ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The Michigan basketball team is an enigma.
We’ve heard the stat recited ad nauseam over the past few months. “Michigan has thus and such record in close games.” Well, on Thursday night, it happened again.
The Wolverines play a lot of really close games. And they’ve probably won more of them than they should. After Thursday night’s 68-65 win over UC San Diego in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Michigan improved to 13-4 in games decided by four points or fewer.
That’s bonkers. And it’s also led many people (myself included) to look at the Wolverines with a fair dose of skepticism.
But maybe there should be a bit more respect mixed in.
It’s pretty clear that the nation doesn’t view Michigan as a legitimate 26-win, banner-hanging team this year. Look no further than the NCAA Tournament selection committee, which gave Michigan a No. 5 seed despite a resume that appeared to deserve better.
Michigan ranked top five in the country in Quad 1 wins, which is right up there with the most important stat when it comes to judging tournament resumes.
The Wolverines also swept Wisconsin (on the road and at a neutral site, no less), finished with the same number of overall losses, ranked higher in the Big Ten, and won the conference tournament.
Yes, the Badgers ranked higher metrically, but at some point, shouldn’t the on-court results matter more than the computers?
But I wasn’t really outraged to see Wisconsin as a No. 3 seed and Michigan as a No. 5, because in the back of my mind, even after Michigan beat Wisconsin twice head-to-head, I wasn’t convinced that the Wolverines were the better team.
Why is that? How is that possible? I know the answer: It’s because of all those close games.
If Nimari Burnett doesn’t hit a prayer at the buzzer, Michigan would have lost to Rutgers. If Tre Donaldson didn’t catch fire in the final minutes, Michigan would have lost to Penn State.
The Wolverines easily could have home losses to Iowa, Northwestern, Penn State, and Rutgers on their resume, and those are four of the worst teams in the Big Ten.
Those games stuck in many of our minds, and even though they were victories, they registered as losses.
But at what point do we have to consider the alternative: Maybe Michigan is just really good at closing out games.
There’s a big of a “chicken-or-the-egg” argument here. Are the Wolverines good at closing out games because they’ve had to do it so often, or have they done it so much because they’re good at it?
Either way, after this past week, we have to at least consider the possibility that Michigan is a better-than-average team when it comes to closing out games.
They had to pull a rabbit out of a hat to beat Maryland in the Big Ten semifinals last Saturday. Then they went 6-of-6 from the free throw line in the final minute to beat Wisconsin in the title game.
On Thursday, after they blew a 15-point lead and trailed UC San Diego with 2:29 left, the Wolverines got a huge three from Donaldson and a pair of clutch free throws from Vlad Goldin to survive.
How many times do we have to watch the same script before we stop dismissing it as a fluke?
It’s rarely pretty, but Michigan almost always finds a way to win close games. And in a tournament that’s defined by chaos, maybe that should be admired, not criticized.
