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Michigan Basketball: Big Ten title race down to two teams

By Chris Peterson

The Michigan Wolverines celebrate a 92-87 win over the Ohio State Buckeyes during Sunday's NCAA Division I Big Ten conference basketball game at Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on February 21, 2021.Ceb Osu Mbk Mich Bjp 12
The Michigan Wolverines celebrate a 92-87 win over the Ohio State Buckeyes during Sunday's NCAA Division I Big Ten conference basketball game at Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on February 21, 2021.Ceb Osu Mbk Mich Bjp 12 /
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After Michigan basketball’s win over Ohio State Sunday, the Big Ten title is coming down to the Wolverines and Illinois. 

There were a lot of reasons to enjoy Michigan basketball‘s win at Ohio State Sunday. It was the first win in Columbus for the Wolverines since 2014 and it was nice to see a top-five matchup go the way of the Maize and Blue.

It’s true that Michigan-Ohio State on the basketball court isn’t the same on the football field, but it’s still an important game and the Wolverines delivered a huge win.

Not only did that help reinforce Michigan’s status as a top seed in the NCAA tournament, but Michigan is also now basically the consensus No. 3 team in the country, both according to the Kenpom rankings and the Top 25 polls.

None of that really matters though. It matters where Michigan is seeded by the committee and even before that, the Wolverines have a very good shot of winning the Big Ten title.

It was a big win for Michigan and a costly defeat for the Buckeyes that basically knocks them out of the Big Ten hunt. Michigan would basically need to lose four of five games and Illniois would also need at least another loss.

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With Ohio State and Iowa each having five losses, Michigan is in a strong spot. The title is going to be determined by winning percentage so as long as the Wolverines have fewer losses than their conference rivals they should come out on top.

So if Ohio State and Iowa both won out, Michigan would need to finish 13-4 to finish ahead of a five-loss team.

The same logic applies to Illinois. That’s why that game is so huge. It’s not about the tiebreaker because there won’t be one with teams playing an uneven amount of games.

But if you consider that Michigan has a magic number to clinch, right now it would be four. If Michigan wins four of five games down the stretch, even if it falls to Illinois it would win the Big Ten title.

If the Wolverines beat Illinois, they would need to go just 2-2 over the last four in order to clinch. A loss, assuming that the Illini don’t lose any games and Michigan would have to go 4-0.

So you can see it’s quite a huge game. But if U-M beat Iowa and Indiana this week, then lost to Illinois, it could still clinch with a sweep of Michigan State, assuming no losses by Illinois.

There are a lot of scenarios but basically, Michigan is the favorite and a win over Illinois just about guarantees U-M of the Big Ten regular-season title.

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