One year after a dismal eight-win season, Michigan Basketball has staged a stunning revival under head coach Dusty May, racking up 27 wins and a Sweet Sixteen berth. Can the Wolverines keep defying expectations?
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What History Says About Michigan’s Path Forward
One year after winning eight games — a win total unacceptable for the football team, let alone a team that competes on the hardwood — Michigan basketball has now won 27 games and is advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.
Turnarounds like this don’t happen. Ever. This would be like if Empire Strikes Back followed The Rise of Skywalker. Normally, following a tragic installment, the next several instances are feeble attempts at trying to reclaim fallen glory instead of creating greatness anew. But when Michigan hired Dusty May last March, they knew he was a craftsman. A leader of men who could carve out his own legacy while honoring Michigan’s.
With Saturday’s 91-79 win over Texas A&M, May becomes the first coach since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 32 teams (1975) to lead a team to the Sweet Sixteen one year after enduring 24 or more losses in a single season. A nontraditional blue blood, the Wolverines have now reached six of the last eight Sweet Sixteens. Michigan’s omnipresence at the top of the sport feels like the norm for younger fans, but this level of play only returned under former head coach John Beilein.
Before reaching the Sweet Sixteen in Beilein’s sixth season (2012-13), it had been 19 years since the program had reached the tournament’s second weekend. Bill Clinton was still in his first term and Forrest Gump had yet to be released in theaters. Since Beilein’s ascension, the program’s standard has been reset. Similar to what Nick Saban accomplished for LSU football, the “happy to be here” days for Michigan basketball are trapped in the early 2000s like Razr phones and T-Pain.
In total, Beilein’s teams made five trips to the Sweet Sixteen, where he posted a 3-2 record with two ultimate advancements to the National Championship. Including one run which came in his first trip to the Sweet Sixteen and continued an interesting trend for Michigan basketball coaches.
Four of Michigan’s last five basketball coaches made it to at least the Elite Eight after guiding the Wolverines into the Sweet Sixteen for the first time under their watch (Bill Freider in 1988 being the exception). In 2021, Juwan Howard led the Wolverines to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in his tenure before falling to UCLA in the Elite Eight. Beilein’s first trip to the Sweet Sixteen saw he and Trey Burke take Michigan to the brink of a national championship in 2013. For what it’s worth, the block was still clean.
During Steve Fisher’s first trip to the Sweet Sixteen as permanent head coach, Fisher and the Fab Five reached the tournament final before falling to a powerhouse Duke team. And this is not counting the 1989 national championship-winning season where Fisher took over for Freider right before the NCAA Tournament after Athletic Director Bo Schembechler fired Freider upon learning he planned to leave after the season for Arizona State (the ‘80s were wild). Lastly, post 1975 expansion, head coach Johnny Orr led the Wolverines to a runner-up finish in 1976 after the team’s first “official” Sweet Sixteen in program history.
When coaches make it to the Sweet Sixteen with the Wolverines for the first time, they are more likely to reach the National Championship than immediately lose. It’s unfair to expect a turnaround of this magnitude already to reach those heights, but history dictates three more wins are more than a mere possibility.
With top overall seed — and Tre Donald’s former team — Auburn next up, very few are giving the Wolverines a chance. But this is nothing new. In 2013 and 2021, Michigan ran into “bad” matchups in Kansas and Florida State, respectively, and still found a way. The Fab Five were never supposed to be that good when they marched through the field. Most remember the final loss to Duke, but most forget the upset of Eddie Sutton and Oklahoma State in the Sweet Sixteen, AND the upset of 1-seed Ohio State in the Elite Eight. Even the 1976 team had to overcome the odds and beat an undefeated Rutgers team riding a 31-game heater into the Final Four.
With history on Michigan’s side, who is anyone to say this run cannot continue for one, two, three or even four more victories? May has already proven it might be time to rearrange the calendar to January-February-May-April, but April may not be safe before it’s all said and done. This team is still hungry despite playing with house money — a combination of ambition and levity that goes a long way in explaining why the Wolverines operate so well in the clutch. And a combination that has given this program a new hope.