Michigan Basketball: Updating bracketology, polls and scheduling

Michigan basketball continues to hold steady as a No. 1 seed in bracketology and also moved up in the latest polls, plus a look at a possible schedule update. 

The Michigan basketball team hasn’t played a game since Jan. 22 and the Wolverines won’t play again until at least this Sunday at Wisconsin.

Yet, that hasn’t stopped Michigan from maintaining its spot in the AP and Coaches polls, as well as bracketology projections.

The Wolverines last win was over Purdue, which was an impressive victory on the road and that boosted Michigan basketball into being a No. 1 seed, something that hasn’t changed in previous weeks and doesn’t look like it will Tuesday when ESPN’s Joe Lunardi releases his next bracket.

Lunardi will tweet out glimpses of what the bracket would look like and he’s never wavered from having Michigan basketball as a top seed and with U-M’s resume, you can’t blame him.

Eight of Michigan’s 13 wins are over teams ranked in the top 85 of the NET rankings and seven of those wins are against teams ranked in the top 60, including a non-conference win over Toledo.

Michigan is currently ranked as the No. 3 team in the country according to Lunardi’s most recent bracket, but also according to the NET rankings and Kenpom. The AP and Coaches polls also have Michigan ranked third after Villanova lost last week.

Following its two-week pause, there was hope that Michigan would be able to play Illinois on Thursday in a game that would feature the top two teams in the Big Ten conference standings.

That game was postponed and hopefully, it can be rescheduled, which is something the University of Michigan said it would work with the Big Ten to achieve.

There have been lots of rumors about games and how the Big Ten will determine its regular season champion, although its looking like it will have to be based on win-percentage.

However, there has been talk of scheduling back-to-back games, which certainly seems plausible between Michigan and Michigan State on the final weekend.

That would make up one of the five games missed by the Wolverines. The Wolverines lead Illinois by two games in the loss column and either way, whether the final standings are based on a 20-game schedule or win percentage, beating Illinois would be essential to wrapping up the title. And it sounds like the game will happen — at some point.

Illinois has had some things moved around schedule wise and it could mean the Big Ten is trying to open a date in the first week of March for Michigan-Illinois.

At the very least, if Michigan played that date and back-to-back against Michigan State, that could help make up for two of the missed games.

But it still seems like getting every Big Ten team to 20 is going to be nearly impossible, so even though the Wolverines are two games up in the loss column, each game will be huge as things could get a little complicated if the title is determined by win percentage.