The Michigan Wolverines travel to Illinois tomorrow for yet another top-10 matchup. This will be the fifth such matchup this season for the Wolverines. If you feel like that’s a lot, you’re not alone. Let’s look back historically and examine how many top-10 matchups Michigan has had per year and how it has performed in such games.
Since 2000, Michigan has played in 17 regular-season top-10 games; Friday’s matchup with the Fighting Illini will be the 18th. However, those 18 matchups are highly concentrated
within three seasons.
Unsurprisingly, no such matchups occurred in the 2000s. Michigan was only ranked in three of those seasons (2005-06, 2008-09, and 2009-10) and never climbed higher than No. 15.
Everything changed in the 2010s. In the 2012-13 season, Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. helped Michigan remain in the top-10 the entire season, meaning all six of their games against top-10 foes qualify by this criteria. The Wolverines went 3-3 in these games, knocking off No. 9 Minnesota on the road, and No. 10 Ohio State and No. 9 Michigan State at home. Michigan fell to then-No. 3 Indiana on the road, No. 8 Michigan State in East Lansing, and then again to Indiana in the season finale with the Big Ten title on the line.
Not that anyone needs reminding, but the 2012-13 Wolverines would go on to make a run to the National Championship before falling to Louisville. The block was clean.
Over the next few years the Wolverines would bounce around the rankings. They were in the top-10 on a few occasions but never while facing another top-10 team until 2018-19. That team was led by Zavier Simpson, Jordan Poole and Jon Teske, and the Wolverines were ranked in the top-10 for most of the season but only played one top-10 opponent: Michigan State twice. Sadly, the Wolverines lost both matchups.
The next year saw the Wolverines start hot by winning their first seven contests. This led to a brief top-10 ranking before losing three of four, one of which came against No. 10 Oregon.
The 2020-21 season was the next season with major top-10 games for Michigan. Led by Hunter Dickinson, Isaiah Livers and Franz Wagner, the Wolverines cracked the top-10 on Jan. 4 and remained there the rest of the season. Michigan’s schedule featured five top-10 opponents, but the matchup with Illinois was canceled due to COVID. Of the remaining four, the Wolverines went 3-1 with wins over No. 9 Wisconsin at home, No. 4 Ohio State in Columbus and No. 9 Iowa at home. The lone loss came to No. 4 Illinois at Crisler.
Michigan started the 2021-22 season at No. 6 in the AP Poll, but quickly fell out following losses to Seton Hall, Arizona and North Carolina. The Wolverines would not return to the top-10 until this season. This year, the Wolverines have a home win over No. 5 Nebraska, and road wins over No. 7 Michigan State and No. 7 Purdue, along with the loss at a neutral site to No. 3 Duke. Friday’s matchup with No. 10 Illinois will be the fifth top-10 matchup of the season for Michigan.
To put it all together, Michigan is 9-8 in top-10 matchups in the regular season since 2000, with the Duke loss last weekend snapping a three-game winning streak. That’s a respectable record in huge games with seeding implications. The Wolverines have had the most success against Ohio State (2-0) while having the least success against Indiana (0-2), with Sparty somewhere in between (2-3).
