Livescore
Michigan began the season as an intriguing roster with a hot-name coach. The Wolverines have quickly proven to be much more. Dusty May’s team has incrementally moved up in human and computer rankings, checking in at No. 20 in this week’s AP Top 25 and climbing to No. 11 at KenPom.com. At 13-3, the Wolverines are not just firmly in the mix to push for supremacy in the highly competitive Big Ten, they’re the statistical favorite to win the regular season.
Michigan has two very big reasons for its quick change into one of the surprisingly good teams in college basketball: Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf. The tall-towers duo has started every game, averaging more than a combined 52 minutes. What Wolf and Goldin are doing is not merely unusual, it’s unparalleled this season and in recent history. They’re both 7 feet tall: Goldin at 7-1 and Wolf 7-even.
How many other teams play two 7-footers together? Michigan is the only one of 364.
“From an outsider’s perspective looking in, a lot of people didn’t think it would work,” Wolf told CBS Sports. “I think at first we didn’t know how it was going to work, but the coaches had an idea and a vision for it and it was all about us buying into that.”
The Wolverines have unlocked a door that was presumed shut by most, as college basketball has tried to somewhat mimic the NBA’s transformation into more positionless roster-building. The Goldin/Wolf tandem has played 491 possessions this season together (not accounting for possessions including free throws, which would vault the number well above 500). The next closest program to play two 7-footers simultaneously is Arizona at 27, according to EvanMiya.com. After that: Saint Mary’s (14), Coastal Carolina (9) and San Francisco (5). (Note: 14-3 Wisconsin frequently plays 7-footer Steven Crowl and fellow big Nolan Winter together but not nearly as much as Michigan. Winter’s height is now officially listed at 7 feet on Wisconsin’s website, but has been 6-11 previously, thus why they didn’t meet the threshold at EvanMiya.com.)
It’s hard to be unique on offense these days. Dusty May’s done it.
“They’re so different as players,” May told CBS Sports. “Vlad’s physical, Danny’s more of the finesse. They obviously have mutual respect for each other in their games. They’re having fun growing with that combination together.”
Wolf (12.4 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 1.6 bpg) and Goldin (15.4 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.8 bpg) combine to average nearly 28 points, 16 rebounds and three-and-a-half blocks. In a traditional sense, Goldin plays center and Wolf’s the power forward. The two have shared the court for more than 45% of Michigan’s possessions.
That’s probably not close to enough.
“Big guys always have a mutual respect for each other,” May said. “They’re always leaned on to do the dirty work, to do a little bit of this and that. And then sometimes they rarely get the ball, where here both of our guys are involved in the offense. There hasn’t been one day where I didn’t think these guys have a nice cohesion.”
The reason why basketball has largely evolved from playing two trees at the same time is that, typically, 7-footers tend to resemble traditional centers. They don’t shoot from the perimeter and they’re not keen to defend in space or switch onto smaller players. The everlasting hunt for athletic wings, switchable bigs and stretch 4s has prompted college basketball teams to put only one behemoth out there at a time.
“It’s all new, but it’s not like it’s anything revolutionary,” May said. “Just felt like Danny could play pick-and-roll, and if he could shoot off the dribble, and if he would be able to just play over-the-top of the defense, he’d get there. So he’s basically just playing like a guard that happens to be 7-feet.”
A 7-foot point forward. Must be nice!
The data is conclusive. Per EvanMiya.com, Michigan is outscoring opponents by 51.2 points per 100 possessions with both Wolf and Goldin on the floor. When Goldin sits and Wolf is still playing, that number drops to 33.8 points better. When Goldin is in and Wolf is off, it slips to 15.6. And when neither is playing? The Wolverines are only 3.8 points per 100 possessions better than their opponents.
The Wolverines also performed as the No. 1 per-possession offense nationally in the past month.
How has Michigan cracked the code? Wolf’s defense has been the key. He’s gotten a lot better since his start at Yale, switching almost always in 1-through-4 coverage and has upgraded his dependability. It’s led to him being a projected first round NBA pick.
Days after May got the job, he asked his top assistant, former Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton Jr., to watch Wolf on film and tell him what he saw. The offensive acumen was striking. But did Wolf have the defensive toolbox to fit into what May wanted to build at his first high-major job? Boynton thought so. With that much size, length and evidence on the tape he could be adept at hunting on the perimeter, they could go for it. Goldin could be more brute force in the post. May agreed.
“This is what we envisioned,” May said. “We were very confident we could make it work, because we thought Danny could move and guard on the perimeter as well, if not better than he could in the post defensively, and then we felt like he had guard skills.”
