INDIANAPOLIS – Michigan was awe-inspiring. Michigan was breath-taking. Michigan took a 36-2 opponent and had it down by 30 points. Michigan has scored at least 90 in every NCAA tournament game and led in every one by at least 16.
A seemingly unstoppable force, thundering toward Monday night like a tidal wave. How can a team that just steamrolled Arizona 91-73 not be thinking One Shining Moment? Who would doubt the Wolverines now?
Except...except...did you happen to notice who they play next? The last night of the college basketball season will feature an extraordinary contrast: The team that looked unbeatable Saturday, against the program that does not know how to lose championship games.
It’s the first week of April. Connecticut Standard Time. Two years ago, three years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago...a blue tide sweeping across the past 27 seasons with six national championships. And now here the Huskies are, one game away from No. 7 and totally believing, even if few others might be if they got a look at Michigan Saturday night.
“Monday’s the big night,” Alex Karaban was saying in the locker room after Connecticut had dispatched Illinois 71-62. “We’re here for Monday.”
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Did they hear how Michigan left Arizona in pieces? That film will be scary to watch. "No one's been able to do that to us all year," Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. But there is something to April aura, which leads to unshakable confidence. We can start with a number that is slightly remarkable, somewhat unfathomable, and absolutely telling.
In the past 114 Illinois games going back to 2023, the three lowest scoring outputs for the Illini were 62, 61 and 52 points.
All three came against the Connecticut Huskies.
“Maybe it's the uniforms. I don't know,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said, somewhat mystified by how his offense came in 21 points under its average Saturday night. “We make those shots against everybody else.”
Ah yes, the Connecticut uniforms. They’re back on the march again, back on the brink, back to where they are convinced they belong. Maybe a lot of these players haven’t been on this stage before but those uniforms have, and that means something,
There was Karaban, already a two-time champion, sitting in the locker room Saturday night describing the confidence that comes from carrying the name into the last weekend.
“You’ve seen what UConn’s been able to do in March,” he said. “Coach always talks about deliver the magic when you wear this jersey, and you definitely feel that.”
Reserve forward Jaylin Stewart is not as renowned as Karaban but was saying the same thing. “Every time I put this uniform on, I feel the magic.”
There it was Saturday, magic or muscle or something, as the defense took apart the vaunted Illini attack. Coach Dan Hurley mentioned how “When you play or coach at UConn, you don't get the benefit of coming in under the radar. You don't get to sneak up on anybody. You've got to be able to handle all the external noise, the expectations, the standards, the history, the tradition . . . I do think when you get to those pressure moments in the tournament or in big spots, that becomes then beneficial because you're playing under pressure the whole year.”
There it was, impervious to one of the most partisan crowds in recent Final Four history. It’s an easy drive from the Illinois campus to Indianapolis and the orange army had invaded Lucas Oil Stadium, seizing every available spot, in full voice. They cheered — they roared — for anything Illini, right down to the female athlete who was the Illinois member of the national anthem quartet. They booed – they howled – at anything Connecticut. They even loudly booed Bill Murray — whose son Luke is a UConn assistant — when he was shown on the scoreboard. And he’s a Cubs fan.
Not that it fazed Connecticut. “You saw it in the stands with all the orange,” Karaban said. “But when you play in front of 80,000 people there’s always going to be a lot of noise whether it’s their fans or our fans.”
Elegant, it wasn’t. Neither team shot 36 percent. Together they were 8-for-26 from the 3-point line in the second half and made eight more free throws than field goals after halftime. The Illini should have sensed bad karma when Braylon Mullins made three early 3-pointers, banking in one of them. He didn’t even do that to Duke.
But it was a struggle until late because the Huskies weren’t scoring enough to make it otherwise. That is UConn’s MO this season.
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“This year hasn't been a joyride,” Hurley said. “We haven't been a machine of destruction. We've been a team that's had to grind out games like this. We're comfortable in a possession game like that.”
Monday can’t be pretty, either. Not if they hope to slow down the Michigan locomotive that ran over Arizona. The Huskies are not here for the style points. They’re here to try to make life difficult for a team that has cruised for three weeks. The Huskies have won their past three NCAA tournament games by four, one and nine points. The Wolverines have won their five tournament games by 21, 23, 13, 33 and 18.
But this is Connecticut. And it’s April. Michigan better not count on easy. Or gentle. UConn is 6-0 all-time in national championship games. Michigan is 1-6. Such history will be irrelevant Monday night. Maybe.
<Hurley made a point of mentioning how Illinois was actually a favorite in some quarters going into Saturday night. That annoyed the Huskies. Best not to annoy them. “Yeah, we knew what it was,” he said. “You're coming into the game as an underdog versus a team that you beat by 13 points earlier in the season, which was kind of surprising.”
It was only as slight edge in odds, nothing much to get excited about. Something of a manufactured slight. Wait till Hurley gets a whiff of some of the things that will be said about Michigan’s prospects the next two days.
His players will bring the fire. They usually do. In the locker room, Jayden Ross talked of how they had to be focused on the task at hand Saturday night. “This was obviously not the time to get ahead of ourselves and get stuck in the past in this game,” he said.
But the glories of the past, and the responsibility of living up to them, are partly what drives this team forward, and will be vital when the Huskies step on the court with a monster Monday night.
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“We're a tough program,” Hurley said. “It's not appealing to everyone. I'm sure there's some people in here that it's off-putting for. But we are a group of fighters. We are incredibly tough. We've got incredible will. We go into these games, we're ready for battle. For us it's not a game that we're just kind of running around in uniforms throwing the ball around, hoping it goes in. That's not what we're doing out there.
“We're fighting. It's a life-and-death struggle for us to get to Monday night for the opportunity to win a championship, and then just to be able to prolong this season with each other and to make the people of Connecticut proud, to make the university proud and all the former great players.”
Karaban sat and pondered what a title would mean Monday night in his final game as a Connecticut Huskie.
“No better ending. This is what I came back for, to win a national championship,” he said. “Once we leave this arena I’m going to tell our guys to flip the switch, focus on what’s going to win the game because winning a national championship is the best feeling ever, and we’re all able to leave a legacy.”
Michigan wowed the college basketball universe Saturday night with 33 field goals and 22 assists and nearly putting six players in double figures. The Wolverine wave. “Obviously they have the kryptonite right now,” Lloyd said.
But this is April, and they’re playing Connecticut. “They have championship DNA,” Michigan coach Dusty May said of the Huskies. Past victims can describe what that is like. There are plenty of them to ask.
