INDIANAPOLIS — The long walk, one that neither Danny Hurley nor Alex Karaban had ever taken before, began in front of the UConn bench, maize and blue confetti still wafting around them. Hurley huddled with Karaban and Solo Ball, his arms around them, their heads pressed together, a moment of quiet communion amid the Michigan celebration.
This was an unfamiliar feeling to all of them. Twice before, Hurley and Karaban had gotten to the national championship game. Twice before, they had won it. Ball had been aboard for the second. They had been the ones dancing on the court, waiting to take the stage and watch themselves in One Shining Moment. You do it that often, it starts to feel like a birthright. A calling.
How close UConn had come. If Ball finishes a layup in traffic after the Huskies forced a steal with two minutes to go. If Karaban’s three-pointer with 18 seconds to go drops. Those are the kind of things the Huskies do, how they managed to come back from 19 points down against Duke in the regional final to even get here. How they outlasted Illinois on Saturday.
The Huskies’ stab at a modern-day dynasty, their run at a third national title in four years, came to an end Monday night with a 69-63 loss to Michigan. It was UConn’s first loss in a Final Four game since 2009 and its first-ever loss in a national-title game. The Huskies had won eight straight games in the Final Four under three different coaches until Monday. Whatever UConn’s secret sauce for winning in April is, there’s only been one counter to it: Playing a Big Ten team in a Big Ten city. Michigan State, 2009, Detroit. Michigan, 2026, Indianapolis.
It was time to leave the floor. Hurley led them down the steps from the elevated court, Ball on his right, Karaban on his left. Ball had the neck of his jersey pulled up over his mouth. Karaban stared at the floor. They walked past the corral where the UConn students were dealing with their own emotions, between the seating risers, through the portal that led under the stands.
It was a right turn to the locker room down the long corridor that ran under the stands. Ball fell behind, but Hurley and Karaban kept going. Hurley had his right arm around Karaban’s waist. Karaban had his left arm around Hurley’s shoulders. They talked quietly. Everything they had been through together, all the success, the work rebuilding after last year’s second-round loss to get back to this point, it had all led to the chance to play for a national title, and in the end only for that.
“You give this program everything every single day for four years,” Karaban said. “Knowing that it’s over now, knowing the legacy I left, knowing everything that I gave to UConn, you just feel like your heart’s ripped out of your body. You gave everything. Every second, I’m thinking about how I can lead this team, how I can help win, how we could have won this game tonight. It’s emotional.”
The game had been played at UConn’s pace, and two early three-pointers by Karaban had helped give the Huskies a narrow early lead. But UConn couldn’t pad that lead, even as Michigan went 0 of 8 from long range in the first half. The fouls piled up, two each on Ball, Silas Demary Jr. and Tarris Reed Jr. A hook-and-hold call on Reed produced a six-point swing late in the half. UConn never led again.
When Michigan finally got its offense into gear, the Huskies struggled to answer. The opportunities they had — the Ball breakaway, Karaban’s late three — weren’t converted. Reed, who started his career amid the disarray at Michigan before Dusty May arrived, went 4 of 10, struggling to finish over Aday Mara or through Morez Johnson Jr. The Huskies had 22 offensive rebounds and only 19 second-chance points; the Wolverines went to the free-throw line almost twice as often and had a 13-point advantage there.
These are kind of the things the Huskies have often done to others, the formula for their recent success under Hurley. For the first time, they found themselves on the receiving end.
“I felt like we deserved that ‘ship,” Malachi Smith said. “We worked hard. To fall short is definitely hard. We stuck to our game plan. We did what we had to do.”
Change will come now for UConn. Reed is done. Ball may be headed to the NBA. Other players, as is always the case in this era, will have decisions to make. Luke Murray, a key Hurley lieutenant, is off to run his own program at Boston College. And then there’s Karaban, having appeared in three title games in a four-year career, the kind of record that usually has John Wooden involved somehow. He is finally done.
The long, unfamiliar walk, with a muffled soundtrack of someone else’s celebration, was over. Karaban and Hurley reached the door to the locker room. Hurley slapped him on the back. Ball followed them in. Karaban, upon reaching his teammates, went around the room and spoke to each teammate individually, his final message to the team whose spine he had become.
A half-hour later, after Karaban and Ball and Braylon Mullins had gone and returned from the interview room to rejoin their teammates in the quiet locker room, a golf cart arrived with Hurley in the front passenger seat. He had changed into a T-shirt after speaking to his team in the immediate aftermath, but was still wearing the same now-threadbare navy blue suit he had for the previous five games. His arms were crossed. His eyes were glassy. He had told his players how proud he was of them, the fight they showed, how they never gave up even as Michigan’s juggernaut gained speed in the second half.
“This is where you wanted to be,” Hurley had said in his postgame press conference only moments earlier. “It hasn’t set in yet. On the flight tomorrow it’ll set in, on the bus ride back. Eventually it’ll hit you that you were close to pulling off what would have been a historic third championship. This team just gave us so much this year. We just didn’t make enough shots.”
Hurley got out of the cart, his head down. It was nine minutes into Tuesday. He walked into the locker room and into a future he had never before been forced to contemplate.
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