For the first time since 2001, when most of Michigan’s current players on the women's basketball team were in middle school or younger, the Wolverines looked like they might have a chance to go to the NCAA tournament.

The perfect picture of a bubble team, players and coaches consistently received e-mails, phone calls and text messages about their tournament status all week. 

While the Wolverines’ bubble dreams failed to materialize Monday night, there is still reason for optimism.

“I think, for our team, it was kind of a relief after last season just knowing and then finding out we’re on the bubble,” sophomore guard Courtney Boylan said Monday afternoon, about six hours before Michigan learned of its NCAA rejection. “I didn’t know we were on the bubble until we hit the Big Ten tournament and people are saying ‘You guys are in.’

“We’re really excited about being in a postseason and being able to keep playing and competing.”

After last season, that’d be understandable. After a somewhat surprising first year under Kevin Borseth in 2007-08 where it reached the WNIT quarterfinals, Michigan bottomed out last season, losing 13 of its final 14 games en route to a 10-20 final record.

So reaching a point at which it would appear from projections that Michigan was one of the first teams left out of the women’s NCAA tournament - a disappointment to be sure - it's an accomplishment in itself. And that this team will host a first round WNIT game on Friday against Kent State is another big deal.

See, these Wolverines were picked to finish last - dead last - in the Big Ten this season. They were replacing four starters off a team that had a 3-15 record in the league a season ago. Most of those players had experience. Borseth had six freshmen coming in.

Their core was young and it left the third-year head man with no idea what was going to happen.

“Beginning of the year, you don’t know a whole lot,” Borseth said Monday afternoon, waiting to hear if his team would reach the NCAA tournament for the first time in his tenure. “There are a lot of unknowns from our perspective, lost four starters and had to replace those people.

“To see it come to shape through the course of the year, to be in this position now feels good but at the beginning we hoped we’d be in the position where we would have postseason play and certainly NCAA play is the measuring stick for all of us.”

Michigan didn’t quite get there at 17-13 overall and 8-10 in the Big Ten, likely hurt by Fresno State and TCU losing in conference championship games Sunday. But for the first time in a while, the Michigan women’s basketball has reason to be hopeful.

Instead of losing four starters, Michigan will return four starters next year including super-frosh Dayeesha Hollins, who has the uncanny ability to slash through the lane and get to the line despite being just 5-foot-6. Leading scorer Veronica Hicks also returns.

In all, six of Michigan’s top seven scorers will be back next year. And they’ll have experience under Borseth’s system and playing college basketball.

So it is, Borseth hopes, just the start of where he’d like to see Michigan go.

“We’re not an established program at this point right now,” Borseth said. “We’re working to be one. Everything has to go good for us. We have to play well and now we’re in a position to develop them this year and the year after before we can say we’ve arrived. I don’t know teams that have arrived come to the conclusion they have arrived, too, because you always want a bigger piece than the piece you have.

“We have a ways to go, but we’re heading in that direction. We’re going there.”

Optimism, no matter what happened, still hung around Michigan on Monday afternoon. They sense they are close to having a breakthrough, even if it didn’t end up happening this year.

Five points kept them from two wins against the class of the Big Ten, Ohio State. They knocked off a Top 10 team, then-No. 5 Xavier, for the second year in a row after beating Notre Dame last year.

And for the second time in three years, Michigan is headed back to the postseason.

“What’s cool is, even if we’re not in, we still have a chance to hang a banner here,” Boylan said. “Hang a NIT banner, and I think that’s cool. It may have been hard to envision after last year and it’s definitely become real now.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.