Hail to the Victors

First things first, my apologies for posting this blog almost a week later than it would normally have been.  I know you have been eagerly anticipating my blog that would have been posted early last week.

The college basketball season has come to an end and the Michigan Wolverines won the championship game on April 6th against the Connecticut Huskies.  This is the second time Michigan has won the National Championship.  The last time was in 1989 with a team consisting of Glenn Rice, Rumeal Robinson, Terry Mills, among others.  After this team came the next best chance for Michigan which was the one and only Fab 5.  Five freshmen who came to Michigan like gangbusters and changed the culture of college basketball by their mere presence.  Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were five 18-year-old kids who played for the National Championship in 1992 and 1993.  Unfortunately, after 1994, there were only four left and after 1995 there were only two left and they never won.

Michigan has had some other teams make the National Championship game in 1965, 1976, 2013 and 2018.  Before this year, 1989 was the only time they had actually won.  After the 2024 season Michigan fired ex-Fab Fiver, Juwan Howard as head coach and hired Dusty May.  May vowed to bring the team back to national prominence.  His first team won the Big Ten tournament and he brought in a stacked team coming into the 2025-26 season.  Yaxel Lendeborg, Morez Johnson, Aday Mara and Elliot Cadeau all transferred to Michigan in the offseason.  The other starter was Nimri Burnett, who transferred to Michigan as well but has been a part of the program for the previous two seasons.

Michigan started the season off smoking hot.  They won some easy games early on as most teams do, scheduling smaller opponents who want some experience and a nice payday.  Then, Michigan went to Las Vegas to play in the Players Era tournament.  This is where analysts expected Michigan to really show their true colors and see how good they really were.  Well, boy did they show that.  They played San Diego State, Auburn and Gonzaga, winning by 40, 30 and 40 points in each game respectively.  They not only showed how good they were, but they dominated their opponents into submission.  Michigan would go on to win 14 games before their first loss and only lose one more game the rest of the regular season, which was a neutral site game against Duke on February 21st.

Michigan’s dominance not only brought home the Big Ten regular season crown but they would beat arch rivals Michigan State in both matchups by an average of 11 points and Ohio State in both matchups by an average of 13 points.  The biggest hit for Michigan came on February 27th when backup point guard LJ Cason tore his ACL.  This left the Wolverines without another true point guard, other than Cadeau.  They still had Lendeborg who can play the point forward and freshman Trey McKenney as their other options.  Michigan squeaked by Iowa by 3 points in their next game and beat Michigan State in the following game to end the regular season.  Onto the Big Ten tournament, the team struggled and lost in the championship game to Purdue.  This would cast some doubt on the team heading into the NCAA Tournament without a true backup point guard.

The team would rise to the occasion when the tournament came around.  Coming in as the third overall number one seed, they beat Howard convincingly by twenty points.  Next would be the St. Louis Billikens with Robbie Avila (aka Cream Abdul-Jabbar, Milk Chamberlain, Larry Blurred, Steph Blurry and College Jokic) who they handled by 23 points.  In the Sweet Sixteen, the Wolverines took on Alabama who went toe to for the first half of the game before Michigan pulled away and won by 13 points.  The Elite Eight was a lot of the same where they took on Tennessee and it was close for most of the first half.  Michigan would dominate again in the second half winning by 33 points.  The Final Four came and next came the Arizona Wildcats, the number one team in the tournament and the consensus to win the National Championship.  It was close for a portion of the first half until Michigan pulled away to lead by 16 points at halftime and win the game by 18.

The dominance Michigan was showing has never been seen in the NCAA Tournament and having at least 10 three-pointers made in every game through the Final Four.  In the game against Arizona, Michigan took another hit when Yaxel Lendeborg went down with a sprained ankle and also turned out to be a sprained knee as well.  Lendeborg would try to come back and play but with the game in hand he sat for most of the second half.  This would be a big hit for the National Championship game when the Wolverines took on UCONN.

The game with UCONN was close from the beginning.  The Huskies forced Michigan into their game playing a physical style.  Michigan had their worst shooting game in a very long time, where they only hit two three-pointers the whole game.  Michigan was up by four at the half with the poor shooting.  Cadeau dominated in the game and Michigan forced UCONN into foul trouble in both halves forcing both starting guards to sit on the bench for large portions of the game.  Michigan had a six-point lead and with just under two minutes left the freshman, McKenney hit a huge three to put them up by 9.  UCONN would keep chipping and would get the lead down to 4 with 37 seconds left.  Michigan would hold the Huskies off and take the National Championship home to Ann Arbor.

Michigan is losing four of their top eight players in Lindeberg, Burnett, Roddy Gayle and Will Tschetter and possibly another three in Mara, Johnson and Cadeau.  The team has a huge recruiting class coming in for 2026 and have already signed transfer JP Estrella.  Could this be a sign of great things to come for Michigan and the beginning of something special going forward?  We will certainly see, but Dusty May has shown he can recruit with the best of them and build dominant teams.