Seattle Times Way-Too-Early Top 25 Has Michigan No. 1
One of the fun and truly pointless things about the last day of the college basketball season is that a bunch of publications release their Way-Too-Early rankings for the following season. A bunch of them came out today, and some of them are stupid, in that they have Michigan ranked down in the teens.
I choose to believe the Way-Too-Early rankings of the Seattle Times, which is predicting that Michigan will be celebrating on a Monday night in April 2022. You'll find the glorious list HERE.
This is the news coverage that will get my clicks!
You mean football?
In all seriousness, I'm a very pessimistic fan (as many of you will attest to) but I don't think this is unreasonable at all. Howard won the toughest conference (pre-tournament, anyway) well before he brought his stud recruits in. The future is very bright right now in Ann Arbor, and even I can't deny that.
Hunter Dickinson would like a word with you about your stud recruits comment.
The article assumes practically everyone is coming back, but its fun to hope.
ESPN power rankings have us at 17 with only Dickinson back from this year's starting line-up. I think that's WAY too bearish, even if that ends-up being true.
Oh yes, Lord MGoBlogger, let us lowly serfs attest to your modest and pessimistic ways. ‘Tis of the highest detail that we applaud and garner your remarks as prudent gold.
I mean the issue with this ranking is that the author seems to be assuming that Franz and Livers both come back which seems dubious
Borzello from ESPN has us Top 4.
That is the 4th best team in the Big Ten behind Purdue, ohio state, and the Turdles.
It would help if you come back next year. No sense in complaining about it online if you’re not coming back.
Moe is telling me to come back.
Axel and Beate want me to finish my degree.
I should come back, but probably won't.
If the real Franz leaves, would you leave with him, please? And if he stays, would you still leave?
That's not nice.
He ranks a 1 seed with AP coach of the year #17. Rational: Hunter returns and basically no one else, but we do bring in the #1 class next year.
As a Ranker, his Rankings are Ranked #25 (the key to my cypher is R gets replaced with a w... also Borzello is a cypher).
Purdue will be good. Better than us? Maybe
OSU will be good. Better than us? Maybe
Maryland will good. Better than us? Absolutely not
Yeah, I swear I just saw that Morsell is in the transfer portal and testing the NBA waters as well. Curious how that shakes out. I just don't think Turgeon is a good enough coach to outcoach Juwan despite the talent gap either way.
I rank ESPN right there with Barstool in my top 25 sports clickbait sites.
well one of the caveats is the assumption Franz is coming back... Which I would love, but I'd be a little surprised unless he really wants one more run at the tournament.
he'll only be 20 by the draft next year i think...
too early to know. Similar to this year, we don't know how good these kids are, even if there are 3 MAAs...
Last year, no one knew how good HD, Smith and Chaundee were going to be...
He probably can make some more improvements to his game if he did come back, which could boost him up in the draft next year.
for sure he could be better...
but if he gets drafted where he is mocked, that means a chance at the lottery, and at worst, top 25...Hard to improve too much beyond the lottery.
I would love Franz to come back tho... you still have to think of injuries too...
This makes complete sense.
It will all hinge on who comes back. If any of Franz, Livers, Brooks, or Smith come back, then I think we will be a contender.If two of them return, then we will possibly be the top team in the country. We need guard play.
I’ve seen some lists with Michigan out of the top 10. With Maryland and Purdue ahead of us. Love that we are criminally under ranked in basketball every year.
How is this possible? I swear none of these dumb shits watch any of these games at all..like zero games, none, zip.
I suppose we should wait to see the roster.
ESPN has us at 17 and basically has everyone leaving, so clearly they didnt do any homework.
Gonzaga, UCLA 1-2 in Way-Too-Early Top 25 college basketball rankings for 2021-22 (espn.com)
A starting five of Collins, Zeb, Houstan, Johns, and Dickinson
That seems...pessimistic
If we strike out on bringing back Chaundee, Brooks, AND Smith, I guarantee you we will have a transfer starter. I think we would be a lock to get Carr and/or Kessler if we really lose all that talent
Kessler isn’t considering us and we don’t need him anyway.
Adam Miller.
Diabate will contribute early-certainly as a defender.
The surprises on this roster will be good ones-both returnees and newcomers. All in all enough talent to win it all.
Returning to school is a fallback plan for Carr, but Howard will get a good guard from the portal if needed.
Trade Brooks for Zeb with Chaundee and Diabate coming off the bench and Freshman tbd and that’s a team that could do some damage.
