One night after Michigan State won at the buzzer on a 3-pointer Wednesday, Michigan did the same thing Thursday thanks to Nimari Burnett’s shot that lifted Dusty May’s program to an 84-82 victory over Rutgers. The byproduct of those two developments is that the Spartans and Wolverines are now both 14-3 in the Big Ten with three regular-season games remaining, and the conference race really does seem destined to be settled, one way or another, when the two in-state rivals close against each other on March 9 inside the Breslin Center on CBS.
“I’m extremely happy for Nimari,” May said after his Wolverines improved to 8-1 in their past nine games. “He deserves to make that play. … His day-to-day work, preparation, consistency, in my opinioni, is the reason you can make shots like that — [and] we needed it.”
Michigan, which seemed kinda flat from the jump, trailed by as many as 13 points against Rutgers and appeared on its way to a Quadrant 2 loss. But, as they’ve often done this season, the Wolverines instead rallied to secure yet another close victory. Specifically, it was their 11th conference win by four-or-fewer points, which is more than any team has ever had in the same season.
The Wolverines remain No. 10 in Friday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Auburn is No. 1 for the 52nd straight day. Michigan will next play Illinois at home on Sunday, and then Maryland at home next Wednesday, before visiting Michigan State on the final day of the regular season. Nobody else in the Big Ten is within a game of the Wolverines and Spartans in the league standings, which suggests that this might be a two-team race at this point.
