Kim Barnes Arico had plenty of questions about her still-very-young Michigan women’s basketball team heading into last Saturday’s game against then-No 18 Notre Dame, and the Wolverines answered every last one of them.

Michigan was more than ready for Notre Dame, walloping the Fighting Irish, 93-54, at Wayne State Fieldhouse in Detroit, for arguably the signature regular-season victory of Barnes Arico’s 14-year tenure in Ann Arbor.

Now it’s on to the next test ― and, well, this one makes Notre Dame look like a pop quiz.

No. 6 Michigan (4-0) plays No. 1 Connecticut (4-0), the defending national champion, in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut at 8 Friday night. The game will air on Fox, the latest taste of national exposure for a Wolverines team whose win over the Fighting Irish was on NBC.

“It’s really exciting. I think it’s a great opportunity for us,” Barnes Arico said earlier this week. “Our kids want to be in this situation and they want to match up against the best.”

This game marks the first meeting between Michigan and Connecticut, the 12-time national champion, in women’s basketball. But it’s not the first meeting between Barnes Arico and Connecticut legendary head coach Geno Auriemma. When she was coaching at St. John’s, her team beat Connecticut on Feb. 18, 2012, to snap the Huskies’ 99-game home winning streak. That was one of just 22 losses for Connecticut in a 13-year span.

This will be the fourth time Michigan ever has played a top-ranked team, and third time in the last two seasons ― after losing to South Carolina and UCLA last regular season. UM also lost to No. 1 Iowa in 1988.

Michigan did beat No. 5 Baylor in the 2021 Hall of Fame Showcase, a win that first helped signal that the program was starting to arrive. A win over Connecticut ― which has four more national championships than the second-best team (Tennessee, with eight; nobody else has more than three) ― would obviously mean even more than that.

“We’ve kind of been working all year for these kinds of games,” sophomore guard Olivia Olson, last season’s co-freshman of the year in the Big Ten, said after the win over Notre Dame, in which she had 20 points.

Two MAC teams at the end of encouraging seasons will meet on Wednesday night.

Central Michigan can keep its faint hopes of making it to the MAC Championship Game alive with a win over Kent State, but the Golden Flashes also have plenty to play for on Wednesday.

Kent State was left for dead before the season started, but it can still get to a bowl game with wins against Central Michigan and Northern Illinois to close out the campaign.

The Golden Flashes are 9.5-point underdogs in the friendly confines of Dix Stadium in beautiful Kent, Ohio, on Wednesday night.

Central Michigan vs. Kent State odds, prediction

It won’t get much love in the mainstream, but what is happening at Kent State this season is remarkable. Projected to be the worst team in the country after going a combined 1-23 in 2023 and 2024, the Golden Flashes were rocked in April when head coach Kenni Burns was fired with cause for violating his contract.

Mark Carney took over on an interim basis, but it didn’t take long for the school to take away that tag. Carney got the Golden Flashes to believe, winning four of their first 10 games. It may not sound like a big deal, but Kent State’s Over/Under for 2025 was 1.5 wins, so it’s some job that Carney has done with the Flashes.

The numbers are not that impressive, but what the Golden Flashes are doing is just hanging around in games long enough to turn them into coin flips. They were on the right side against Akron, Bowling Green, and Merrimack, and the wrong end against Ball State and Buffalo.

Betting on College Football?

Central Michigan will come into Kent with plenty of betting support. The Chippewas are the better team, they have more on the line, and they are in good form with three wins from their last four games. The problem is that the lopsided action for this game has caused this line to balloon, putting some value on Kent State.

The Golden Flashes should stick around in this one, and it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibilities that Central Michigan falls flat, like it did against Akron not too long ago.

The Play: Kent State +9.5 (-110, DraftKings)

Why Trust New York Post Betting

Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.

BLACKMAN TWP., MI – Elected officials unanimously oppose state plans to reduce the size of Michigan Avenue through Blackman Township.

The Jackson County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution opposing a “road diet” proposed for East Michigan Avenue during its regular board meeting Tuesday, Nov. 18.

The Michigan Department of Transportation has been busy drafting plans to rebuild E. Michigan Avenue from Page Avenue eastward.

The current plan would remove 5 feet of drivable roadway, reducing it from four lanes to two lanes with a single shared center turn lane.

The commission believes this would likely slow down traffic in the area, make it harder to enter and exit E. Michigan Avenue and would make it harder for emergency vehicles to navigate the roadway, leading to longer response times.

“Our township board passed a similar resolution unanimously in opposition to it,” Blackman Township Clerk David Elwell said. “We’re not big fans of road diets as you can guess.”

A representative with the Michigan Department of Transportation was not immediately available for comment.

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