ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The curse of being anointed November national champions is a standard that sometimes feels unattainable. Simply winning stops being enough; style points become a necessity, questions raised about peaking too early almost a guarantee.
All that is especially true when you win the November championship as convincingly as Michigan did, in 40-point blowout fashion over Gonzaga in the Players Era Championship final in a game that felt closer to Globetrotters vs. Generals than one top-10 team vs. another. It continued to build with six more consecutive 18-plus-point wins. Michigan wasn’t just beating opponents, it was throttling them en route to record KenPom efficiency margins and even talk of undefeated seasons.
