INDIANAPOLIS — Michigan guard Elliot Cadeau strutted from the lane to the 3-point line and stepped toward the halfcourt line as he motioned for the Wolverines’ fan base to embrace he and his teammates for what they’d just done.
There still were about 90 seconds left in Monday’s national championship game, but Michigan freshman Trey McKenney had just all but put the dagger in UConn. And Cadeau knew it.
Michigan didn’t make a three-pointer until Cadeau knocked one down more than 27 minutes into the game and didn’t make another until McKenney did so to put the Wolverines up nine with less than two minutes left.
It’s the type of play, the type of shot that so often evaded Michigan through almost all of Monday’s game. McKenney was undeterred, though. He let it go and threw it in to all but seal a magical end to a special season.
When it went in, Lucas Oil Stadium erupted. So did Crisler Center back in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Nothing was entirely settled with that shot – and UConn made sure of it – but it felt like Michigan’s breakthrough moment on a night when it appeared as if it may have had to get this over the finish line without one. The thing about this Michigan team, though, is that it may have been able to become national champion without one.
The Wolverines held off UConn the rest of the way for a 69-63 victory; it’s their second national title and the Big Ten’s first since Michigan State beat Florida in Indy in 2000.
Michigan was 29-2 in the regular season and suffered just one loss in Big Ten play. Its most impressive times were still ahead, though. They would come in the NCAA Tournament, when an opponent didn’t come within 12 points of Michigan before Monday night’s win. Three of the five teams it played – including a No. 6 and a No. 9 seed – didn’t come within 20 points. And the most convincing win wasn’t one of those three; that was a 91-73 trouncing of Arizona – which was ranked No. 1 for nine weeks this season – in a national semifinal.
Dusty May’s team was ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 just once this season, but that became harder and harder to believe each time it took the floor in the NCAA Tournament. That lack of a No. 1 ranking doesn’t define this team anymore, though.
“I guess the final poll is one that matters, and I think that one comes out tomorrow,” Michigan assistant Mike Boynton told HoopsHQ. “We’ve got some (championship DNA). This team won a Big Ten Tournament championship last year with several guys who were on (this season’s) team … and then obviously won the Big Ten regular season. I think it’s kind of got lost that we won essentially the best league in the country by four games … and didn’t have a whole lot of resistance doing it.”
This group is America’s best team and there’s nothing anyone can do or say to prove otherwise. Leaving Monday night as the champion wasn’t inevitable, but it was fitting.
If anything indicated that, it was the fashion in which May’s team got this thing done on Monday. It shot just 13.3% from three-point range (2-of-15). It played the slow grinder of a game that UConn wanted. It attempted 13 fewer shots than the Huskies, too. And while it fought to overcome those things, its best player – forward Yaxel Lendeborg – went just 4-of-13 from the field while noticeably hobbled by a left leg injury.
“It was really a nasty one, but I feel like the course of the year, we were able to kind of show we’re capable of winning in many different ways,” Michigan wing Roddy Gayle said. “And at the end of the day, we just kind of found a way to be able to cut down the net.”
What is May going to remember from the night that his second Michigan team immortalized itself?
“Just the fight and the grit,” May said, “that our guys played with.”
Michigan wasn’t letting this get away. The Wolverines knew all along that they were capable of this and were confident enough in that thought process to leave Lucas Oil Stadium as champions.
It’s not as if Michigan was all that close to an outcome that didn’t end in a confetti-filled celebration, either. Michigan led for 30:11, had as much as an 11-point lead and never trailed in the second half. UConn has championship DNA, but this Michigan team is decisively college basketball’s best. It wasn’t at its best, but its 14-point advantage in the paint indicated that it was the more physically imposing team. It also was the better one, as indicated by the final score.
As a result, it ended with Lendeborg embracing his mother on the floor after the buzzer sounded, big man Aday Mara celebrating while draped in a Spanish flag, Cadeau’s locker drenched in water and this group of mere mortals transforming into maize and blue legends.
“That takes a lot of work and people don’t see that. But I see it, and it’s special,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said. “We want to win. … And I have people leading each program who want to win. I have student-athletes in each program who come to Michigan to win. They don’t come here to participate; they want to win. … And so we put people around them, both coaches and staff, that can support them to win.”
Monday night, this program did that. Now, its players get to call themselves national champions forever.
“It’s super, super special for us,” Mara said.
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