Monday's NCAA Championship Game delivered a huge victory for the University of Connecticut, in that Dan Hurley did not bring himself, his team, the university or the coaching profession into three days of disrepute, nor did Dawn Staley repeatedly offer to kick his ass. Hey, sometimes the championship you're playing for isn't necessarily the same one everyone else recognizes. It will be a lot of text to fit onto a banner, but it's something—five wins packaged neatly into one loss.
Not that Ol' Bug Eyes Himself didn't want to win the national championship of men's college basketball. It's just that his charges chose a bad night to get into early foul trouble and subsequently watch Michigan shoot 25 free throws, and a worse one on which to miss 11 consecutive threes while trying to dig out of a double-digit deficit. They definitely chose a bad time to be scheduled to play in a gigantic football stadium that made shooting from distance a festival of long rebounds for both teams. They could not have picked a more dreadful night to challenge a bigger stronger team at the rim.
All that suggests that Michigan's 69-63 victory in Lucas Oil Stadium last night was a fait accompli for the Wolverines. It wasn't, and not just because Michigan hadn't won one in 37 years and represents an elephantine conference that hadn't won a title in the last 26. This would be statistically accurate, but only that. The game was in many ways a grisly slog, not the least of which was the fact that Michigan's shooting numbers were only barely better than UConn's—13 misses in 15 attempts from three, and just 21-for-55 from the floor overall for the night. The difference was that, after having fallen behind early, the Huskies needed to take 33 treys in an unforgiving airport hangar with roughly the same shooting background that the Artemis astronauts see out their window, against a team whose defense wasn't offering any agreeable alternatives inside 12 feet. Connecticut acquitted themselves well enough for being the less accomplished team at the rim, but in the end that only gets you a half-hour of lead time in the transfer portal.
Michigan had browbeaten its half of the bracket for three weeks, scoring 90-plus each time in a series of remorseless blowouts, but unless they'd volunteered to play another half weren't going to get close to that again against Connecticut. The decision by head coach Dusty May to forgo the long jumper in favor of controlling the interior was a pragmatic rather than an inspired one, but decisions don't get paid off on aesthetic grounds. This game, like so many championship games, was not destined to be an advancement of the art form; it was, instead, a headlong and unlovely contest of bodies strewn across the landscape in search of open lanes and loose balls. The game wasn't dirty but it was physical, and Michigan's resources in that area seemed unlimited all season long, and also through the lens of this most recent bit of recency bias. As a general rule, the better team does not lose by six.
Indeed, this was rather an old-fashioned night of basketball. It fit well in a town that runs short on glitz itself, and that houses the sprawling mega-conference currently bragging its corporate ass off after also winning the women's title—UCLA is in the Big Ten, repeat it to yourself until it feels right—the football championship, and about six other things you don't much care about unless your tastes coincide with your career choice as a shut-in.
The Wolverines weren't as clinical as they were cussed in pursuit of that prize, and their biggest accomplishment might have been beating UConn at its own pace—not that this was a conscious choice either, mind you. The Huskies knew they needed to avoid an up-tempo game and did, and while Michigan's Elliot Cadeau did what he could to rev the motor, his own first half foul trouble and Yaxel Lendeborg's wonky leg made staying at the speed limit the more prudent choice. As it was, Lendeborg played more minutes than anyone else, and while his was not the most glittering performance due to that sprained MCL, all-hands-on-deck games do not differentiate between who will contribute most. Cadeau finished with a game-high 19 points, but freshman sixth man Trey McKenney's step-back 26-footer with 1:50 left gave Michigan just enough cushion for just long enough to make UConn's last run at an improbably out-of-context victory more decorative than damaging. The better team won on balance, save maybe for the safety-yellow quarter-zips that made May and his staff look like the crossing guards you don't joke around with while waiting for the traffic to clear.
As for grander lessons to be drawn, there weren't any. This game will not be hailed as a classic, or even particularly memorable for anything but Team A beats Team B reasons, and on that you must decide based on your own rooting interests. Michigan was dominant all season long and just good enough when it mattered most; people whose fandom involves constantly redecorating a personal pantheon will find a place for them in there somewhere. Instead, this will be noted as an event for what it didn't have—people talking about what a tool the losing coach was. Hurley was effusively gracious after the game despite his own high-revving personality, maybe because he knew that there were still people who wanted to litigate the Geno Auriemma thing. Hurley, to his credit, knew and read the room, and thus knew that, when you can't hit a shot to save your arse, not acting like one in the aftermath is its own victory.
