Despite a disappointing loss to Purdue in the Big Ten tournament championship game, the Wolverines received a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, although it wasn't the No 1 overall seed.
Duke was awaded that. Michigan will have to play on Thursday, which is something Dusty May wanted to avoid. That probably wasn't going to happen because of the head-to-head loss to the Blue Devils.
The Wolverines are in the Midwest regional. They will play the winner of UMBC and Howard. Those two teams will meet in one of the First Four games.
A decent draw for Michigan with one major threat
Looking at the Wolverines draw as a whole, it's pretty favorable. There are multiple teams in the bracket good enough to win the national championship. According to the proven metric there are five teams in the region capable of winning it all.
That seems like a lot and sounds like That sounds like bad news for Michigan, but three of those teams are the opposite side of the bracket, with them being Iowa State (No. 2), Virginia (No. 3), and Tennessee (No. 6).
So Michigan can only play one. The other is Texas Tech. So the Wolverines would need to defeat two teams with metrics strong enough to win a national title. Yet, there is only one team ranked in the top 10 of the Kenpom rankings, Iowa State (No. 6 Kenpom).
The Cyclones are a strong 3-point shooting team (38.7 percent, 13th). They also force 15.7 turnovers per game. Milan Momcilovic, a 6-foot-8 forward, shot 49.6 percent this season from 3-point range and made 3.7 per game. Iowa State has three players who average double figures.
Iowa State's defense is sound, too. 3-point shooting, or the lack of it, is one red flag for Michigan. The Cyclones are better at defending threes than twos, but if they can force Michigan into 15 turnovers, it might not matter.
Of course, the Wolverines have to win three games just to get a matchup against Iowa State, but the Cyclones look like the most serious threat, among four of five teams to keep Michigan basketball from reaching the Final Four.
.