#michigan-wolverines

#michigan-wolverines

Michigan was the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament men's basketball selection committee's bracket preview, revealed on Saturday, followed by Duke and Arizona in what the committee chair called a consensus top three. The Wolverines rank No. 1 in six of the seven metrics on the NCAA teamsheets, also leading the country in combined Quadrant 1 and 2 wins.

But they looked every bit of the best team in the country on Tuesday at Mackey Arena, comprehensively dispatching No. 7 Purdue, 91-80. Michigan led for the final 33 minutes and its lead expanded to as many as 20 points late in the first half. "We needed to deliver a lot of punches, whether it was the first or second," coach Dusty May said. "We knew this was going to go all 10 [rounds]. If we took a shot, we knew we had to respond and our guys did that over the course of the game. That was impressive the way they answered those runs with really sound play."

"Not much," Michigan coach Dusty May said when asked by the AP after Saturday's rout of UCLA about the significance of potentially topping the poll. "It means we haven't drank our own Kool-Aid. We've put ourselves in a position to be playing the types of games in mid-February that we want to be in, but we've got to continue to improve."

A rule change allowing college basketball programs to schedule legitimate preseason matchups against other top programs has provided a few new data points to consider for preseason rankings. With the start of the men's college basketball season one week away, I've made a few adjustments to my original preseason poll. Those preseason games do not count, but as North Carolina coach Hubert Davis said last week, it's not like they're lab experiments. They keep score, Davis said.

While Oklahoma smothered Wolverines freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, Mateer completed 21 of his 34 passes for 270 yards with a passing touchdown and an interception. He also finished with a team-high 19 carries for 74 yards, adding a pair of rushing scores on either side of halftime in his second career start for the 18th-ranked Sooners. "You saw what he can do," Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables said of Mateer. "He falls forward a lot. He's got great strength and great skills.

Savion Hiter, a 6-foot, 200-pound running back from Virginia, committed to Michigan for the 2026 class, becoming the highest-ranked running back in the program’s history.