NCAA tournament preview: Can Michigan meet its lofty expectations?

Much like the Toronto Maple Leafs, anything this team did in the regular season wasn't going to matter or really impress anyone. It's always been about how many trophies it collected.

It would never have simply been good enough for Michigan, with its sextet of first-round picks — including four of the top five in last year’s draft — to simply win the Big Ten regular season (they didn’t) and postseason (they did). With this many elite players for their age group playing in a win-at-all costs environment, it’s Frozen Four or bust. At a minimum.

And it’s clear that those have been the stakes more or less from the outset. This is why Michigan infamously begged out of having to play Western Michigan — an excellent team that