INDIANAPOLIS — The day between the national semifinal doubleheader and the championship game is somehow both calm and chaotic.
The two programs left standing in the NCAA Tournament scramble to prepare for each other, but also do their best to relax and recuperate.
After a raucous evening inside Lucas Oil Stadium, the building was eerily quiet on Easter Sunday as UConn and Michigan conducted their final practices of the season in front of more than 70,000 empty seats.
Monday the building will be buzzing again for the Final Four’s main event, which pits a possible dynasty in UConn against an extraordinary juggernaut in Michigan.
The Huskies secured their place in the final with a 71-62 victory over Illinois and have a chance to become the first team since UCLA in the 1970s to claim three championships in a four-year span. The Wolverines stunned the college basketball world by steamrolling Arizona, 91-73, and are aiming to cut down the nets for just the second time in school history, while simultaneously snapping the Big Ten’s 26-year title drought.
Celebrations were extremely brief for both programs on Saturday night. Back in the locker room, UConn coach Dan Hurley told his guys that he wanted to set the NCAA Tournament record for fastest exit from an arena following a game. There was too much work to do — and rest to get — to dawdle.
Teams tend to be banged up if they manage to reach this stage, and UConn and Michigan have been dealt significant blows in the past 24 hours. Junior guard Solo Ball, UConn’s third-leading scorer, was in a boot on Sunday after spraining his foot during Saturday’s semifinal. Ball sustained the injury in the first half and was able to finish the game, running on adrenaline to contribute 13 points. He was held out of practice on Sunday and his status for Monday remains uncertain.
“I don’t really know,” Hurley said, when asked if Ball will suit up. “They alerted the medical staff and general manager Tom Moore. I saw him in the boot first and then they told me. But I couldn’t tell. We’ll know more as we get later in the day.”
“I’m feeling all right right now,” Ball said. “I’m just leaving it up to the medical staff. I’m doing everything I can to prepare for tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, Michigan’s 6-foot-9 senior forward Yaxel Lendeborg, the Midwest Region Most Outstanding Player and Big Ten Player of the Year, tweaked his left ankle and suffered an MCL sprain in his left knee early in the Wolverines’ victory over the Wildcats. He played in the second half but was clearly fighting through pain. Asked afterward whether there was any chance he would be sidelined on Monday, Lendeborg shook his head. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Unless I wake up and I get up and fall off my feet, I’m gonna be in that game.”
On Sunday, Michigan coach Dusty May said Lendeborg’s imaging came back clean and the big man was in the process of receiving treatment. “I’m sure he’ll give it a go tomorrow,” May said, “but that will be entirely up to him and the medical staff. They’ll tell me if he can go, and if he can — we were laughing (because) he played the second half like a 38-year-old at the YMCA… a really good 38-year-old at the YMCA. Whatever version of Yaxel we get, it’s going to be somebody that helps us play better basketball.”
Even with Lendeborg hobbled, the Wolverines breezed past the Wildcats in what many believed to be a battle of the nation’s two strongest programs. Michigan has been utterly dominant throughout the 2025-26 campaign. It destroyed three teams by an average of 36.7 points en route to the Players Era championship in late November, claimed the Big Ten regular-season title with a 19-1 league record and has won all five of its NCAA Tournament games by at least 13 points.
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Lendeborg is the team’s centerpiece, but May’s roster is loaded from top to bottom. Junior Aday Mara, a 7-foot-3 center and the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, was the star against Arizona, posting 26 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks. The Wolverines have another dynamic big in sophomore forward Morez Johnson Jr. and a talented floor general in junior guard Elliot Cadeau. Sharpshooter Trey McKenney, a freshman wing, has knocked down 52.4 percent of his threes in the tournament.
Michigan is the only program that ranks in the top four in both offensive and defensive efficiency (No. 4 and No. 1, respectively). The team has the second highest net rating of the KenPom era (since 1997), trailing just the 1998-99 Blue Devils. With tremendous size, versatility and depth, the Wolverines pose a number of matchup problems and can effectively shift styles.
“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.”
UConn doesn’t boast the resume or metrics of Michigan, but it has what May referred to as “championship pedigree.” Led by Hurley and four-year starter Alex Karaban, a 6-foot-8 forward, the Huskies are experienced, disciplined and resilient. On their road to the final, they toppled Michigan State, Duke and Illinois, three of the top 10 teams on KenPom. Against the Blue Devils, they erased a 19-point deficit to win at the buzzer on freshman guard Braylon Mullins’ 35-foot heave.
UConn has been elite defensively throughout the tourney, holding opponents to just 65 points per game on 41.5-percent shooting. On the other end, it has relied greatly on 6-foot-11 senior center Tarris Reed Jr. and continued to wear teams down with its high-motion, screen-heavy system.
The East Region Most Outstanding Player, Reed is averaging 20.8 points, 13.0 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.8 blocks in March Madness. He has found success against other big teams (Michigan State, Duke and Illinois), but Michigan will be his toughest test yet. “It’s going to be a great challenge,” said Reed, who played his first two seasons at UM before transferring to UConn. “They play with a lot of size, especially in the frontcourt. That’s been helping them a lot this year.”
UConn knows that to take down the mighty Wolverines it will need to slow the game and shoot better from the perimeter, which starts with Karaban, Ball and Mullins. Karaban opened the tournament red hot, but he has made just two of his last 13 attempts from deep. Ball’s availability is up in the air, and for all his heroics, Mullins has been inconsistent.
While they will enter Monday’s showdown as considerable underdogs, the Huskies certainly don’t see themselves that way, and Michigan isn’t taking them lightly.
“They have championship DNA,” May reiterated. “They’re conditioned to win. This run they’re on is probably the best since John Wooden. 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 11:00 tomorrow night or whenever the game concludes.”
“They’re an incredibly dominant team, incredibly well coached, talent up and down the roster, physically imposing, all those things,” said Hurley. “The good thing for us, it’s not a seven-game series. Just got to play one game on Monday night.”
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