A Michigan Dad Life

**WARNING: this post contains positivity** Michigan is the best team in college basketball and played its A-game last night. Purdue maybe reached a B-. The difference was obviously the first half. First step is admitting UM is CBB’s barometer this year. They are the best team our guys have played in their 4 years, up there with UConn in the natty. If you can agree on that, then you can agree that Purdue now knows what it will take to win it all. Just like when we got spanked by Auburn last year in the non-con and got better from it. Purdue has a month to start firing on all cylinders every game. I saw some posts about effort in the 1H and, imo, that wasn’t an issue. Look at how many bunnies we missed and all the rebounds that went UM’s way in the first 20 min - imo our guys were shell shocked playing against that size for the first time (I don’t think we’ve faced a team with more length and size since who knows when). The guys were going hard after rebounds, Michigan was just better. It took Smith a half of navigating their defense to get going and I thought rebounding improved as the game went on, too. If Purdue plays Michigan again, Michigan won’t have that element of surprise that their size gives them. (Btw, imagine getting Michigan for the first time in March and having to play them on a one day prep. Damn.) And it’s not like Purdue plateu’d entering last night’s game. Purdue is still playing well at the right time. It simply ran into the best team CBB has seen in two years. IMO, it’s great to see what the barometer is within a month of March Madness. Purdue attempted 12 more field goals last night than its opponent, it just didn’t shoot well enough to win. Part of that is clearly UM’s defense. But Purdue left a lot of points in the paint. The good news is that if we play Michigan again it will be in April. And Purdue only has to play its A game versus UM once this year - it didn’t do it last night in a FEB regular season game. If Iowa state locks up the Midwest 2-seed, there are worse things than avoiding arguably your team’s two worst matchups until the Final Four, you know. And we’d only play one of them. (If Purdue finishes top-4 in the Big Ten (it will finish top-3) then it cannot be in the same region as the 1-seed from the same conference). None of that matters if Purdue doesn’t reach its peak, which I truly believe it’s still doing. If Purdue plays a complete game, it can beat anyone in the country. Can it reach that point by next month where it’s playing lights out game-to-game? If Purdue can win its last 5 reg szn games and at least 1 in the BTT, they would be a lock for a 2-seed in the NCAA tourney. No sane person is complaining about 27-6 and a 2-seed. This year’s field is just historically good. It sucks that Purdue has this team and it’s forced to play in arguably the deepest field CBB has seen in two decades but it is what it is. Every team is facing that reality this year. There are only three teams that I’d go into a tourney game worried about losing to: UM, ISU and HOU. That’s it. And if the Midwest 1 & 2 are UM and ISU then worst case is Purdue can only play 2/3 and both games would be in the Final 4. Win the last 5 games and a 2-seed out west with Gonzaga as the 3 and Arizona as the 1 would be a great draw. This year is far from over, folks. 🚂🏀

Tensions are high between No. 2 Michigan and Northwestern.