Ultimately, only one team will cut down the nets on a Monday night in April and celebrate a national championship.

There are 362 Division I teams that will not. They will fall short of that ultimate goal in college hoops.

More than anything else, you just hope two things happen over the course of a college basketball season.

First, you want to have a team that

put forth the required effort to ultimately achieve that. Effort, energy, enthusiasm, that's the

prerequisite. You must have that just to be one of the teams of 363 eligible for a national

championship. And also, you want to feel like you maximize the team, the schedule, the moments that define

your season.

The first bucket, Michigan has done that, in my opinion.

The second bucket, obviously, it very much has not.

The Wolverines will head to the Big Ten tournament at 17 and 14 overall.

And if you were to just play the course of this 31 game regular season, 1,240 minutes,

and then a few extra, especially over these last few games,

if you just play it out straight through against whatever the averages of the opponents

that Michigan has faced over the course of the season,

and the Wolverines would probably have a higher number than those 17 wins they ended up earning.

But when you lose 12 games by single digits, when you lose back-to-back games in the final week

of the regular season in overtime on the road against teams that were favored to beat you

or ahead of you in the standings.

Yeah, it's tough.

It doesn't even out.

It doesn't average out over the course of the season.

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