INDIANAPOLIS – Long after the buzzer had sounded, even when half of Lucas Oil Stadium had already cleared out, the Michigan basketball team still wouldn’t leave the court, which at the Final Four is elevated like a stage, a fitting platform for the drama they had just performed.
Yaxel Lendeborg kept hugging people. Elliot Cadeau smiled for the TV cameras. Aday Mara draped himself in a Spanish flag.
Finally, with pieces of net in their hair, championship caps on their heads, and the sweet sweat of victory drying on their skin, the players and coaches headed to the locker room through a massive cheering section, which burst into a chant that echoed to the rafters:
“IT’S GREAT … TO BE … A MICH-I-GAN WOL-VER-INE!”
Hard to argue. With a scrappy, herky-jerky 69-63 win over a relentless Connecticut team on Monday, April 6, Michigan captured its second national basketball title, 37 years after its first, easing the sting of four previous trips to the mountaintop that ended empty-handed.
It was hardly easy. In fact, for much of the night, it was like that dream where you’re giving a speech without your clothes on. Everything the Wolverines normally did, they weren’t doing. Their best player was a shadow. Their long shots were clanking. They had almost no assists. They were getting outrebounded.
But it’s a trademark of this gifted and now legendary group that when the rabbit won’t come out of the hat, they just find another rabbit. Can’t make shots? Block them. Can’t get assists? Steal the ball. Can’t find your rhythm? Squeeze the Huskies off theirs. This game was like watching two movie combatants wrestle each other into the ocean: messy and gasping, but if we’re going under, so are you.
And only one of us is coming back up.
Blue survives.
Down comes the net.
Celebrate the Wolverines’ national championship!
“How will you want this team to be remembered?” a TV reporter asked Lendeborg, the Big Ten player of the year, in the immediate aftermath of this crazy U-M win, which capped a record-setting 37-3 season with a championship cherry on top.
“They may call us mercenaries,” Lendeborg replied, “but we’re the hardest-playing team in college basketball! And the best team in college basketball!”
It’s great to be a Wolverine.
A dance in Connecticut mud
Let’s say it right now. This is a new era in college hoops and a new way of doing things in Ann Arbor – and most everywhere else. Here was the first team to win an NCAA title starting five transfer players. And it won’t be the last. There’s no telling how many Wolverines will be coming back from this group. But then, that’s pretty much the mantra everywhere in this sport right now.
What we do know is that coach Dusty May, in just his second year, molded a group of newcomers into a tightly knit, family-style unit, one that truly doesn’t care who gets the big numbers or the final shot, as long as it results in a win. If it’s alchemy, then he’s a wizard. Remember, many of Michigan’s “stars” were riding benches with their previous teams last year.
In nine months, they became a unit that cried not at winning the title, but at their final practice. A group that enjoyed when May brought baskets into Michigan Stadium last week so they could simulate what shooting in a football stadium would be like.
That kind of chemistry is a credit to May and his staff. You don’t win a game like Monday night’s – one where everything looks upside down – if you haven’t drilled your players until confidence is second nature, and backup plans can be implemented as easily as sliding open another drawer.
“All year we’ve been finding ways to win,” said Cadeau, the mop-top point guard who won the Final Four Most Outsanding Player award after leading the way Monday night with 19 points and an almost uncountable tally of fouls drawn from UConn players. “[Tonight] we made two 3s the whole game. We weren’t making shots. We had a couple assists … but we’ve constantly been finding ways to win all year, no matter how everybody is playing.”
On Monday, they needed to. The first half was played in Connecticut mud. After an early Wolverine spurt, the Huskies began taking it to Michigan the way quicksand takes to a body. Slog, slog. Erase your speed. Slog, slog. Outhustle you for rebounds. Slog, slog. The more you press, the more uncomfortable things get.
It worked – for a while. Michigan was a mess. Here was Lendeborg, clearly in pain from ankle and knee injuries, being little more than a toll booth – one basket, no rebounds and no assists in the first 20 minutes. Here was Mara missing his first three looks, losing his dominance off the boards. Here was Cadeau, after some early fireworks, saddled with two fouls and sitting on the bench, watching his teammates look discombobulated on offense.
