WBBubble Watch

January. February. Barnes-Arico. That's right, the college basketball postseason approaches and Michigan is attempting to keep a five-tournament streak alive. It's by far the longest in team history, but to continue it Michigan will need to win some games, and also get some luck elsewhere.

At press time, ESPN's Charlie Creme had Michigan at a 10-seed in the last four byes. CBS Sports has Michigan in the first four out. Michigan was in the first four out of the most recent Athletic bracketology, but this morning they're not even on the bubble (UPDATE: this was an oversight and they should have been). Things are tight.

Michigan has two remaining games, an extremely tough contest in Columbus on Wednesday night and Senior Night against Purdue on Sunday. Then they'll have an opportunity to pick up some prove-it wins at the Big Ten Tournament. We'll start with the Big Ten and then look at the national bubble.

Quick housekeeping note: In order to provide an update after the full weeknight slate is played, I'll be releasing the regular column on Friday this week.

Big Ten Tournament Seeding

Between now and Thursday night, there are six Big Ten Games, and then there is a full slate of seven games on Sunday. The Michigan/Purdue game will be the last game played in the Big Ten Regular Season, the Wolverines will go into that game knowing exactly what's left to play for.

There are 8192 sets of results left in Big Ten play. I posted this on Twitter last night, showing each team's highest potential seed, lowest potential seed, and most common potential Big Ten Tournament seeds among those 8192 sets of results.

Here's Michigan's seed spread by number of results:

By tomorrow sometime I'll have the full scenarios table available, but right now it's just too big and makes Google Sheets crash. After tonight's Indiana @ Northwestern game, it'll be half the size, and shareable.

Here's some good news: Michigan holds a lot of tiebreakers. Michigan has head to head wins in their only matchups with Maryland, Illinois, and Wisconsin. They split against Penn State, but the second tiebreaker is who has the better record against the #1 team in the conference (and, if still tied, the #2 team and so on and so forth). Michigan is the only team with a win over OSU in conference play this season, so they hold the tiebreaker against Penn State, and the OSU win helps Michigan win a lot of three and four-way ties.

The short version: if they're ahead of Michigan, root for them, if they're behind Michigan, root against them. Especially Maryland.

The Best Michigan Can Do

Well this was an easier section to write than I intended: if Michigan finishes 2-0, they are the sixth seed. No other results matter. This scenario also involves the only tiebreaker Michigan loses: if MSU goes 0-2 and Michigan goes 2-0, they'll be tied but MSU will get the five seed by virtue of sweeping Michigan. Blech.

The Best Michigan Can Do While Going 1-1

If Michigan goes 1-1 with a loss to Ohio State and a win over Purdue, they cannot fall below the seventh seed. Maryland's final two games are against Wisconsin and @ Indiana, with Indiana likely going into that game with a shot at the two-seed. If Maryland also goes 1-1, Michigan is the sixth seed.

Maryland is really the only team that matters, provided Michigan goes 1-1. As previously established, the hold the tiebreakers over Penn State and Illinois (and Maryland), so if Michigan wins just one game, the best Penn State or Illinois can do is tie and lose a tiebreaker.

Game By Game

Like I said, really only Maryland matters. I'll put out a full Sunday rooting guide in the column later this week, but in the meantime let's take a quick look at the weeknight games, mostly for fun. The tables show the number of sets of game results where Michigan earns each seed based on the winner in each row.

Northwestern @ Indiana, Tue, 7p, BTN

Literally does not matter for Michigan at all:

Penn State @ Purdue, Wed, 7p, B1G+

Ok now we're getting somewhere:

A Purdue win takes most of the worst-case scenarios off of the table. Most of Michigan's 9-seed scenarios involve them going 0-2, but if Purdue can take down the Nittany Lions it basically slots Michigan into a 6/7 seed AND would be helpful on the big tournament bubble.

Michigan @ Ohio State, Wed, 7p, Peacock

Yeah. This one would be a big deal.

Iowa @ Minnesota, Wed, 9p, Peacock

Next.

Wisconsin @ Maryland, Thu, 6p, BTN

Easily the biggest non-Michigan game of the weeknight slate. Look how much a Wisconsin win limits Michigan's chances at the 7th seed, and look how a Maryland win gets it closer to a toss-up. Obviously by the time this happens we'll have the M/OSU result and be able to make inferences based on that, but for both the B1G and the bubble, root for Wisconsin.

Illinois @ Michigan State, Thu, 8p, BTN

I know that technically the numbers favor a Michigan State win here but the degree by which they do so is not that significant. If you don't want to root for MSU, don't. If Michigan takes care of business v. Purdue then this game doesn't matter.

Maryland @ Indiana, Sun, 3p, Peacock

I'm not going to do the full Sunday slate because there are just too many results that happen first, but I was curious about what the chart would look like for this one.

NCAA Tournament Bubble

Like I said above, Michigan is getting projected somewhere between the last four byes and the first four out. That averages out to Michigan playing a First Four game, and I'd take it.

