After No. 1 Purdue lost handily to Iowa State this weekend, the Michigan men’s basketball team inched one spot closer to the top spot in the AP Poll. Michigan is ranked No. 2 in this week’s edition of the poll, one spot behind No. 1 Arizona.
Purdue fell all the way to No. 6 in the poll, with Duke, Iowa State, and UConn rounding out the top ten. Other Big Ten teams ranked include Michigan State (No. 9), Illinois (No. 13), Nebraska (No. 23) and UCLA (No. 25).
This is the first time the Wolverines have
been ranked second in the poll since the poll was released on March 1, 2021. It comes after the Wolverines played just one game this week, routing Rutgers at home, 101-60. This was the third game in a row that the Wolverines scored 100 points in the game, the first time that’s happened in program history since the 1989-90 season.
With 17 first-place votes, the Wolverines finished as the top team in the country on USA Today’s most recent Coaches Poll. Michigan remains the No. 1 team in KenPom and is now favored by the site to win every game on the rest of its regular season schedule. The Wolverines have looked every bit like the National Championship contender that advanced statistics have indicated that they are.
Michigan has two more games this week, hosting Villanova for a 2018 National Championship rematch before traveling to College Park for a Big Ten duel with Maryland. That Villanova game is set to tip-off on Tuesday, Dec. 9, at 6:30 p.m. EST on FS1, and the Maryland game tips off on Saturday, Dec. 13, at 8 p.m. EST on Fox.
Shifting to women’s hoops, the Wolverines remain ranked at No. 6, slightly behind UCLA (No. 4) and ahead of Maryland (No. 7), Iowa (No. 11), USC (No. 16), Washington (No. 20), Ohio State (No. 21), Nebraska (No. 24) and Michigan State (No. 25).
This lack of movement isn’t surprising; there weren’t a lot of games played in general across the sport, with many teams participating in some sort of tournament on Thanksgiving week, and using this week to recover. Michigan won both its games handily this week, destroying Central Michigan on Wednesday, 82-40, before starting Big Ten play with a blowout victory, defeating Purdue yesterday, 104-56.
Michigan has just one game this week, hosting Akron on Saturday, Dec. 13. That game is set to tip off at Noon on B1G+.
