The most anticipated sporting event of my life was Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014: the Michigan men's basketball team playing Michigan State in Ann Arbor. I'd grown up around Big Ten basketball, but I was a newly minted Wolverine fan (and a freshman on campus). My matriculation coincided with off-the-charts hype for Michigan hoops—the Brady Hoke doldrums of the football team combined with a thrilling 2013 Final Four run at the start of an era that would send a whole bunch of recruits to the NBA. I struggled at the football games—imagine thousands of binge-drunk college kids packed into bleachers blacking out through a 3-5 conference record—but I found a kind of home in the basketball arena. You could get a spot just behind the benches, as long as you showed up early enough. The football-school culture meant that the attendees were generally more sober and less willing to let disappointment ruin their entire week. And I liked that the basketball players were instantly recognizable, without helmets or pads. For two years, I lived just a few steps from the ones in the Class of 2017, and even though that didn't make us friends or even acquaintances, you get a little boost rooting for people you see every day.
The Michigan State game was the one you circled months in advance, pitting the standard-bearers of the region against a program that'd recently proven it could hang at that level. For a national audience, this was No. 20 vs. No. 13, so it probably didn't feel like the game of the year. But for me it was Game 7 of the Finals.
There were rules against camping out overnight, but no rules against camping out nearby. My roommate and I (who had the most conveniently located dorm) hosted a slumber party in our 200-ish-square-foot room. We fit two people in each bed, one on the futon, and two on the floor, including me. (I was feeling generous.) We woke at the crack of dawn and walked down to join the line already forming outside the closed doors of Crisler Center.
It was cold. Like, numb-fingers-even-in-gloves cold. The kind of cold where you hop around in place, desperate to put your mind on anything but the biting, unpleasant air all around you. To this day, when I think about my capacity to deal with below-freezing temperatures, that morning is my point of reference.
Thankfully, it's a memory I don't mind revisiting. This game was a rare instance where the payoff matched the anticipation. We stuffed ourselves into a space a few rows up from the Michigan bench and watched as the Wolverines recovered from an early deficit and pulled away late. I clearly remember Glenn Robinson III appearing to defy gravity as he hung for an extra beat in mid-air on an oop that extended the lead to double digits. I think I'm just out of this shot in the upper left, jumping and screaming.
Michigan lost in the Elite Eight that year, suffered through a couple of rough seasons when I was a sophomore and junior, and then had a really cool run to win the Big Ten Tournament in my last months as a student. I watched excitedly from New York as they excelled in my first few years after graduation. But as the players I had personally seen when I had season tickets all moved on, I gradually did too. When the Wolverines dipped into irrelevancy under Juwan Howard, they stopped being a priority, and I'd be lying if I said all the winning that Dusty May spearheaded brought me any closer. I felt neutral at best about the University as an institution, and the maize and blue were just my favorite college team by default. I couldn't tell you about what makes the 2026 players unique. The defining experience of watching Michigan basketball this year, even after they made the tournament, was checking my phone while I was out and thinking "Oh wow, they won by 20." But a national title game was still worth going out of my way to see.
Of the group that went to the MSU game with me 12 years ago, two are married to each other, one texted us from the seats in Indianapolis, and another lives nearby in Brooklyn. We first met when we just happened to sit next to each other at our very first Michigan football game, which is a fun fact that people seem to love when it comes up. We went to our default local sports bar, getting there this time only about 20 minutes before tip-off. I unexpectedly ran into some old friends from the school paper just about as soon as I walked in. It made me feel comfortable, even as the bar got so loud and packed with both UM and UConn supporters that they eventually stopped letting people in.
The gamers have emphasized that this was an ugly one, but it didn't scan that way in the atmosphere where I watched it. With the split loyalties of the bar—not something I'm used to, because the Michigan fanbase is often overwhelming—I watched the game as an absorbing, ultra-competitive battle in which both sides gave their all on every possession.
I couldn't really articulate the stakes when I got there, beyond "Oh, it'd be nice to win." The push-pull of that second half, however, was impossible to resist. On basically every possession, half of the bar would yell and clap, forming opposing waves of noise that rocked me back and forth. It sharpened my desire to be on the winning end, my fear of having to make a glum and quiet exit through the championship whoops. But I also, as I paid more attention to Michigan than I had all year, started to appreciate the rarity of the moment. I was spoiled with local titles when I was a young kid, to a point where they kind of felt like a thing that just happened every once in a while. But I'm old enough to know now that there are no guarantees. If Michigan didn't win this game, who knew if they would ever get the chance again?
There was no indelible moment quite like the Stauskas-to-Robinson alley-oop—one that had me throwing my entire heart and soul into what I was seeing—but what I'll remember best is the end, when I finally stopped gaming out scenarios for Michigan to blow their slim lead. It was a rebound on a missed layup and then a blind throw down the court, the ball bouncing on its own while the last seconds ran out.
I thought the celebrations at the bar were impressively mature: just one round of the fight song, and then some hugs. My old friend and I took a picture to send to some of the gang that slept in my dorm back when we were teenagers, and soon after I was ready to duck out. I had a nice, quiet walk back to the train and an uneventful ride home. I did a load of laundry before I fell asleep. It was a fun night.