In early April May flew to Connecticut and had lunch with Wolf in New Haven. A lot of the conversation was about Goldin and how Wolf could fit playing alongside him. Goldin was yet to commit, but May felt confident his former player would follow him to Ann Arbor. So he sold Wolf on the vision and why he saw him playing — a lot — and being a defensive factor, not just a dazzling 7-foot facilitator on offense.
“He honestly believed in me more than I believed in myself in terms of me playing at the 4,” Wolf said. “I’d say that belief and trust has carried over this far into this season.”
Goldin and Wolf wound up visiting Michigan in April at the same time. Privately, Goldin was all in, he just had to make sure he wasn’t going to chase the pros in 2024 instead of 2025.
“It’s something that I value more than any kind of opportunities or any other stuff,” Goldin told CBS Sports of going to Michigan. “Relationship over everything.”
Goldin could’ve been Dusty’s guy and Wolf could’ve said no with the thought he might have been his backup. Bigs have become the most prioritized position in the portal and, as a result, commanded more money on average in NIL deals than guards, wings and forwards. Wolf could have transferred to just about any school he wanted.
“I for sure had a little reservation and skepticism and of course second-guessing,” Wolf said.
It was Goldin, of all people, who wound up helping close the deal.
“Vlad was very proactive in helping to get him,” Boynton said. “From a buy-in standpoint in all this, the credit goes to Goldin, because he helped Wolf be more comfortable.”
Wolf told me Goldin “is an extremely unselfish player,” and heaped compliments on his teammates as well. With Michigan’s deep bench and array of wings, Wolf said, “It makes our game much easier and honestly it makes us look better.”
The first few games this season had in-game growing pains; Michigan fell to Wake Forest in its second matchup but soon thereafter found more rhythm with both sharing the court. But they ran well in transition, they learned to stay out of each other’s way both in half-court sets and in quick-change possessions. Their pick-and-roll instincts and body behavior is harmonious in a way you can’t find elsewhere in college hoops.
“We knew it over the summer,” Goldin said. “We knew we could play well, but the biggest question was can we play against everybody and can we play against different coverages? I feel like we’ve proven, step by step, we can play against anybody.”
May remembers watching a few practices in the fall and seeing how fluidly Goldin and Wolf and Like were executing pick-and-roll actions. It all popped. The vision was materializing in a tantalizing way.
“We just felt like it might be a little bit choppy at first, but. even when it wasn’t working with the naked eye, the numbers said that it was on as far as offense and defensively,” he said. “It’s not rocket science.”
Maybe not, but right now it looks really smart — and it could give May his shot at a second Final Four way ahead of schedule.
The special stat that could help Cooper Flagg’s case for NPOY
Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg is delivering on the preposterous hype that was promised just a few months ago. Gary Parrish and I made the case on Eye on College Basketball that Flagg narrowly overtook Auburn’s Johni Broome in the national player of the year race over the weekend. Flagg posted the best game of his Duke career against Notre Dame: 42 points (on 14 shots!), seven assists, six rebounds. Flagg posted a few Duke and ACC records, notably becoming the highest-scoring freshman in a game in league history and being the first Blue Devil to score 40 since JJ Redick’s senior season in 2006.
Flagg also leapfrogged Broome in KenPom’s kPOY rankings. Given the lack of high-end competition in the ACC (Duke is the only ranked team for the second straight week), Flagg seems more likely than not to continue putting up the type of stats that will enable him to earn the highest honor for a player in the sport.
Here’s the nugget that might do it: Flagg leads the Blue Devils in points (18.7), rebounds (8.2), assists (4.1), blocks (1.2) and steals (1.5). One player leading his team in those five stats is uncommon but not rare: 50 players have done it since blocks and steals became officially tracked NCAA stats in 1985-86, per Stathead. In fact, UAB’s Yaxel Lendeborg is in the club with Flagg this season. The most famous to pull it off are CJ McCollum (Lehigh, 2012), Dwyane Wade (Marquette, 2003) and Bonzi Wells (Ball State, 1996-98).
None of those were freshmen. But one previous player was. If Flagg finishes the season leading Duke in all five major statistical categories, he’ll become the second frosh to do that, joining LSU’s Ben Simmons in 2015-16.
Simmons went No. 1 in his draft; Flagg almost certainly will as well. Other than that, these players don’t appear to be walking the same path. Simmons’ LSU season was an infamous bust, the Tigers going 19-14 despite his highly publicized (and oft-criticized) one-and-done campaign. Then there’s the huge letdown that has been Simmons’ NBA career.
