Michigan Wolverines Mens Basketball Tickets
The Michigan Wolverines men’s basketball team is a Division I program for the University of Michigan. The team is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan and play their home games at the Crisler Center. The Crisler Center has a capacity of 12,721 people and was built in 1967. The team plays in the Big Ten Conference. The team is currently coached by John Beilein. In his five years coaching at Michigan, Beilein has posted a 91-77 record, making the NCAA Tournament three times, and bringing back to Ann Arbor the team’s first Big Ten championship since 1986.
Michigan basketball has had a very tenuous history throughout its existence, and in the team’s hundred-plus year history, has endured the gauntlet of scandals, and successes. In 1908, the team played its first game; however, due to poor attendance, it took ten years for the team to regain its existence. The team won its first conference championship in 1922, and ended up winning three more in the decade, including consecutive titles in 1926 and 1927. The team’s next pocket of success came in the 1960s and 1970s, where under Dave Strack and Johnny Orr, the team made seven NCAA Tournament appearances, with three of those resulting in trips to the Final Four, and twice making it to the championship game. In 1989, under coach Steve Fisher, who took over for Bill Frieder just before the start of the NCAA Tournament, led the team to their only NCAA National Championship.
Michigan reached their highest level of sustained success since the 1970s in the early 1990s, after pulling in one of the greatest recruiting classes of all time including Juwan Howard, Chris Webber Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. Their success came at a cost. In 1996, the NCAA found out about the illegal recruiting the team had done in order to lure in such players as Chris Webber and the rest of the Fab Five as they were known. This led to the firing of Fisher, as well as being banned from postseason play for a number of years as well as vacated all wins from 1992-93 and 1995-1999.
The team has two major rivals, Duke and in-state foe Michigan State. Duke holds a big lead in the matchup; however, these games took on extra prominence during the “Fab Five” era. Michigan leads the series 87-75 over Michigan State, and these games are annually some of the most hotly contested matchups. The rivalry took place in the recruiting forum as well, as the recruiting of top prospect Mateen Cleaves set off the Michigan basketball scandal.
