After putting the final touches on a victory over Minnesota on Monday evening at Crisler Center, it’s clear the Michigan women’s basketball team has cooled off slightly over the last 10 days. The Wolverines,
who came out of the gates with a scorched-earth, shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality, have now settled into simply winning by 10 on off nights.
The Wolverines are 12-2 and currently ranked ninth in the country, sixth in NET rating, and have been one of the most dominant teams in the country over the first couple months of the season. As the preseason’s No. 13 team, Michigan was expected to be good, but no one expected the women to reach this level, even under the guidance of head coach Kim Barnes-Arico.
Barnes-Arico is the Pat Summit of the Michigan women’s program. Since KBA took over in 2012, Michigan has never had a losing record in conference play and has won more than 20 games in 12 of her 13 seasons. A feat that had only been reached four times ever before her arrival, none of which came post 2000. The only season she didn’t reach 20 games, the team was 16-6 and had nine games canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her previous best team was inarguably the 2021-22 team. That season, the Wolverines made the program’s first-ever Elite Eight appearance (one year after reaching the program’s first-ever Sweet Sixteen), led by All-American Naz Hillmon, Leigha Brown and the sharp-shooting Maddie Nolan. That team was viewed as the pinnacle of KBA’s career. A crowning achievement for a program reaching new heights.
But this current team is better.
Both teams were 12-2 eight days into January, but their paths look much different beneath the surface. The Hillmon-led squad won its first 12 games by an average of 17.3 points per game compared to the staggering 33.8 this season, with only two victories being less than 26 points and only one less than double digits.
The ‘22 team had the better win to that point. A four-point OT win over a Baylor team that would finish seventh in the AP Poll, and a 19-point victory over an eventual Sweet 16 team in Ohio State, are both likely better than anything the ‘26 team has accomplished yet. But that team also went to overtime with IUPUI in the season-opener (which was a sneaky good team, but a Horizon League team nonetheless) and needed a late 13-3 run to bury a .500 Oakland team.
Although lacking the true big win, this year’s team did absolutely dismantle Notre Dame (a team just outside the top-25) by 39 points. A beating so thorough Anthony Joshua was envious. Moreover, Michigan has been consistent to start the season and has avoided any dramatic letdown performances, even in its two losses.
Thus far, the Wolverines have only dropped two games. The first was to top-ranked and undefeated UConn by three on a “neutral site,” a stone’s throw from the basketball capital of the world. A game where Michigan scored the most points UConn has allowed all season, held the Huskies to a season-low and became the only team to play UConn to one possession since its last loss 33 games ago.
Michigan’s only other loss this season was at Washington by 12 on the second leg of a West Coast road trip, a couple days and a New Year’s Eve after its emotional double overtime victory in Eugene. Comparatively, the first two games Michigan dropped a few years ago were never close. The first loss came by 22 to Louisville, a team that would eliminate the Wolverines in the Elite Eight later that year by 12, and the second loss came to Nebraska by 21. Although both the Cardinals and Cornhuskers were good, the scoring margins exposed an underlying weakness — depth.
When Hillmon wasn’t going full tilt offensively, the team struggled. Six of Michigan’s seven losses came when she was below her seasonal scoring average. Sure, it’s easy to say, “When the best player plays badly, it is no surprise the team loses,” but that reductive reasoning was not the case in most of these losses.
Hillmon wasn’t playing badly — she averaged a steady 21 for the season on 33 minutes a game and only failed to score at least 15 points three times. But behind Hillmon, Michigan only had one other player (Leigha Brown) averaging double digits. Maddie Nolan had her moments, as did the unsung Emily Kiser. However, and this isn’t a slight to her teammates, the secondary scoring was never sustainable to get this team to the next level. That elite level. Simply, Michigan’s roster was not ready to support a true star like UConn’s or South Carolina’s were built at the time, an issue KBA has since worked to address.
This year, the Wolverines have four players averaging double figures (Olivia Olson, Syla Swords, Mila Holloway, Te’yala Delfosse), all of whom have had individual games leading the team in scoring. Olson is Michigan’s leading scorer, but has only led the team in scoring six times during the first 14 games. A team full of answers prevents one player from having to shoulder the burden of always being the solution. Furthermore, 10 players are averaging double-digit minutes, with the 10th woman, Alyssa Crocket, averaging more points per game than the seventh woman on Hillmon’s team.
As Michigan’s schedule picks up, it is unlikely this trend will continue to this degree (Michigan’s men’s team would disagree), but this established depth will help the Wolverines weather most storms ahead. Over Michigan’s final 12 games this season, nine are against ranked competition, and the three that are not are still conference road games. But even a drought or a rough stretch is not the end-all be-all. The 2022 team dropped four of its last six games, including a three-point loss in the opening game of the Big Ten Tournament to Nebraska, before marching to the Elite Eight.
But unlike the Hillmon team, regardless of what happens in March, this year’s team is not the end of an era. Seven of Michigan’s eight leading scorers can all return next season, including the top four, who are just sophomores. This team is just the steady evolution of what KBA started in 2012. The next chapter. Although the start of the season has been historic, Michigan is just living up to the standard set by the great teams before them. And raising the bar for those who follow.
