Michigan played its first game of the season without the injured Isaiah Livers on Saturday. The opponent was Ohio State. It was the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament. The result was a 68-67 loss to the Buckeyes that dropped the Wolverines to 6-7 over the past two seasons in games in which Livers didn’t both start and finish healthy.
That’s not great.
Start a bracket pool to compete against friends or fill out your bracket for a chance to win a brand new Nissan Rogue and a college basketball dream trip. Get in the action today!
But, yes, I still kept Michigan at No. 4 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings because nobody below the Wolverines currently deserves to be ahead of the Wolverines based on the bodies of work. And, yes, I think the No. 1 seeds in the 2021 NCAA Tournament are, at this point, pretty much locked-in.
Gonzaga will be the No. 1 overall seed.
Book it.
And then, I’m fairly certain, Illinois, Baylor and Michigan will be the three other No. 1 seeds, if only because I can’t envision a scenario where the selection committee can justify anything else, which makes the final Sunday before the start of the NCAA Tournament a little anticlimactic (at least until the Selection Show starts at 6 p.m ET on CBS). Obviously, if Cincinnati becomes a bid-stealer by upsetting Houston in the American Athletic Conference Tournament title game, that’ll be a big story (and additional bad news for bubble teams who got nothing but bad news Saturday because Georgetown and Oregon both became bid-stealers). But it’ll have no impact on the four projected No. 1 seeds, each of which has built an incredible resume that, again, at this point, seems unpassable regardless of what Alabama and Ohio State do Sunday, respectively, in the SEC Tournament title game and Big Ten Tournament title game.
Jonathan Coachman is joined by Mike McClure and Larry Hartstein to dish out the best bets for Sunday. Download and subscribe to The Early Edge on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Sunday’s Top 25 And 1 rankings
#College #basketball #rankings #Michigan #Top #losing #Ohio #State
Source