Here were the high-scoring Wolverines – who racked up over 90 points in each of their previous five games in this tournament – missing all eight of their 3-point shots in that first half, getting no fastbreak baskets (except a hard put-back rebound) and barely cracking 30 points before halftime. Their previous low for a half in this Big Dance had been 47.
A TV reporter asked UConn coach Dan Hurley about the pace his team was imposing.
“We’re dragging them into probably the only kind of game that we have a chance to win,” he said.
Mud’s the word.
Old champion recognizing new champion
And yet, somehow Michigan came into halftime with a four-point lead. Then – and this is likely where the game was won – they regrouped.
“Early in the second half the game got a little bit chippy and physical, so we thought, this is going to be a game we just have to figure it out,” May said. “[But] we did feel like we were defending well enough that we were going to be able to find enough baskets.”
Using that defense – they would finish with six blocks and six steals – the Wolverines eventually edged to their biggest lead, 11 points, thanks mostly to drawing fouls and making their foul shots. They would sink more free throws than baskets (25 to 21) and shoot them at a much higher percentage (89.3% versus 38.2%.)
But it was the timing of their moments that won the night. Whenever UConn pulled close, the Wolverines came up with a play to push them back underwater.
Here was guard Roddy Gayle Jr., when the Huskies had pulled within five, taking a steal and lobbing a perfect pass to Mara for a wicked slam that drew a roar. Here was Cadeau, with UConn making a late surge, drawing an offensive foul, then drawing a defensive foul. Here was freshman Trey McKenney, after UConn’s heart-and-soul leader, Alex Karaban, sank a huge 3-pointer to cut the deficit to six, taking the wild end of a whiparound play and calmly hitting a 3 of his own.
That basket – with less than two minutes to go – may have been the one that broke the Huskies’ spirit. UConn was a team that had won two of the past three national titles. At that moment, you sensed old champion was recognizing new champion.
A few moments later, it became reality. The final points came off two free throws by young McKenney, just as 37 years ago, the Wolverines’ first championship came off of two free throws by Rumeal Robinson.
“Everybody on this team is extremely talented,” McKenney said later. “A lot of us could be somewhere else doing more than what we’ve done [individually] this season. But I think it just shows that this team is super-selfless. I’ve never been around such a talented group of guys that are willing to take a lesser role for somebody next to them.”
And by taking less, they just got the most.
Down comes the net.
A magical team, even beyond wins and losses
Thus ends a season for the ages, and the dawn of what Michigan fans no doubt feel is a golden era for its basketball team. May inherited a program that had eight wins in 2023-24. He has had 64 wins in two seasons since.
But it was the way Michigan won that will be remembered when this season is done. Dominating teams on offense (like beating Gonzaga by 40) and leading the nation in all kinds of defensive categories, while also leading in strength of schedule.
That’s a damn difficult daily double, and something that will be marveled at when they write the detailed history of this team.
For the moment, as with any dewy-fresh championship, it’s still just snapshots. Lendeborg, who muscled through his injury, hugging his mother in the stands, after telling the TV cameras he wanted to “take care of her forever.” And Cadeau, who was never quite appreciated at North Carolina, cradling the MOP trophy. And Mara, the first Spanish man to ever win a Final Four, answering the question “What are they thinking in Spain right now?” by saying “I hope they are asleep.”
And finally, May, the alchemist, coming off that stage and hearing that chant:
“ITS GREAT … TO BE … A MICH-I-GAN WOL-VER-INE!”
As he entered the tunnel, he stopped to autograph a jersey from a young fan hanging over the railing. It’s nice to see that, in a moment that could have been all about him, he made it about someone else. Or maybe he just didn’t want to leave the space where, after 37 years, the magic had finally happened again.
Down comes the net.
Can you blame him?
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Michigan basketball magic delivers a team for the ages
Reporting by Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
