Michigan jumps five spots to No. 17 in latest AP Top 25 Poll

Michigan basketball has jumped up five spots in the latest AP Top 25 Poll from No. 22 to No. 17 in the rankings that were released Monday morning.

The Wolverines (22-7, 11-5 Big Ten) are coming off a 2-0 week where they earned a pair of home victories. The first was a 74-59 route of Iowa Wednesday, Feb. 14, followed by one of U-M’s marque wins of the season over then ranked No. 8 Ohio State by a final score of 74-62 on Sunday, Feb. 18.

The win gave the Wolverines two wins over top-10 opponents this season with the first being at then ranked No. 4 Michigan State.

Joe Lunardi of ESPN released his latest NCAA Tournament bracket on Monday morning and bumped the Wolverines up to a No. 5 seed in the Midwest Region against No. 12 Loyola-Chicago. Jerry Palm of CBS has the Wolverines slotted a bit lower as a No. 7 seed in the East Region against No. 10 NC State.

There are three other Big Ten schools ranked the AP Top 25 Poll starting with No. 2 ranked MSU (26-3, 14-2), followed by No. 9 Purdue (24-5, 13-3) who fell three spots and No. 16 OSU (22-7, 13-3) who dropped eight spots. Penn State (19-10, 9-7) received six votes after beating Ohio State and losing to Purdue by just three points last week.

U-M heads into the final week of the regular season in a fourth place tie with Nebraska (20-9, 11-5) who holds the tiebreaker over U-M.

To finish up the regular season, U-M will play back-to-back road games with Penn State at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 21, followed by Maryland (18-11, 7-9) at noon on Saturday, Feb. 24.