By Noam Kupchan | March 30, 2007
Maceo Baston’s basketball career at the University of Michigan was full of ups and downs, surprises, and disappointments. He helped his team reach three NCAA tournaments in four years, yet the Wolverines could not advance beyond the second round.
During Baston’s freshman year, Michigan received a ninth seed and looked to knock off eighth-seeded Western Kentucky in the first round. Baston’s Wolverines got off to a good start and took a 36-31 lead into halftime but, after missing all nine attempts from beyond the arc in the second half, just couldn’t keep up with the Hilltoppers, and ended up losing a close one, 82-76.
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“It was nice,” Baston said. “My first year being a freshman, playing with Jimmy (King) and Ray (Jackson), that was a good experience, but bittersweet because we lost in the first round.”
In Baston’s second tournament appearance, the seventh-seeded Wolverines couldn’t overcome a nine-point halftime deficit to the 10th-seeded Texas Longhorns and suffered yet another first round loss, 80-76. The upset occurred despite Baston’s remarkable performance of 23 points and 15 rebounds.
“We had a pretty good team to make a run and lost in the first round again to Texas, but I had a pretty good game personally,” Baston said. “So I was still learning.”
Despite being a top-five team in the national rankings for part of Baston’s junior year, the Wolverines went on to lose six of their last nine games and did not receive an invitation to the NCAA tournament.
“We were ranked as high as fourth in the country,” said Baston. “We didn’t make the tournament, but we did end up winning the NIT championship.”
Baston recorded 20 points and seven rebounds in the title game to help lead the Wolverines over the Florida State Seminoles 82-73 at Madison Square Garden.
With one more year to go in his college career, Baston hoped that the 1997-98 season would bring different results. However, after receiving a No. 3 seed in the tournament and crushing 14th-seeded Davidson 80-61 in the first round, the Wolverines were again upset, this time in the second round by sixth-seeded UCLA.
“The experience was fun, to get to that point and try and make a run, we just couldn’t put it together,” said Baston. “Then the atom bomb fell and (the NCAA) wiped everything off because of the violations and sanctions.”
Baston is referring to the sanctions the University of Michigan imposed on itself in 2002 after it was discovered that a school representative had illegally given funds to former members of the men’s basketball program. The Wolverines voluntarily forfeited 112 prior victories as a result.
Baston summed up his postseason record at Michigan with one word: “underachieving."
