NCAA men’s final: Michigan stops UConn for second national title

Coach Dusty May and the Wolverines (37-3) finished with the winningest season in Michigan’s history.

They held off UConn (34-6), the defending national champions, using its size, depth and muscle to wear down the Huskies.

Michigan had scored 90 or more points in five consecutive games to begin this year’s NCAA Tournament, and while the Wolverines were not as dominant against UConn, they held the Huskies to 31% shooting from the field, The Athletic reported.

The Wolverines outscored the Huskies by 14 points inside and went 25-for-28 on free throws. It was enough to hang a long-awaited national championship banner and give the Big Ten its first NCAA crown in men’s basketball since Michigan State in 2000.

“We talked about it early in the season, to hang a center banner,” May said. “If we were having a bad practice or we didn’t have our edge, we would remind (our players) that if we were ever going to hang another banner so that one has some company, then we can’t have these types of days or practices. Usually that was one way that we could refocus our group.”

Count UConn coach Dan Hurley as a believer.

“They’re legit,” Hurley told reporters after the game. “They definitely deserved to win the national championship. They’re clearly the best team in the country this year. They’re just so hard to score against at the rim. I could talk about the 3s that we missed, and I thought we had a lot of good 3s that we missed. But they just made it so tough on us around the rim.”

UConn was attempting to become the first men’s team since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty of the 1970s to win three titles in four seasons.

Elliot Cadeau was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, and Michigan point guard came through in the final by scoring 19 points -- including 12 in the second half.

“We made two 3s the whole game. We weren’t making shots,” Cadeau said. “But we’ve constantly just been finding ways to win all year, no matter how everybody is playing.”

Cadeau picked up the slack for Yaxel Lendeborg, the Big Ten Player of the Year and leading scorer who was hampered by an injury to his left leg.

Lendeborg still managed to score 13 points.

UConn fought until the end. Solo Ball banked in a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to four points with 37 seconds left. But Trey McKenney sank a pair of free throws to ice the game for Michigan.

“These guys have done it all year,” May said. “When one side of the ball has let us down, the other side has picked it up. Our togetherness defensively ultimately got us over the hump.”