Game 30: Michigan at Illinois Preview

The fact that Michigan has something to play for tonight (7:00 p.m., ESPN) is an accomplishment. The Wolverines looked dead in the water after a 22-point loss at Penn State that wasn’t even that close. They were 11-10 on the season (5-5 in Big Ten games) without a redeeming victory on a resume tarnished by a loss to one of the worst teams in the country.

A month later, Juwan Howard’s team doesn’t just have something to play for. It feels like a team that’s genuinely playing well enough to make some noise in the postseason — if it can make it to that point.

The Wolverines played like a top-20 team in February, something they hadn’t proven capable of before. Dug McDaniel and Kobe Bufkin have reached a level we didn’t know they had, while Hunter Dickinson is back to the level we all expected.

Michigan is the only team in the league that still has a chance to share the Big Ten title with Purdue. It is a longshot that would require winning out and Purdue losing to Wisconsin and Illinois, but the possibility is still on the table with two games to play. They also need to steal a win at Illinois or Indiana just to make the field of 68.

It’s a bit of poetic justice that the journey starts with tonight’s trip to Champaign against a team that Juwan Howard hasn’t beaten in his tenure and that features a star transfer that was tantalizingly close to ending up in Ann Arbor.