NCAA basketball power rankings: Way-too-early college basketball Top 10 for 2021-2022

1. NCAA Basketball Rankings: Michigan Wolverines

There is no question that the top projected team entering next season will be Michigan. The program took a huge leap forward in Juwan Howard’s second season, going from a projected finish in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament that was inches from a trip to the Final Four.

There will be plenty of losses in Ann Arbor, including Franz Wagner, who should jump to the NBA after a strong sophomore season put him in the lottery conversation. Isaiah Livers will likely follow Wagner to the pros but there is a strong likelihood that one of the Wolverines’ other key seniors like Eli Brooks or Chaundee Brown opts to utilize their extra year of eligibility.

Having Hunter Dickinson back as a sophomore will also be exciting but the big difference here is that Howard has assembled the nation’s top recruiting class, landing two five-star freshmen in Caleb Houston and Moussa Diabite with four more four-star recruits set to wear maize and blue in November.

That kind of talent infusion should supercharge the program as Howard has already shown an innate ability to get more out of his players than most experts would expect as evidenced by the play of Dickinson, a four-star recruit who played like a five-star this season. The Big Ten hasn’t won a national title since Michigan State cut down the nets back in 2000 but the Wolverines have an excellent shot to break the conference’s long drought in 2022.

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