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Michigan defeated UConn 69-63 in the NCAA men’s basketball national championship game on Monday night, ending a 26-year national championship drought for the Big Ten.
The Wolverines captured the second NCAA title in school history and its first since 1989.
Elliot Cadeau led the Wolverines with 19 points, including the team’s first 3, which came 7:04 into the second half. The second, from freshman Trey McKenney, came with 1:50 left and felt like a dagger, giving the Wolverines a nine-point lead.
To no one’s surprise, UConn fought to the finish — Solo Ball banked in a 3 to cut it to four with 37 seconds left — and after two missed free throws, UConn’s Alex Karaban (17 points) barely grazed the rim on a 3 that would’ve cut the deficit to one with 17 seconds left.
Not until McKenney sank two free throws to bring Michigan’s shooting from the line to 25 for 28 for the night could the Wolverines (37-3) kick off the celebration.
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“Nobody cared about stats the whole season. Nobody cared about nothing but winning,” Cadeau said from the trophy presentation stage amid a confetti-strewn court.
The game had a 1950s feel to it.
“If you’d told me we would shoot it this poorly and (be) dominated on the glass and still find a way to win, I don’t know if I would have believed you,” May said. “This team just found a way all season.”
Michigan had to fight for everything. The Wolverines missed their first 11 shots from 3, finished 2 for 15 from there and won despite the struggles of its best player, Yaxel Lendeborg. Ailing with a hurt knee and foot that kept him from elevating, the graduate transfer from UAB finished with 13 points on 4-for-13 shooting.
Truth be told, it wasn’t anyone’s prettiest night.
UConn’s hopes at becoming the first team since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty to win three titles in four seasons came up short, done in by massive foul trouble and its own terrible shooting.
Coach Dan Hurley’s team shot 30.9% from the floor and missed its first 11 shots from 3 in the second half.
Braylon Mullins, the hero of the Duke win that put UConn in the Final Four, finished 4 of 17, though he made a pair of late 3s that kept the game in reach.
UConn (35-5) covered the 6 1/2-point spread, and Hurley kept his players out on the court to watch the podium get set up for the presentation of a trophy heading not to Storrs, but Ann Arbor.
About the only consolation: The Huskies clogged things up, slowed things down and made Michigan beat them at their game.
Michigan had become the first team to score 90-plus points in five straight tournament games in the same season. With the help of 7-foot-3 center Aday Mara, the defense amassed eight or more blocks in the first four games of the tournament — the first time that’s happened since blocks became an official stat in the 1980s.
The Wolverines had only three swats against Arizona, but that was a 91-73 win in a game that was supposed to be the best of the tournament but turned into something else.
Style points aside, this was a championship built from outside — the best team money could buy.
All five Wolverines starters played college ball elsewhere, and all but Nimari Burnett came to Ann Arbor this season. That’s the product of the transfer portal that May has shown no reluctance to use. His ability to form a makeshift group into a winner is still the value of a coach and a culture.
“They might be still calling us mercenaries but we’re the hardest-working team,” Lendenborg said. “We’re the best in college basketball and we’ll be one of the greatest ever.”
The Ann Arbor Police Department said it had a large presence “as thousands of fans celebrated” the win.
It added that “two people were arrested and Ann Arbor Fire extinguished more than 40 fires in connection with the post-game celebration. Multiple street signs were also damaged during the celebration. There were no serious injuries reported.”
