The Michigan men’s basketball team has already put together impressive weekly performances this season. The Wolverines won the Players Era Championship by defeating San Diego State, Auburn and Gonzaga in three consecutive nights. They also took down Nebraska and Michigan State in one week just a couple weeks back.
But those still may not compare to the three-game stretch Michigan has coming up starting on Saturday.
The Wolverines will host UCLA for a Valentine’s Day matinee, travel to West Lafayette
to take on Purdue (Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.) and finish the week in Washington D.C. against Duke (Saturday, 6:30 p.m.), adding to the gauntlet of a schedule head coach Dusty May and his team have already faced this season.
Michigan has passed these tests with flying colors so far this season, and it will need to use that past success as fuel to get through more top-tier programs before the NCAA Tournament begins.
May made it no secret at the beginning of the season his goal was to test his team as much as possible before the postseason. While the Wolverines had a ton of success last season, it couldn’t get over the hump against No. 1 seed Auburn in the Sweet Sixteen. In order to do more this year, May scheduled as many tough opponents as possible to be battle tested in time for the tournament. So far so good, and Michigan is hoping the lessons from those wins will carry them through this part of the season.
“I know some coaches and programs don’t value an 18-team tournament this year against 18 really good teams, winning three games in three days, a lot of times against Sweet Sixteen teams,” May said before the Players Era Tournament in November. “(But), we want to win the Big Ten Tournament again, we want to be in position to compete for it. So three games in three days gives us an opportunity to prepare like that, to take care of our bodies and prioritize the next game immediately when the buzzer sounds after Game 1 and Game 2. And then we’ve got to be able to learn on the fly where we don’t have time to practice in between when we go straight from a game film session, walk through and be able to apply things. That’s the secret sauce of an elite team. So hopefully we’ll see us doing that on the fly.”
Purdue will be able to match up closest to the Wolverines, with Trey Kaufman-Renn (6-foot-9), Raleigh Burgess (6-foot-11), Oscar Cluff (6-foot-11) and Daniel Jacobsen (7-foot-4) manning the front court. The size of each team should match up nicely, forcing both programs to scheme and adjust on the glass.
Duke’s lineup is a little shorter, as centers Ifeanyi Ufochukwu and Patrick Ngongba II are both 6-foot-11 and are the Blue Devils’ tallest players, while Cameron Boozer is 6-foot-9. However, they are one of the best shooting teams in the country, converting nearly 50 percent from the field, making it a different offense for Michigan to prepare for.
But Michigan has won in different ways against different types of teams. As May said following the win at Michigan State: “I think we proved that we can still win in different ways. … Last year’s team, we didn’t respond very well once the Big Ten got into this part of the season. And we addressed that through recruiting, and our guys were able to do that tonight. … It’s going to help us going forward because we’ll refer back to these moments, and this is going to give our guys even more confidence.”
It will be a big week for the Wolverines, but history has shown that fans should believe in the way that May has prepared this team.
