Michigan Basketball is Impossible to Anticipate

Michigan basketball has played some really good games this season, and it’s played some really bad ones. There’s no use in trying to find a rhyme or reason.

I haven’t been terribly impressed with the Michigan Wolverines this season. Well, actually, let me take that back and say I haven’t been impressed for more than a couple games in a row.

That’s because, through tragedy and triumph, it has become impossible to anticipate what Michigan is going to do. There’s no telling when we’ll be watching an embarrassing performance (like the one against Indiana) or a miraculous performance (like the one against Purdue).

As we run through the numbers and trends, the natural response is to allocate blame. Maybe, for instance, Caris LeVert gets 50 percent, Derrick Walton Jr. gets 15 percent, Zak Irvin gets 25 percent, Duncan Robinson gets 8 percent, and Mark Donnal gets 2 percent. Just throwing figures out there as an example, though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that’s pretty close to what others would say.

The problem with dishing out blame is sort of demonstrated with those made-up numbers: there’s way too much going on to point a single finger. There’s way too much going on to point two hands worth of fingers.

The combination of misfortune and underperformance, coupled then with lucky breaks and sudden bursts of basketball prowess, have led to where we are now: Michigan is 20-9 (10-6) and in decent shape for a tournament berth with games against Wisconsin and Iowa looming. And we’ve got no idea what to expect.

The inconsistencies have been abundant and, often times, atrocious. And that feels weird to say when you consider that the Wolverines really haven’t had a bad loss all season; the worst to date was probably against Ohio State (No. 63 in ESPN’s RPI rankings).

I’m not even going to bother looking at games before LeVert got hurt. There’s no denying his absence has taken a lot away from the hands of Michigan, and with him on the court, this is a team that was playing well and, most importantly, not slumping for stretches.

From Jan. 7 to Jan. 17 Michigan played games against Purdue, Maryland and Iowa. The thought was the Wolverines would do themselves a mighty favor by just taking one of those games; anything after that would be a completely unexpected bonus. Michigan played well in all three games, really, even if the scores against Purdue and Iowa don’t reflect that. But an upset win over then-No. 3 Maryland had us believing this was a team that could thrive despite not having its star in LeVert.

Michigan ripped off four wins in a row following that stretch to get to a 7-2 Big Ten record. Not bad at all. The only problem with that—and we should have seen it sooner—is that the Wolverines were playing one of the weakest conference schedules in the first half. So we go on the real tests.

Immediately Michigan got embarrassed by Indiana and Michigan State in back-to-back games. The combined score, 169-140, showed that this in fact wasn’t a team going places without LeVert. And that margin should have been larger; Michigan’s bench beat Indiana’s bench in the waning minutes to make it a more respectable score.

Michigan proceeded to play bad basketball against Minnesota, but that was a needed win. It would have been extremely difficult to drop three in a row that late in the season and still be pushing for a spot in the dance. The brightest part of the last month came on Feb. 13 against Purdue, when Michigan knocked off the Big Ten’s tallest team. LeVert was back for that game, but he only played 11 minutes and sat out the second half.

With the trend starting to move upward again, the Wolverines lost in a snoozer to Ohio State on the road. And just like that, we’re back to having no idea what in the world is going on. Michigan gave Maryland its second ride of the season and nearly converted the sweep, but ultimately fell short. It was only right that the Wolverines showed up big after losing the way they did to the Buckeyes. Except it was against a good Maryland team. The unpredictability is very real.

More wolverines: LeVert won't be shut down

Michigan beat Northwestern on Wednesday and plays Wisconsin on Sunday. We’ll continue to offer predictions, but on what basis? You may have a higher conversion rate predicting the whether on June 13 of 2018.

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