A second national championship, and first in 37 years. That would be the longest wait any program has ever endured between first and second titles. “We all know what it would mean to all of us and to the university,” Elliot Cadeau said Sunday. “It’s been so long. I’ll be in the history books at Michigan.”
The right to raise their hands as the team that broke the Big Ten’s 26-year title drought.
Dusty May joining the club of national championship coaches, passing the final initiation in his home state, 68 miles from where he went to high school and 49 miles from where he went to college.
Being proclaimed the instant model for what a transfer portal team can do, if all the pieces fit. “We all love each other,” said Yaxel Lendeborg, one of four starters who were somewhere else last season. “And that plays a big part in games like Monday night.”
And something else. Genuine, take-no-prisoners history. Few teams have rampaged through the NCAA tournament the way they have so far, their five victories by an average of 21.6 points. If it ends that way, it would be the fifth-largest scoring margin ever. Michigan is already the first team to hit 90 points in five consecutive games in the same tournament. The 18-point rout of Arizona tied for the largest margin in a contest between two No. 1 seeds since seeding began in 1979.
Just one more win rakes it all in, over a Connecticut program that collects national championships like stamps.
“We have a team that we think is elite,” May said. “But we also know that once the ball is tipped, that means nothing. You still have to do all the things that got you to this point, and you have to weather storms. You have to handle success.”
This is the stage where the Wolverines must overcome their own past. Michigan has been this way before to a championship game. Seven times. There is but a single title to show for it, in 1989 and the only one-point overtime NCAA championship game in history, over Seton Hall. The other six? A long line of defeat in four different decades at the hands of Hall of Fame coaches. The Wolverines have lost to John Wooden and Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith, Rick Pitino and Jay Wright.
Now it’s Dan Hurley’s turn to join the list, or not.
But the Michigan narrative leans a different direction after Saturday’s dismantling of Arizona, where the full might was shown of how a talented group of imports properly mixed can turn into a devastating assault. The Wolverines will bring a 36-3 record to Lucas Oil Stadium Monday night, with half of the 36 wins by at least 18 points. Only 10 of 38 opponents have played Michigan to single digits.
They came from everywhere this season to unite into a juggernaut.
Lendeborg from UAB and Cadeau from North Carolina. Aday Mara from UCLA and Morez Johnson Jr. from Illinois. Freshman Trey McKenney from high school. Nimari Burnett and Roddy Gayle Jr. were already in Ann Arbor but had earlier arrived from Alabama and Ohio State. They don’t mind sharing. Consider their March Madness rampage — 66 percent of Michigan’s field goals have come with assists, six Wolverines are averaging in double figures, seven have scored at least 15 points in a tournament game.
“I think they did a really good job of putting five or four transfers, or five players on the court at all times that are really good at passing the ball,” Cadeau said. “And I think they knew that when they were recruiting all of us.
“The passing makes it look we have chemistry. I mean, we do have chemistry.”
They had dinners together, hung out together, bonded together, and turned into a beast, if you look at their scores, and it has been that way since November. “They’ve been killing it all year,” Connecticut’s Alex Karaban observed. But could anyone imagine Saturday, turning a showdown with mighty Arizona into a Michigan highlight tape?
“The thing with Elliot and Yaxel and Morez and Aday and these guys, all the portal guys, when we've played on the biggest stages in the most important moments, their play has been elevated," May said.
Not everyone may be tickled by Michigan’s success, since it validates heavy use of the NIL and portal. May discussed that Sunday.
“I know this is going to set off a Twitter firestorm, but I think we all are better in certain situations than others. There's an environment that's right for me. There's an environment that's right for you. Sometimes you don't choose the right environment from the beginning or sometimes as people we change and we need something different, for a number of reasons. The way we choose to look at it, we're going to bring in really, really good guys that are high achievers, that want to do it the way we want to do it.”
This time, Michigan hit the jackpot, with players driven to win a championship by the blessings of a fresh start.
