WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Michigan is a machine.
On Tuesday, the newly ranked No. 1 team in the country brandished its brawn and might in an authoritative 91-80 road win over No. 7 Purdue to improve to 25-1, marking the first Big Ten team to reach that record since Ohio State in 2011 and the best start in Michigan history.
The victory reinforced what college basketball’s most respected advanced metrics have been claiming for more than half the season: Michigan is the best team. How it’s doing this is incredible, though. Almost every win is either a knockout or convincing vanquishing.
And yet: This team found itself a little surprised by the ease in which it trounced Purdue.
That’s because almost 13 months ago, on Jan. 24, 2025, Michigan came into this same building and got dropped 91-64. The Wolverines were down 44-15 with more than five minutes to go in the first half.
“It felt like it was impossible to win here,” Michigan assistant Mike Boynton told CBS Sports.
On Tuesday, a script flipped in one of the loudest basketball environments you’ll ever find. Michigan point guard Elliott Cadeau, who’s been involved in many riotous arenas, compared Mackey Arena to Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. Then he offered the highest possible compliment.
“This place is louder,” he said.
‘Paint Crew’ was primed and ready for Lendeborg
Mackey is always loud, but the student section — dubbed the “Paint Crew” — was especially deafening at the start. They let Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg have it early and often with profanity-laced chants. Why? A video surfaced on social media over the weekend that dates back to last summer, when Lendeborg was approached at a bar and dropped an F-bomb-laced promise that Michigan would… um, yeah: it was definitive. Michigan was going to beat Purdue.
“I didn’t think it was going to end up like this,” Lendeborg told CBS Sports. “I forgot about the video. But it resurfaced and I was like, what?”
Oh, it went viral and Purdue’s students were ready.
They were equal parts eager and angry.
And then Michigan blitzed a 24-4 run in the early part of the game to take a 26-11 lead — which it would never give back. Lendeborg finished with 13 points (including some spirit-crushing 3-pointers in the second half, which were tagged with some joyous gestures right back to the Purdue crowd) to go with seven assists.
“He doesn’t want to be the big storyline, he just wants to be one of the guys,” Michigan coach Dusty May told CBS Sports.
Michigan’s players had well-rounded effort: six players scored between 10 and 17 points and seven sank at least one 3-pointer, leading to a season-high 13 triples en route to the program’s sixth consecutive road win in the conference by at least 10 points.
That ties the Big Ten record, which dates back to an Illinois streak in the 1950s.
“There were some holes on our roster last year that we had to work around,” May said. “This year, we don’t feel like there’s any holes across the board. There’s no style of play we can’t play well. Are we going to win every game? Hopefully, but probably not. But we do feel like we’re equipped to play any style, any way, shape or form.”
For more than half the season, Michigan has rated No. 1 at KenPom.com and EvanMiya.com. But the AP voters couldn’t get the Wolverines there in the previous three-plus months because Purdue, Houston and Arizona (which finally took its first loss just eight days ago) held the top spot due to how the schedule broke and Michigan’s unexpected home loss to Wisconsin (91-88) on Jan. 10.
The team’s won 11 in a row since, including road victories vs. top-10 competition: No. 5 Nebraska (75-72 on Jan. 27) and No. 7 Michigan State (83-71 on Jan. 30). Arizona’s back-to-back losses paved the way on Monday for the Wolverines to return to the top of the AP poll, a perch they hadn’t occupied in 4,765 days (last ranked No. 1 in early February 2013). Tuesday night brought an allegedly compelling matchup.
It marked the seventh time Purdue had hosted a No. 1 team and the first since Jan. 8, 2005, when No. 1 Illinois beat the Boilers 68-59 in Gene Keady’s final season. (Keady was on hand tonight to watch courtside, as was Zach Edey, who had the time to fly in near the end of the NBA’s All-Star break.)
Putting polls in perspective
May told me he approached his staff about the No. 1 ranking and whether they’d bring it up with the team. They decided against it.
“I haven’t heard one thing about the No. 1 ranking, except in the media,” May said. “Haven’t heard it in the locker room, on the plane, in passing. Our guys don’t really care about that.”
Purdue did. It had no choice. This spot was its last chance to salvage a shot at a Big Ten title. That 1 next to a team’s name is all the motivation any opponent ever needs to bring that much more to a battle. Michigan has faced some really good teams in some hostile environments, with more to come, but nothing will match the ferocity of the lead-up and opening minutes of Tuesday.
Mackey Arena had the clamor of a jet engine as the game tipped.
But U-M rendered it meaningless. The Wolverines handled the harassment on the way to doing what they’ve done 21 times this season: win a game by double-digits. Purdue lost for a third time at home this season; that hasn’t happened in six years. Tuesday was also the first time since 1994 that Michigan won at Mackey when Purdue was ranked in the top 10.
“This is the best team we’ve played,” Purdue coach Matt Painter told CBS Sports. “It’s the problems they cause. They’re not a team that forces a lot of turnovers, either, they’re just going to get you to take tougher shots. They’ve got guys that can carve you.”
Michigan stifled All-American Braden Smith to zero points in the first half (he finished with 20) and flustered Purdue to just 8-of-26 shooting from beyond the arc.
The win all but clamps the Big Ten regular-season title in Michigan’s favor. May’s team is 15-1 in the conference with four regular-season contests remaining and a two-game lead in the loss column.
“Our biggest strength is we don’t have a best player,” Lendeborg, who, by the way, is Michigan’s best player, said. “We’ve been having a little joke in the locker room, like we feel we’re the best team ever assembled. It’s a joke but also something we want to accomplish.”
The tongue-in-cheek (that’s not so tongue-in-cheek) motto originated in Las Vegas after Michigan won the Players Era by 110 points in three games, punctuated with a 40-point beatdown of Gonzaga. Whatever the tenor of that locker room, the team is nearly indestructible. It took Wisconsin making 15 3-pointers to steal a game last month. On Tuesday, every time Purdue got within 10, 11, 12 points in the second half, Michigan had an answer (often a 3-pointer) that Painter admitted to me was so demoralizing.
“We showcased we’re the No. 1 team in the nation for a reason,” Lendeborg said.
He’s right, and they are. The Wolverines shot 53% from the field, 57% from 3-point range, grabbed 57% of the rebounds and scored 1.31 points per possession on the road against a projected No. 2 seed.
And it was maybe their sixth-most impressive win of the season.
This team is laughably good.
Showdown with Duke a de facto No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup
Michigan is 10-0 in Quad 1. It’s won 10 games by 30-plus points, the most by any school since Duke in 1998-99, one of the best teams ever to not win the national title.
Speaking of Duke, it’s next.
Yep, it’s one down and one to go for arguably the toughest two-game week any team will face this regular season. With the road tilt against Purdue now conquered, the neutral-site biggie on Saturday against the No. 3 Blue Devils in Washington, D.C. It will be hyped as the biggest game of the regular season, and rightfully so.
Before that game, when the NCAA’s top 16 seeds are revealed Saturday at 12:30 p.m ET on CBS, Michigan will be the No. 1 overall seed. The Wolverines have been operating as the best team in college basketball for more than half this season. They look thoroughly uninterested in giving up that title after Arizona’s two straight losses, understandable as they were, cracked an opening for Michigan to rise to its earned spot at No. 1.
The Wolverines and their top-ranked defense have done enough to prove they should be the deepest, most dangerous team in the NCAA Tournament.
And if Michigan beats Duke on Saturday, it will be on a shelf to itself, looking down at the rest of college basketball, heading into March.
