ANN ARBOR -- Two top-five teams left home on Tuesday night and lost to unranked teams. Fifth-ranked Michigan will try to avoid that fate on Wednesday at Illinois.
The Wolverines hit the road to wrap the early portion of their Big Ten schedule. They beat Iowa 103-91 at home on Friday.
Illinois, meanwhile, has lost all three of its matchups against teams currently in the KenPom top-100. One was a blowout loss at Arizona. The others involved wild comebacks. Illinois trailed Miami by 27 at home and lost by two. On Saturday at Maryland, the Illini led by 15 before losing by one.
Iowa's big man Luka Garza scored 44 against Michigan. The Wolverines will have their hands full with Illinois' 7-foot, 290-pound freshman Kofi Cockburn.
The top-50 recruit leads Illinois with 15.4 points and 10.7 rebounds per game. Illinois grabs a larger percentage of its misses than any team in the country, and Cockburn is a big reason.
"Strong, tough, physical inside presence," Michigan head coach Juwan Howard said. "Plays extremely hard. … We have to match his toughness."
Cockburn is from Jamaica. His frontcourt mate, Giorgi Bezhanishvili, is from Georgia (the country). Andres Feliz, another starter, hails from the Dominican Republic. Reserve Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk is from Belgium.
Second-leading scorer Ayo Dosunmu didn't travel nearly as far to get to Champaign. The Chicago native is averaging 15 points per game as a sophomore but shooting just 27 percent from 3.
Michigan has done a good job of taking away the outside shot, but Illinois hasn't relied on it at all. The Illini haven't forced turnovers at the rate typical of a Brad Underwood team either.
Still, this is a road game for Michigan, and those are rarely easy. The home team has won all eight of the Big Ten matchups so far this season, including unranked Penn State beating No. 4 Maryland on Tuesday (outside of the Big Ten, No. 1 Louisville lost to unranked Texas Tech at Madison Square Garden).
Michigan's other true road game this season came at Louisville and resulted in a 58-43 loss.
"That was great to experience that earlier in the year to prepare (us) for moments like we'll encounter tomorrow vs. Illinois," Howard said. "We as a group learned that no matter what, if the ball is not bouncing in for you on the offensive end, continue to play defense on the other side of the floor."
Michigan will tip at the State Farm Center at 9:00 p.m. ET. By then, the other Big Ten game of the night, Wisconsin and Rutgers, should be wrapping up. The home team in that matchup, Rutgers, was a one-point favorite as of Tuesday night. Michigan was an equally small favorite.
The Wolverines have posted a respectable 11-8 record in Big Ten road games the past two seasons. They’ll try to get off to a good start in that regard on Wednesday.
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