Michigan Basketball: Latest bracketology, look at NCAA tourney schedule

Michigan basketball is just days away from getting back on the court and here’s a look at where the Wolverines stand with bracketology, in the Big Ten and the new NCAA schedule. 

The Michigan basketball team is just days away from getting back on the floor against the Wisconsin Badgers Sunday and all I know is the last month of the season will be crazy.

Michigan has at least been able to practice this week, so that should give the Wolverines a better shot against Wisconsin, than if they had to play tonight against Illinois.

Still, at 8-1 in the Big Ten conference, there’s no way that Michigan basketball is going to play 11 conference games in the next month as the Big Ten tourney is supposed to start March 10.

Basically, the regular season is supposed to end on March 7 on that Sunday. I’d expect Michigan basketball to add some more games and it looks like the games lost against Illinois and Michigan State will be made up but that still leaves three games to make up.

I guess if the Wolverines are forced to play five games in a week, maybe it’s possible but more likely the Big Ten will need to decide the conference title on winning percentage.

And since only Illinois and Ohio State have three and four losses respectively, as long as the Wolverines can win more games than they lose down the stretch, they should easily come away with the Big Ten title.

However, that won’t be easy as the closing stretch is brutal. Yet, before Michigan goes to that stretch, U-M is being projected by just about every bracket as a No. 1 seed. Zach Shaw of the Michigan Insider, citing bracketmatrix.com, writes that Michigan is the No. 3 overall seed with the Wolverines predicted as a No. 1 in 97 of 101 brackets.

New NCAA tourney dates/times

The NCAA tournament is going to go forward and the entire schedule with TV times is shown here and was announced recently.

But one thing I noticed is that the tournament will have a much different feel with games taking place on different days than before.

The first four will be on a Thursday, with second-round games following on Friday and Saturday on the first weekend. The third round (round of 32) will then be on Sunday and Monday, so instead of the Sweet 16 taking place on Thursday and Friday night, as in the past, it will be played on Saturday and Sunday, with the Elite 8 to follow on Monday and Tuesday.

Yet, the Final Four will have its traditional Saturday schedule with the Monday night national championship game.

With the way the Wolverines have played, they will be in the NCAA tournament and who knows, there seems to be a good chance they earn a fourth-consecutive Sweet 16 trip and maybe more.