In 2025, Duke is pacing toward a No. 1 seed with Flagg as the centerpiece, his NBA future looking rosy and robust.
Cronin voices displeasure with Big Ten scheduling
As I wrote over the weekend, there’s a lot going on with Mick Cronin these days. Acid-laced press conference last Tuesday, his first ejection as UCLA’s coach on Friday, then Monday night’s discouraging 75-68 loss at middling Rutgers. The 11-6 Bruins have lost five of their last six. The team flew back to Los Angeles overnight Monday, where upon approach they could see the burning in the black below, as wildfires continued to singe Southern California.
It’s worth keeping at front of mind.
Beyond that, Cronin has bones to pick with his new conference. When I spoke with him in Maryland, he took time to log multiple grievances with Big Ten officiating and scheduling.
“We needed some stronger officials on the game in my opinion, but we needed to be stronger with the ball. In defense of my players, we didn’t have a lot of time. We had one day to prepare,” Cronin said amid the team’s longest road trip of the season. They also traveled to New York for the CBS Sports Classic less than a month ago. UCLA is 2-8 in the Eastern Time Zone since Cronin became coach in 2019.
This is the first season the Bruins, USC, Oregon and Washington are in the Big Ten. UCLA’s schedule cadence is not sitting right with Cronin, at least in relation to how some other teams have been given a bit more runway leading into games. Last week UCLA played at home vs. Michigan on Tuesday before flying east to Maryland on Thursday for a five-and-a-half-day road trip.
“We had to travel on a five-hour-and-50-minute flight. [Maryland] got home Sunday (from Oregon). They had two extra days,” Cronin said. “Now Rutgers is sitting at home, and they got an extra day.”
Cronin noted how UCLA had to play at Nebraska three days before the Michigan loss, meaning that over a 10-day span — from Jan. 3 through Jan. 13 — UCLA logged 7,700 total miles and approximately 20 hours in travel to play four games in January. (This accounts for flight time on four plane rides, the bus trip from Maryland to New Jersey and all other airport commutes.)
“Whoever did it, I get it. I mean, it’s probably virtually impossible to make the schedule, but I just know it hasn’t been good for us,” Cronin said. “Michigan was in LA three days before we were.”
These are the consequences when you make superconferences determined by football interests, a predictable ramification of the graceless, endless quest to make as much money as possible through television contracts. Non-football sports will bear the biggest brunt in scheduling and travel logistics. UCLA will be paid well for its troubles; the Big Ten is set to make more than $7 billion through 2029-30 thanks to its record-setting media rights deal.
“There’s no perfect way to do this,” one Big Ten source told CBS Sports. “Given the variables, this is what is going to be.”
The variables being 18 teams spread across the country to play 20 league games. That means UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington all need to play 10 games on the road, with three of those games coming against each other on the West Coast. They all take four road trips to play the other seven games: three trips for two-plays, plus one standalone road game, which in UCLA’s case was the westernmost Big Ten team in the Central Time Zone (Nebraska).
UCLA (and USC, Oregon and Washington) all have two more long trips coming. For the Bruins, it’s Illinois and Indiana in mid-February, then Purdue and Northwestern on Feb. 28 and March 3. Then one more Midwest jaunt for the Big Ten Tournament (March 12-16).
“I haven’t mapped all this out, but I sure hope it swings our way at some point,” Cronin said.
It will. Six of UCLA’s next seven games are in Los Angeles. The only time they’ll get on a plane between now and Feb. 10 is the Jan. 24 game at Washington. The other road game in this upcoming stretch is a quick bus ride vs. crosstown rival USC.
Rare is the national champ with a truly awful noncon loss
With Ohio State and Notre Dame in the national title game Monday night, the Fighting Irish are on the precipice of an unprecedented juxtaposition. Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde did the research to determine that, should ND beat Ohio State, it would gain the distinction of being the national champion to overcome the worst same-season loss in the history of college football. The Fighting Irish infamously fell 16-14 at home in September to Northern Illinois despite being a 28-point favorite. NIU went on to finish 8-5, but ranks 94th in the Sagarin Ratings.