There's two major discussions to have about Michigan's place on the bubble: how scared are we of bid thieves, and who else do we want to lose for at-large reasons.

Conference Tournaments and Bid Thieves

The best way for a one-bid league to become a two-bid league is to have one legitimately good team and then have that team lose the conference championship game. That leaves one less spot on the bubble for an at-large. As such, generally if you're a bubble team you want every conference tournament to be one by it's one-seed. We'll take a closer look at this next Monday or Tuesday, but for now, here are the biggest ones. Throughout this section, the team you're rooting against is in italics.

Ivy League (all on ESPN+)
Friday: Columbia @ Brown (4p), Harvard @ Princeton (5p)
Saturday: Columbia @ Yale (3p), Dartmouth @ Princeton (4p)

It's possible that the single most important bubble teams for Michigan are Columbia and Princeton. These Ivy teams are unique because not only are they both in the hunt for the Ivy's bid, they're both bubble teams in their own right. Creme has Columbia getting the Ivy's championship and Princeton in the last four byes with Michigan.

Your rooting advice for this week is to root for them both to lose. We'll have to pick one of them to root for in Ivy Madness, but this weekend just root for them both to prove they're not at-large worthy without a conference championship.

Horizon League (all on ESPN+)
Tuesday: Cleveland State @ Youngstown State (6:30p)
Wednesday: Green Bay @ Purdue Ft. Wayne (7p)
Saturday: Northern Kentucky @ Cleveland State (2p), Milwaukee @ Green Bay (2p)

In a similar situation to the Ivy, Cleveland State and Green Bay are both fighting for their conference title and to prove that they are worthy of an at-large bid should they fail to get the auto-bid. For now, root against them both.

Atlantic Ten (all on ESPN+)
Wednesday: Duquense @ Richmond (6p), Fordham @ St. Joe's (7p), Dayton @ George Mason (7p)
Saturday: Richmond @ St. Bonaventure (1p), George Mason @ VCU (1p), St. Joe's @ Duquesne (2p)

The A10 has three bubble-ish teams. Once again, root for them all to lose, but if one of them finishes 2-0 then you're probably rooting for that team in the conference tournament next week.

Other Teams You Should Root Against This Week But For Next Week

Wednesday: Boise St. @ UNLV (9:30p)
Thursday: N. Florida @ FGCU (7p, ESPN+), North Dakota v. S. Dakota St. (8p)
Saturday: N. Dakota St. v. S. Dakota St. (3p), San Diego St. @ UNLV (5p), Sam Houston St. @ Middle Tenn. (3p, ESPN+), Jacksonville @ FGCU (7p, ESPN+)

UNLV (Mountain West), Florida Gulf Coast (Atlantic Sun), Middle Tennessee (Conference USA) and South Dakota State (Summit League) are all bubble-ish teams that are also the only teams in their conference with any shot at all at an at-large. It's possible that it's a stretch to say any of these will particularly affect Michigan's shot at a bid, but if you want the bubble to get softer you want these teams to lose, making it more likely their conferences are one-bid leagues regardless of who wins their conference tournaments.

Those UNLV games stream for free (I think) on the Mountain West's website. I believe the SDSU games are on the Summit League website but behind a paywall.

Worth noting that some conferences have their conference tournaments a full week after the Big Ten's, so some of these teams have regular season games on weeknights next week.

Other Bubble Teams

Elsewhere, we're just watching the bubble. If we're saying Michigan's a 10 seed in Creme's projections, we want to look at the teams that are just above them and just behind them.

The further you get down this table the less this matters, but we want the teams near Michigan to lose, especially the ones nipping at our heels. The most important thing Michigan can do is win, especially if they can go to the conference tournament, win Thursday night, and pick off a little upset on Friday. If you do that everything's gravy. But I'll take the help if any of these teams can lose.

There are some old friends in this chart: not only is Maryland the biggest other team when factoring Michigan's BTT scenarios, they're an important team to watch on the bubble. Same goes for Penn State. If Michigan has a better finish down the stretch than Maryland and Penn State, they can hopefully stay ahead of them in the conference pecking order in a conference that is going to send eight or nine teams to the tournament.

We're also rooting hard against Iowa State, Texas A&M, Kansas, Auburn, and Vanderbilt. Ultimately we just want as many teams from major conferences to look bad down the stretch. But more important than any of that is Michigan looking good. It appears that Michigan does control their own destiny. You can handle a loss to OSU in Columbus, but they absolutely need to take care of Purdue on Sunday night.

Ok. This is what you've been waiting for.

The Part With The Screenshots You Can Save

The Big Ten:

Bid Thieves:

High-priority bubble teams:

Low-priority bubble teams:

Everything above but organized by day. Tuesday-Thursday:

Friday-Sunday:

Brief update at the top of Friday's regular column, full update next Monday or Tuesday.