Michigan Basketball ranked 6th in the first NET rankings of 2020-21

Michigan basketball is on a roll after demolishing Northwestern last night to move to 9-0 on the season. With the first NET rankings of 2021 debuting this morning, the Wolverines found themselves ranked 6th in the country.

If you don’t know exactly what the NET Rankings are in college basketball, don’t worry, most people don’t. What’s important to know is that it is an analytics driven rankings system that is used by the committee who selects the NCAA Tournament teams and seeding. If you want to know more details about the rankings and the analytics involved, check out this helpful article.

Michigan basketball is one of only four remaining undefeated teams (who have played at least 9 games) and are sitting alone at the top of the Big Ten standings. So it’s no surprise that Michigan basketball is ranked fairly high. But with a pretty weak strength of schedule to date, being ranked all the way up at number six may surprise some people.

Here is who makes up the top-10 in the debut NET Rankings:

1. Gonzaga

2. Baylor

3. Tennessee

4. Illinois

5. Villanova

6. Michigan

7. Iowa

8. Houston

9. Texas

10. Missouri

The full rankings can be found here. Five teams in total from the Big Ten found themselves in the top-25 of the new NET Rankings.

4. Illinois

6. Michigan

7. Iowa

11. Wisconsin

17. Rutgers

Michigan basketball is also expected to make a substantial jump in the new AP Poll that will be released this afternoon.

The Wolverines were ranked 16th last week but went 2-0 this week with two convincing victories over Maryland and Northwestern. The win over the Wildcats last night was Michigan’s first win over a ranked team this season.

Juwan Howard’s squad will have another chance to impress voters with a huge matchup this week against a top-25 ranked Minnesota team.

The Golden Gophers have already beaten two ranked teams this season and are coming off a dominating performance yesterday against Ohio State. Michigan will look to keep things rolling and keep climbing up the various college basketball polls.