

Daniel

March 17th, 2014 at 3:32 PM ^

The defense was better last year, and even though scoring is more balanced this year, last year's team would have a healthy McGary. And that team's three-headed center would have five additional fouls to give.

If McGary was healthy on this team, though, I might give the edge to this year's iteration.

SF Wolverine

March 17th, 2014 at 3:52 PM ^

Hard to argue we are a Top 5 team nationally; hard to argue that we aren't top 10.

As for the Sparty thing, you knew that the Izzo teabagging crowd have been looking for any evidence that their preseason #1 was correct.  And, to be fair, wins against a hot Wiscy team and the Big Ten champs (by three games) is not bad evidence.  

allintime23

March 17th, 2014 at 5:22 PM ^

Not really. Our record against top fifty teams is second only to Kansas and other BIG teams had more bad losses. We won the conference a week before tournament week. We beat the best basketball ran that's ever existed twice. STOP LISTENING TO 97.1!!!!!!!