If you’re wondering what team or teams in college basketball would be the parallel, there are two of them dating back to the expansion of the NCAAs to 64 teams 40 years ago. Specifically looking at the worst nonconference losses among all NCAA basketball champions since 1985, the two worst losses by an eventual champ are:
- Michigan State 1999-00: Lost 53-49 at home to an 11-17 Wright State team finished 215th at KenPom
- UNC 2004-05: Lost 77-66 in season-opener, in Oakland, to a 15-16 Santa Clara team that finished 129th
No other champions in the past four decades took a loss to a sub-.500 team in non-league play, and looking at all the practical title contenders this season, it won’t happen again. No bad losses in the bunch.
@ me
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Got a few questions Tuesday as Indiana got boatraced in Bloomington by Illinois. The last time a high-major coach was multiple games above .500 when he was fired prior to March was … last season. Ohio State was 14-11 when Chris Holtmann was dumped on Valentine’s Day. Steve Alford was fired at UCLA in December 2018 with a 7-5 record. Woodson’s guiding a 13-5 team right now. After how bad it got Tuesday night, he feels at risk before March; it’s a lock if Indiana doesn’t reverse itself soon. The upcoming schedule is daunting. And a particularly damning note, researched by Zach Osterman of the Indy Star: 14 of Mike Woodson’s 35 losses in the Big Ten have been by at least 15 points. Barring a minor miracle, there will be a coaching change later this year.
Brad Underwood isn’t on the top tier for national coach of the year, but considering how much roster he had to flip and with Illinois at 13-4 with some loud wins, I’d easily have him in the top 10 midway through the season.
You’re correct. The Big Ten is the only high-major league playing on Thursday nights this season. To be fair, the Big East and ACC haven’t played games on Thursday nights in … I can’t remember how long. The Pac-12 was a Thursday night staple forever, and will be again when the league reforms in 2026-27. For now, it’s a night for the Big Ten, WCC, American and a hodgepodge of mid-majors … until we get to conference tourney time.
Calipari isn’t quitting this season, but the sky is falling in Fayetteville after Tuesday night’s LSU loss to drop the Hogs to 0-4 in the SEC. Calipari will need one of the best coaching jobs of his life to turn this around and rally to make the NCAA Tournament. Meanwhile, in Lexington: Kentucky is 5-0 against ranked competition this season, which is the best record in the country. All wins came with UK scoring 89.8 points on average against teams ranked 14th or better, with three of the five wins not at home. We know who won the divorce.
Norlander’s news + nuggets
• No. 2 Iowa State hosts No. 9 Kansas tonight, just the sixth time Hilton Coliseum has hosted a top-10 game. Bill Self is 53-26 all time in top-10 matchups, while TJ Otzelberger is … 2-4.
• Iowa State is enjoying its highest ranking in school history. A stat I frequently forget about but still amazes me: Maryland has the most appearances at No. 2 without ever —yes, ever — reaching No. 1 (26).
• Bet you didn’t know: Oregon is second behind Auburn for most Quad 1 wins (7).
• Houston is really interesting. Top-3 in almost every predictive metric, an outstanding reputation as a program and a 12-3 record this season. But the Cougars are 0-3 in Quad 1 and rank outside the top 25 in the résumé metrics. If this team is elite, we won’t know for a while longer; its next game vs. a top-40 opponent isn’t until Jan. 25 at Kansas.
• Speaking of Houston, it’s the No. 1 per-possession defensive team, with Duke going to No. 2 over the weekend. The Blue Devils will probably slip even more in the coming weeks due to Maliq Brown’s sprained right knee. Jon Scheyer said Monday that Brown will miss several weeks. When I asked Duke’s staff in the preseason who their most valuable defender was, the answer was Brown. He’s not a big-name player, but he’s a big-play player on D. His absence is going to be felt.
• Virginia will formally and publicly honor Tony Bennett on Saturday, Feb. 8, for the team’s home game against Georgia Tech. “UVA will recognize Bennett with tributes throughout the game and raise a banner in JPJ during a special ceremony at halftime,” per the school, with a heavy influx of Bennett’s former players expected to travel in for the occasion.
• NC State’s 63-61 home loss Saturday to UNC foiled what would have been a second straight win over the Tar Heels (dating back to last season’s ACC Tournament conquest). Here’s what’s wild: The Wolfpack haven’t beaten the Tar Heels two times in a row since 2003.
• I was wondering when someone was going to get around to writing about one of the biggest portal busts of the season so far. Eamonn Brennan’s always on the qui vive. Here’s his piece on Arkansas’ Johnell Davis.
• A great story find by local Charleston reporter Scott Eisberg. Duggar Baucom, who spent 17 years coaching VMI and The Citadel, is a licensed tour guide in his retirement. I’m due to visit Charleston this summer and have to hit up Duggar for all my intel.
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