Johns is going to need to keep trending towards his potential. There will be some competition for minutes next year.
I know Zags have a good class coming in too, but aren't they going to lose everybody to the NBA?
FSU? Really? Did they see that team play?
St. Boniventure? Ok, that's where I stopped.
Arkansas is the only SEC school not named Kentucky to ever win an NC...and that only happened once...there is good reason this is so. It is silly to give serious consideration to FSU, Alabama, Arkansas or any other SEC in a discussion of future NCs.
Let it never be said that ESPN won't fire off a completely bugnuts article in a couple of hours to collect on those sweet clicks.
I swear people talking about UCLA only watched the last 5 games of their season. They are legitimately one missed FT from not even making the tournament, and yet they are projected to be #2 in the country next year because apparently FT defense and hitting 70% of contested 2s is absolutely a repeatable skill and not, you know, a quirk of small sample size.
They are legitimately one missed FT from not even making the tournament
And a few missed FTs from being knocked out of the tourney multiple times
UCLA at 2 is hilarious. They're definitely losing Juzang (aka most of their scoring) and coming off one of the luckiest tourney runs in a long time. People are putting sooo much weight on them taking Gonzaga to overtime
Still sticking with the lame narrative that UCLA was lucky, huh? God people are annoying. UCLA ran a gauntlet against good competition. And they have a lot of talent and a good coach. The only reason they were seeded so low was because they lost a few straight games at the end of the season - to teams that ended up having deep tourney runs. You don’t get to the Final Four, beating Michigan and taking Gonzaga to OT, by being lucky.
You don’t almost miss the tourney because you lost a couple straight games at the end of the year. You almost miss the tourney because you were mediocre throughout the year.
As for the final four run, it was impressive and they hit their stride at the right time, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t lucky to get there. Making it to the sweet sixteen by beating MSU, BYU, and Abilene Christian was not a gauntlet.
What "gauntlet" did they run? They went 4-7 against the KenPom top-50 (and that's with teams like Oregon St. getting a boost into the top-50 during the tournament) during the regular season. Before their late "swoon" their biggest two accomplishments were a 3-point home win against Colorado and a sweep of #29 Arizona. Maybe had they swept the final 3 games of the season they would have been a 9 seed, but they had some bad losses during the season and weren't remotely as good as the 6-game sample they had in the tournament.
MSU beat three top-10 teams to end the year and then flamed out in the play-in tournament. That's as impressive as anything UCLA did to end the year, but I doubt we'd call them a good team. Sometimes you do get lucky, and if you're reasonably talented that can get you somewhere during a single-elimination tournament played during a pandemic. Doesn't mean they are objectively good.
I hope Juzang comes back. I'd like another crack at the Bruins.
Unless nobody comes back; in that case nevermind
If you read the other team’s breakdowns this writer has lots of guys coming back to their respective teams. The fact that he says Franz is coming back tells you a lot about his credibility.
While I would love for him to be right, the simple fact that he thinks Franz will be back tells me that he doesn't watch a lot of basketball outside of Gonzaga.
Yeah, that part of Wagner cracked me up. It basically reads like someone who looked at the rosters and assumed everyone who wasn't a top-10 pick or a senior was returning.
To their credit, they got Baylor right last year in their early rankings, but then the rest was...not great.
When you’re right, you’re right.
I've always said Seattle is the Ann Arbor of the northwest!
Team chemistry is what truly matters and we have no idea what next season's team will be like. For all of the heartache of the UCLA lost, we might have witnessed something we may never see again.
Coaching, my friend. Coaching. And lots of talent-sure, a lot of it quite young and raw.
What we saw this year was not an anomaly. Juwan is back-and as far as we know so will his staff. Michigan will be very good next year.
Seriously? We won the Big Ten championship and made the Elite Eight. So, just recently, we've won the Big Ten in 2012, 2014, and 2021 and made at least the Elite Eight in 2013, 2014, 2018, and 2021. We have the COTY and the #1 incoming recruiting class in the country.
How does any of that translate into "we may never see that success again" ?
Re: ESPN
Folks, if I was a writer, this is an excellent top 25. UCLA at #2? Ok, I will click and see why. Michigan at #17? Ok, I will click and see why.
I honestly don't know how you leave Michigan outside the top 10. Yeah we lose Franz and Livers, but we bring back a lot, a lot of talent is coming in, and I think Juwan has shown he knows what he's doing but whatever. We'll just surprise people again
let's hang the banner already then! LFG!!!!