March Madness: Michigan defeats UConn and is champion for the 2nd time
The Michigan Wolverines defeated the UConn Huskies and are crowned for the second time in college basketball.
INDIANAPOLIS — Before the Michigan Wolverines took the field to face the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the Players Era Championship title game back in November, Elliot Cadeau made a comment to his teammates.
“We are the best team ever put together,” Cadeau said at the time.
Immediately afterwards, Michigan came out to play and beat Gonzaga by 40 points.
From that moment on, the Wolverines became the most dominant team in the country, and closed the season this Monday as they had shown themselves since Thanksgiving Day: as the best team in college basketball.
Michigan put the finishing touch to a historic season in the national championship game played this Monday, beating the UConn Huskies 69-63.
The Wolverines won the first national championship in program history since 1989, also becoming the first team to defeat UConn in the “Sweet 16” round or later since the Michigan State Spartans beat the Huskies in the 2009 Final Four.
UConn’s game plan from the start didn’t differ much from the strategy employed in the early rounds of the NCAA tournament: get the ball to Tarris Reed. He attempted three of the Huskies’ first four shots, but had difficulty finishing plays given the wingspan and size of Michigan’s Aday Mara. The Wolverines’ physical superiority in that facet of the game was also decisive on the other end of the court, adding three offensive rebounds and six points in the paint before the first television break of the game.
However, the first 15 minutes of the game went, for the most part, in UConn’s favor. The Huskies managed to prevent Michigan from developing its quick transition game; Proof of this is that the Wolverines did not score a single point on the fast break during the first half, having only one real opportunity to run on the attack. Michigan tried to put pressure on the Huskies defensively and speed up the pace of the game, but UConn was able to take care of the ball effectively.
Much of the credit went to Malachi Smith, who provided some quality minutes for Coach Hurley while Silas Demary Jr. remained on the bench weighed down by foul trouble. Smith contributed four quick points and held his own against Michigan’s outside line.
UConn controlled the pace of the game, remained firm in the fight for rebounds and was favored by Michigan’s lack of success in shooting; The Wolverines were 0 for 8 on three-pointers during the first quarter. While Solo Ball showed no ill effects from his foot sprain — scoring 12 points in the first half despite also committing two fouls — Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg looked like a shadow of the player who earned All-American and Big Ten Conference Player of the Year honors. He played the full 20 minutes of the first half, but made just 1 of 5 field goals and was ineffective on both ends of the floor.
“I feel terrible; I feel super weak right now,” Lendeborg said during the halftime broadcast. “I can’t score anything… I played too softly in that first half.”
The Wolverines were overcoming their shooting woes by dominating two familiar areas: the paint and the free throw line. They had a combined 33 points in the first half coming from those areas, compared to 12 for UConn. With two personal fouls each — Ball, Demary and Reed — in the first half, one of UConn’s Achilles heels was showing up at the worst possible time.
The first major shift in momentum in Michigan’s favor came after a hook-and-hold penalty against Alex Karaban with 3:16 remaining in the first half. This fueled a 6-0 run for the Wolverines in just 46 seconds, and sparked a 10-4 run to close the half, giving Michigan a 33-29 lead at halftime.
Foul trouble continued to be a constant for UConn in the second half. Ball committed his third and fourth fouls, and Demary picked up his third foul before the first television break after the break.
A three-point play by Cadeau — sparked by Ball’s fourth foul — put Michigan up by seven points with 16:20 remaining; the biggest difference in favor of Michigan so far in the game.
The Huskies went cold offensively and Michigan inevitably began to be more efficient on offense. Cadeau scored the Wolverines’ first 3-pointer of the game with 12:56 left in the second half, extending the lead to 11 points; On that same play, Lendeborg grabbed his first rebound and recorded his first assist.
UConn was reeling and seemed to have run out of answers. At one point in the game, the Huskies missed 13 three-pointers in a row.
Entering the final four minutes of the game, UConn was 5 of 21 on its first-shot attempts on offense during the second half — according to data from AM850 Research — and the Huskies were 1 of 9 on shots that had been scored by Mara. The size and length of Michigan’s players at the basket — with four blocks after the break — proved to be a formidable obstacle.
The Huskies were unable to generate sustained positive momentum and put real pressure on Michigan in decisive moments of the game. The Wolverines left the door open for their rivals to get back into the game, but UConn failed to string together three or four consecutive possessions combining good defensive actions with shooting success. A spike defense and a rebound by Karaban gave possession back to UConn with a five-point deficit; However, Karaban himself lost the ball on the next play, which led to an alley-oop culminated by Mara that raised Michigan’s lead to seven points again.
UConn had another chance to cut the lead to four points with two minutes remaining, but failed to convert a fast break chance. Michigan responded at the other end of the floor, where Trey McKenney hit a killer 3-pointer that gave the Wolverines a nine-point lead.
