First look at UConn vs. Michigan in the men’s basketball national championship game
The stage is set. UConn and Michigan will play for the national championship in men’s basketball Monday night in Indianapolis.The No. 2-seeded Huskies, seeking a third title in four seasons, dispatched No. seed 3 Illinois 71-62. Top-seeded Michigan routed fellow No. 1 Arizona 91-73, adding a fourth blowout win to its five-game run through this NCAA Tournament.The results Saturday ensured a historic result in the title game. No program has won three championships in four years since John Wooden’s UCLA teams more than half a century ago. And it’s been longer than a quarter-century since a Big Ten team — Michigan State in 2000 — hoisted the trophy.First lookThe Huskies and Wolverines both look like teams of destiny.UConn (34-5) is 13-1 in eight trips to the Final Four and has won five national championships in seven trips to the Sweet 16 since 2004.This matchup pits UConn’s uncanny postseason success against the Wolverines’ utter dominance in 2025-26. Michigan’s 18.1-point average margin of victory leads power conference teams.Big Ten player of the year Yaxel Lendeborg, a senior forward, scores 15.2 points per game for Michigan (36-3). Of major concern: Lendeborg suffered a left ankle and knee injury Saturday night in the first half. He returned after halftime and scored 11 points in 14 minutes against Arizona, but Lendeborg’s readiness Monday will be monitored closely.Lendeborg and sophomore forward Morez Johnson together pull down more than 14 rebounds per game. Elliot Cadeau runs the offense, and Trey McKenney provides a spark off the bench.Senior forward Alex Karaban is the heartbeat of the Huskies. He won titles with UConn in 2023 and 2024 and has accumulated 126 victories in his career. The 6-foot-8 Karaban scores 13.2 points per game. Senior center Tarris Reed Jr. leads the Huskies in scoring at 14.7 points per game and rebounding at 8.8. Reed also leads the Big East in field goal percentage at 62.1.
Junior guard Silas Demary led the Big East in assists with 6.1 and shoots 40.5 percent from 3-point range. Junior guard Solo Ball averages 12.9 points per game.UConn ranks eighth nationally in defensive efficiency. Michigan is fifth on the offensive side and No. 1 on defense. The Wolverines also rate as the better rebounding team. But UConn matched against another Big Ten giant Saturday and lost the rebounding battle. It didn’t matter.The coachesUConn’s Dan Hurley, in his eighth season with the Huskies, is 5-0 in the Final Four and 18-3 in the NCAA Tournament. A win Monday for the 53-year-old would deliver a third national championship and pull him even with Roy Williams, Bob Knight and Jim Calhoun — behind only John Wooden (10), Mike Krzyzewski (five) and Adolph Rupp (four). Hurley’s career exploded in his fifth year with the Huskies after he spent eight seasons in charge at Wagner and Rhode Island.For Michigan, 49-year-old Dusty May is coaching in his home state as he seeks to direct the Wolverines to their second national championship. Michigan won its lone title in 1989, before May attended high school. He graduated from Indiana and got his start in college hoops as a student manager in Bloomington under Knight. After six seasons at Florida Atlantic and a trip to the Final Four three years ago, this marks his first involvement in a national championship game.X-factorsUConn guard Braylon Mullins: His job for the Huskies is simple: Deliver the daggers. Mullins hit one of the greatest shots in NCAA Tournament history, a 35-foot 3-pointer with less than one second to play, to push UConn past top-seeded Duke in the East Regional final. The 6-foot-6 freshman from Greenfield, Ind., buried one from long range Saturday against Illinois to give his team a 7-point lead. He scores 12 points per game and shoots 32.8 percent from distance. But Mullins’ impact is greater than numbers can illustrate. Hurley has nicknamed him the “Bringer of Rain.”Michigan center Aday Mara: The 7-3 Spaniard owned the paint against Arizona on Saturday in the second semifinal with 26 points and nine rebounds. Mara leads the Big Ten in blocked shots and averages 11.8 points and 6.8 rebounds. He rates as a centerpiece on the defensive end and a luxury for the Wolverines on offense, forming a lethal tandem with Cadeau on lobs to the rim. How Mara matches against Reed ought to shape the battle Monday near the basket.What’s at stake?Monday brings a shot at immortality for Hurley, five-year veteran Karaban and the Huskies. UConn has won six titles since 1999, twice as many as any other program in that stretch. A seventh championship would separate UConn from North Carolina and place it behind Kentucky’s eight and UCLA’s 11 in NCAA Tournament history.For Michigan, it’s an opportunity to stamp this group as iconic and extend a golden age in the name, image and likeness era for the Big Ten, which has won the last three college football championships. In basketball championship games, the Big Ten is 0-8 since the Spartans’ title 26 years ago. Michigan has finished as the runner-up six times, including losses against Villanova and Louisville, respectively, in 2018 and 2013 amid the Big Ten drought.UConn and Michigan have never met in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies have won two of three meetings, most recently in 2015.
