Michigan is completely terrifying
College basketball’s latest great team has arrived
One enjoyable thing about the 2024-25 men’s college basketball season — among many, obviously — was the confirmed death of the sport’s most annoying meme: No great teams.
The phrase used to dominate holistic conversations about the sport. It started off innocent enough, and was occasionally even true; the past two decades have had plenty of seasons without historically standout squads. But no great teams morphed into a cudgel. It was a way of saying college basketball as a whole had declined, that things were better in the old days, that the whole enterprise was just kind of OK. Worse: It became the baseline analysis, the default. Repeat something on a broadcast often enough, and your average casual starts to believe it — even when the numbers say something else entirely.
Key battles were won in 2020-21, when Gonzaga and Baylor were obviously great; in 2022-23, when the glide of UConn’s title run helped; and in 2023-24, when the Huskies really left no doubt. The 2024-25 season finished the fight. Four teams boasted historically elite net ratings, including one with two highly productive top-five NBA picks and the second-highest rating, dating to 1997, in KenPom.com’s database. All four (Duke, Houston, Florida, Auburn) were No. 1 seeds. All four played in April. Every team was great.
As the confetti fell in San Antonio, it was worth wondering whether this was structural or a blip. Did a bunch of crazy rosters randomly materialize in the same season? Or had NIL and the portal — and coaches’ understanding of them — created the conditions for a new degree of top-down dominance? Both, probably. Either way, we could test the theory again in 2025-26.
In one case, at least, the verdict is already in.
We’ve seen enough: The 2025-26 Michigan Wolverines are one of those teams. They are already historically great. Frankly, they’re downright terrifying:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Buzzer by Eamonn Brennan to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.