SI:AM | Michigan Grinds Its Way to a Championship

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I was pleasantly surprised that UConn was able to keep that game as close as it did.

In today’s SI:AM:
〽️ Michigan completes its turnaround
😞 UConn falls short
🏆 Big Ten triumphs again

If you’re reading this on SI.com, click here to subscribe and receive SI:AM directly in your inbox each morning.

Michigan wins a slugfest

All season long, Michigan blitzed past its opponents with a combination of high-powered offense and smothering defense that more often than not resulted in blowout victories. But in Monday night’s national championship game, UConn made the Wolverines work for it.

It probably isn’t fair to call it a sloppy game, but it was definitely a grind. Michigan won, 69–63, just the fourth time that it was held below 70 points and the fourth-fewest points UConn scored in a game this season. Both teams posted their lowest field-goal percentages of the season (38.2% for Michigan and 30.9% for UConn). The Wolverines, after hitting at least 10 threes in each of their first five NCAA tournament games, went 2-for-15 from deep. That’s 13.3%, the fifth-worst three-point percentage in national title game history, and second-worst among teams that won the game.

“You know, all year we’ve been just finding ways to win,” Michigan’s Elliot Cadeau told reporters after the game. “We made two threes the whole game. We wasn’t making shots. We weren’t. We had a couple assists, not as many as we usually do, but we constantly just been finding ways to win all year, no matter how everybody is playing.”

Cadeau led all scorers with 19 points and was named Most Outstanding Player. Michigan needed him to step up, too. The team’s best player, forward Yaxel Lendeborg, was dealing with knee and ankle injuries and was clearly diminished. He finished with 13 points, shooting just 4-for-13 from the floor and missing all five of his three-point attempts.

“It took a lot to get on the court, honestly, and to stay on there,” Lendeborg said. “I was dealing with a lot of mental issues today. These guys all leaned in on me and helped me out, helped me dig myself out of the hole and just continued to keep fighting. [Michigan trainer] Chris [Williams], shout-out to him because he was with me pretty much all day, all night, making sure I was even 50%, 60% ready to play.”

Lendeborg didn’t play like his usual self, but he was still critical to Michigan’s victory. Nine of his 13 points came in the second half as UConn hung around and attempted to mount a comeback.

Lendeborg was one of several transfers brought in by coach Dusty May as he attempted to build on the progress of his first season in Ann Arbor. Four of the Wolverines’ starters played elsewhere last season. May has done an incredible job in his short time at Michigan, taking over a team that went 8–24 in Juwan Howard’s final season and now winning a national title two years later. May had previously worked miracles at Florida Atlantic, taking the Owls to the 2023 Final Four, but becoming a juggernaut in the Big Ten is a different story. Just ask every Michigan team since 1989 that tried and failed to do what May and this Wolverines squad did on Monday.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Michigan wins national championship — Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Second-year coach Dusty May had the vision to construct a roster that delivered Michigan’s first national title since 1989, Pat Forde writes. First, Indiana won a football national championship.
Now, UCLA and Michigan have won the women’s and men’s national titles in basketball. Bryan Fischer says it's the Big 10’s world and we are all just living in it.
Kevin Sweeney describes how a gimpy knee and ankle did not prevent Michigan’s sixth-year player, Yaxel Lendeborg, from giving his team a second-half push to the national title.
Fischer also writes about how UConn senior Alex Karaban’s quest to win a third title fell short.
After North Carolina chose Michael Malone to lead its men’s basketball program, Forde says the Tar Heels are doubling down on its hiring of championship-winning head coaches from the professional ranks.
Sweeney looks ahead to the next season and provides his way-too-early top 25 rankings, with some familiar teams atop the list.
Albert Breer talks to John Schneider about the general manager’s decades of journaling, including lessons he learned from the Legion of Boom years.
In his takeaways column, Breer also dives into Kirk Cousins’s bag-getting prowess and the complicated situation between Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense.
The Blue Jays, Red Sox and Padres have gotten off to slow starts after entering the season with playoff expectations. Stephanie Apstein assesses how worried their fans should be.
Dan Falkenheim says the Sky’s trade of Angel Reese to Atlanta is the latest example of the incompetence by the Windy City franchise.

The top five…

… things I saw last night:
5. Rockies outfielder Troy Johnston’s wacky night at the plate. His first hit came on a bunt that barely stayed fair, his second came on a grounder that bounced off second base and his third was a towering home run.
4. The big brawl in the first period of the Lightning-Sabres game as Tampa Bay and Buffalo battle for first place in the Atlantic Division. The Sabres won, 4–2, to move into a tie for first.
3. Two clutch threes by Aaron Gordon late in the fourth quarter. (The Nuggets ended up winning in overtime.)
2. Jalen Johnson’s dunk on two Knicks defenders.
1. Roddy Gayle Jr.’s thunderous put-back dunk in the final minute of the first half.