Welcome back to the Wolverine.com podcast. I'm John Borton. The video edition of the podcast is always great because we get to see Tom Crawford in action and all the excitement and passion he brings. Tom, our man in East Lansing, great to have you back on the podcast.

Well, it's great to have a relevant podcast on the day after

selection Sunday, and we're not bemoaning the fact that Michigan has to go to the NIT, which I think

a lot of us feared, you know, maybe not, you know, maybe it's that, you know, just that

worst case scenario syndrome you had that I have sometimes. But, man,

when that name popped up, Michigan, and, you know, here we only had to go through the

second region, South popped up in Indianapolis. Oh my God, this is like hitting a lotto.

I am ecstatic, and I do like the matchup with Colorado State. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute,

but not only not in the NIT, not only not in the

playing game, but you're a solid number 11 seed, you're sticking close to home in Indianapolis

again, a venue where they are very familiar.

And really, you couldn't have asked for a whole lot more from Michigan after it dropped that game against Indiana with the huge lead in the Big Ten tournament.

You know, John, I didn't go down in the Big Ten tournament. I had some back issues that slowly but surely is getting better.

And with some painkiller, I'll be able to get through this NC2A. I know it's going to stop me from going down the NC2A.

But I got to tell you something. It went beyond a back ache. It was a heartache that lost on Thursday at noon to Indiana. Just how, you know,

that 60 to 43 lead, how they surrendered that lead, all the, all the optics that we saw,

every little ass, every little moving part to that, you know, just, you know, destruction, self-destruction,

was a microcosm of the season. I truly thought, not playing 40 minutes, not finishing or not

starting out and having to rally and then falls short, which has also been the case. This was

like Central Florida times 10. It reminded me so much of that central Florida game on

December 30th, where they had a 12 point lead with about the same amount of time to go,

and all of a sudden they started unraveling. And that's the thing that throws such a question

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