👉 WATCH: Michigan vs. Arizona extended highlights
“A lot of us weren’t in the situation that we envisioned or were satisfied with last year,” Cadeau said. “So just being able to get on this stage, with everyone playing the way they wanted to play, it would mean everything to us.”
May is the director to all this. He is the generally genial leader who has a nickname for every person in the program, down to the student managers, which he once was at Indiana. But he’s also unrelenting in his team building, which even his opponent admires.
“What makes Dusty May special as a coach,” Dan Hurley said Sunday, “is obviously his eye for talent, his ability to construct a roster, the fact that he insulates himself with an excellent coaching staff, and his ability to build team and culture. He's got a special eye for how to put together a great team.”
The Wolverines’ chemistry starts with Lendeborg, the most decorated of the crew.
“I think the guys know that Yax is about winning,” May said. “And from day one, he's always just been one of the guys. And when you have a first-team All-American, potential player of the year that just wants to be one of the dudes, it helps everyone else fall in line and just accept their role.”
But now Lendeborg may have to play through a gimpy knee that affected him Saturday. “He played the second half like a 38-year old at the YMCA,” May said. “A really good 38-year-old at the YMCA.” But Lendeborg vowed, “There's no way I'm missing the game on Monday night no matter what goes on. I'm going to play unless I can't walk at all.”
Connecticut has issues too, with both Solo Ball and Silas Demary Jr. nursing lower leg injuries. It’s the last game of the season, everyone’s banged up. But nobody wants to sit out.
READ MORE: Unstoppable meets unbeaten: Michigan's force set to collide with UConn's April magic
Michigan has no intentions of slowing down but understands Saturday’s score does not splash over to Monday.
“We never ride momentum,” May said., “It's what do we need to do to prepare to play well against UConn? They have championship DNA. They're conditioned to win. If we think any momentum or riding in on a wave is going to take care of UConn, then we're going to be very disappointed at about 11 tomorrow night.”
Here’s the irony. The most important Husky to take the fight against Michigan’s massive front line and the biggest concern for May might well be... an ex-Wolverine. Tarris Reed Jr. transferred to UConn from Ann Arbor two years ago. “So I started my career at Michigan and now I'm about to play them my final game of college basketball,” he said Sunday. “I never would have thought that would happen in a million years.”
He has been one of the stars of March, beginning with the historic 31 points and 27 rebounds in the NCAA tournament opener against Furman. He followed with 20 points against Michigan State, 26 against Duke, 17 and 11 rebounds Saturday against Illinois. ”'He’s a force. He's relentless,” May said., “He plays now like their coach coaches.”
Reed is very much a Connecticut story, an incoming player who struggled at first to cope with Hurley’s demanding ways.
“My mom always said once you start something, you have to finish it,” he said Sunday. “So that meant finishing my basketball college career at UConn, knowing how tough it was, how some of the days were very dark.
👀 UConn vs Illinois game highlights
“It was me and the Lord, It was crazy. After that (first) season, I’m in my room just crying, like, what do I do? I’m in my journal, just trying to think whether to stay or go. When I started writing down in the journal, it became pretty obvious that if I wanted to do this, if I wanted to go to the NBA, I had to stay at UConn. So I was just wrestling with myself for the longest time, knowing how tough it was going to be to come back from one of the hardest seasons of my life and then choosing to go back. That’s not easy to do.”
And now he might be Connecticut’s best hope against the ferocious Michigan front wall.
“I've been saying that, go back six weeks, go back two months, go back three months, our season is going to be determined by what Tarris Reed does, which Tarris Reed we get, does the light switch go on for Tarris Reed,” Hurley said.
He will be among giants with Michigan on the floor. Their program, the one that has waited so long to stand on the podium, his program, the one in such a hurry to get back. Michigan looks on-course and at full speed. But...
“These are all one game, Game 7, single game elimination. There's been plenty of times in the history of this tournament where the best team hasn't won it,” Hurley said. “The good thing for us, it's not a seven-game series.
“Just got to play one game on Monday night.”
