INDIANAPOLIS — Perhaps the basketball gods were just teasing us in the Final Four this year. Two electric matchups that had everything on paper to become classics, two duds in practice during the national semifinals on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
All of it will be forgotten on Monday night, however, a slate wiped clean as history will be made one way or the other in the national championship game pitting UConn against Michigan.
It’s a budding dynasty for Dan Hurley and the Huskies as they try to do something that hasn’t been done since the days of John Wooden at UCLA. Standing in their way as the prohibitive favorite will be the burgeoning Midwestern dominance of Michigan that is aiming for the Big Ten’s first title in 26 years. Something will have to give and, hopefully for all taking in the spectacle of the final hoops game of the season in a cavernous football stadium, it will have a game to match the occasion.
“The guys knew right away when we got back to the locker room, we’re here for a reason. We’re not here to win one game, we want to win two, and we know the national championship game is the reason why we came here,” said UConn senior Alex Karaban, on the verge of his third ring in four years. “Just reminding guys what our goal is the entire year and to be 40 minutes away from it you’ve got to invest everything you have right now to prepare the right way and to execute out there tomorrow night.”
“We want to win one for the University of Michigan who we represent and our fan base, and then also we’re in the Big Ten, so we take pride in representing the Big Ten,” said Michigan coach Dusty May. “Every year we’re competing against each other, we’re competing against the SEC, the Big 12, the Big East and all these other leagues. The better we can do as a group, as a league, it helps financially as TV contracts are renegotiated and things like that. We have to do well for us and the Big Ten if we want to continue to be on the cutting edge.”
Adding another layer is simply who will be on the court for each side, each quite literally having starters limp into the contest.
Huskies guard Solo Ball, a member of the 2024 title team, sprained his foot in the first half against Illinois. He proceeded to finish things out, even throwing down a monster dunk late that helped keep the Illini at arm’s length, but was walking around in a boot on Sunday and playing coy as to his availability.
Far more certain to play is Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg. He rolled his ankle on a drive and suffered what he later confirmed was a sprained MCL in his knee that limited him to just 14 minutes of action on Saturday. He continued to act like it was not going to stop him from taking the court with the chance to play for a national title, but just how effective he can be is something entirely different given how much movement and screening UConn’s offense features and how quick it is in terms of rotations on defense.
Against Arizona, Lendeborg looked half a step slow as he adjusted to his new normal and gutted it out to finish with a still impressive 11 points that included hitting all of his three shots from beyond the arc. Whether that relegates the do-it-all forward into far more of a jump shooter than he typically is for the Wolverines remains to be seen but it is an added element for a group which has otherwise laid waste to the opposition since the opening round of the tournament.
“All imaging has come back clean, and he’s getting treatment and doing rehab all day today. I’m sure he’ll give it a go tomorrow, but that will be entirely up to him and the medical staff,” said May. “He played the second half like a 38-year-old at the YMCA—and a really good 38-year-old at the YMCA. Whatever version of Yaxel we get, it’s going to be somebody that helps us play better basketball.”
Michigan enters the contest as a 7.5-point favorite over UConn, which is the largest in the national title game since North Carolina was similarly respected by oddsmakers over Michigan State in 2009. It’s not totally surprising to see that type of margin after the Wolverines scored 90 or more in every game during the Big Dance and won their last two pressure-packed games by a whopping 51 combined points.
“There’s been plenty of times in the history of this tournament where the best team hasn’t won it. You’ve just got to be better for one night, and obviously for us, we need to play the game a certain type of way where we obviously can’t get into a certain type of game with Michigan. They’re an incredibly dominant team, incredibly well-coached, talent up and down the roster, physically imposing, all those things. The good thing for us, it’s not a seven-game series. Just got to play one game on Monday night,” said Hurley. “I don’t know that we necessarily feel like a huge, huge underdog. Obviously we acknowledge Michigan’s greatness and the team that they are, but we’re a 34-win team coming into the game tomorrow night.”
“These are one-game seasons, and you win or go home, and we’ve made it this far, and I’d hate to drop the last one,” added May, almost beat for beat with his opposition. “We never ride momentum. It’s, what do we need to do to prepare to play well against UConn? They have championship DNA. They’re conditioned to win. This run they’re on is one of the best—probably the best since John Wooden.”
That added ambiance of representing something more than just the ones who get to take some wooden hardware home can at times overshadow the matchup itself for both sides.
While the Huskies carry an nearly unmatched pedigree into the game as the attempt to secure the program’s seventh national championship, this is also a group which might represent Hurley’s best coaching job since he’s been in Storrs, Conn., given the way they’ve overindexed their talent. Sharpshooter Braylon Mullins may be the only one who has a chance at the NBA draft lottery and it has been center Tarris Reed Jr. (a Michigan transfer, no less) who has largely kept the team afloat during this run that has seen them fall behind every round of the tournament.
Now the group who have fought and clawed their way to the brink of immortality will face their most imposing task yet.
“Just how big they are at the three, four and five, like, is there going to be enough spacing on the court offensively for such a huge, athletic group. They’ve just been dominant, just scary with the size, scary with the rebounding that they’ve got just a great scheme,” said Hurley, later comparing the frontcourt to the Monstars of Space Jam fame. “Obviously they’ve got one of the best coaches in the game in Dusty and they’ve got the orchestrator with [Elliot] Cadeau who’s shown his worth, obviously, at that position.”
It all adds up to a rarified national title game that features a bit of everything for the basketball purist and casual fan alike. If you love off-ball screens and the term Spanish referring to both offensive actions as much as it does the mammoth 7' 3" center on the court, this one is for you. If you’re hoping to lean into the narratives that will inevitably take on a life of their own in the aftermath of a single-game result for both the schools and conferences involved, things have been set up nicely for that, too.
No matter what however, let everyone involved hope that the powers at be have something special in store for the occasion. History will certainly be on hand Monday night in the Circle City as a dynastic run either continues apace or finds a way to step aside for yet more Big Ten destiny.
More March Madness From Sports Illustrated
Listen to SI’s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on the SI College YouTube channel.
- SI:AM | UCLA Leaves No Doubt in National Title Blowout vs. South Carolina
- After a Hard Reset, UCLA Decided to Win a National Championship on Its Own Terms
- ‘We Got Smacked’: South Carolina Couldn’t Do Anything Right in the National Championship
- Why Three UCLA Players Danced to Tate McRae After Winning National Championship
- Breaking Down the Matchups That Will Crown a Men’s Hoops Champion: Michigan vs. UConn
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dynasty or Destiny: UConn and Michigan Collide for the Men’s Hoops Crown.
