Michigan is back on top. The Wolverines beat UConn 69-63 on Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for their first men's national championship since 1989.
How Michigan won it
This was a grinder. Michigan forced six second-half turnovers and won the points-in-the-paint battle 32-22, per NBA.com's recap. That's how you beat a UConn team built to win in March.
- Elliot Cadeau led Michigan with 19 points and was named Most Outstanding Player.
- Yaxel Lendeborg was a key piece and summed up the team's identity afterward: "We're the hardest-playing team."
- For UConn, Alex Karaban scored 17 and Tarris Reed Jr. was a factor inside.
It's a big win for coach Dusty May, the USBWA National Coach of the Year, and a tough one for Dan Hurley's Huskies, who've made a habit of being in this game.
A title in the NIL era
This is what a championship looks like now: assembled fast, with players who've moved through the portal and coaches who can recruit in a revenue-sharing world. It's also a program that's leaning into its athletes as personalities.
Back in March, Michigan athletics announced a Venmo NIL program featuring 27 athletes, one from each varsity sport, creating social content about how they use the app, according to Sports Illustrated. That's a useful reminder that NIL at a big school isn't only about the basketball stars. The whole department is in the content game.
The offseason starts immediately
Here's the strange part of modern college hoops: the champagne is barely dry and the next season is already underway. The men's basketball transfer portal opened Tuesday, the day after the title game, and runs through April 21. 247Sports described it as a two-week window, much shorter than in past years, with teams barred from contacting most players until they officially enter.
That means fans of every team, including Michigan, are about to spend two weeks refreshing portal trackers. Some players from this game will be back. Some won't. A few are headed to the pros.
What it means for fans
- Follow players, not just jerseys. With rosters turning over this quickly, the athletes you connected with this season may be playing somewhere else in November.
- Championship moments have a short shelf life. The best time to engage with a title team's players is right now, while the moment is fresh.
- Watch the April 21 deadline. That's when the portal picture comes into focus.
One more thing worth saying: title teams are rarely just one or two stars anymore. They're rotations of players who arrived from different places and bought in fast. That makes the people on this roster easy to root for and, for a lot of fans, easy to get to know over a single season.
Congrats to Michigan. Thirty-seven years is a long wait, and Monday night was worth it for Wolverines fans.