How Michigan, UConn Punched Their Championship Monday Tickets

Dusty May was in the building early. While Braylon Mullins and Tarris Reed Jr. were still warming up for the first semifinal, Michigan’s head coach had already taken his seat at Hinkle Fieldhouse to watch UConn and Illinois go at it. He had a hunch he’d need to know what he was getting into Monday night. His team gave him plenty of time to study.

By halftime of his own game, the score was 48-32 and Arizona was already finished. May had his scouting report, his team had its statement, and the national championship matchup was locked in before most of the country had settled in for what was supposed to be the night’s marquee event.

Michigan 91, Arizona 73. UConn 71, Illinois 62.

The Wolverines and Huskies meet Monday night for the 2026 NCAA title.

A Blowout That Wasn’t Supposed to Be One

People had been talking about Michigan-Arizona for weeks. Two No.1 seeds, the country’s best defenses, enough NBA talent between them to field a small draft class — it had every ingredient of a classic. Arizona came in having lost twice all year, never by more than four. They had never been handled like this.

Michigan handled them like this.

Nine points in the hole before two and a half minutes were up. Double digits before the first media timeout. Sixteen at halftime. Peat getting consolation buckets in garbage time while the Wolverines were already thinking about Monday.

None of it required their best player.

Yaxel Lendeborg already had two fouls within five seconds of each other, less than 90 seconds after tipoff, and then sprained his MCL by rolling his ankle on Motiejus Krivas’ foot when driving to the rim. Despite him needing to spend time in the locker room, Michigan kept growing the lead without him.

Aday Mara, the junior center who transferred in from UCLA, stepped up with arguably the best performance of his college career. He scored 26 points, grabbed nine rebounds, protected the rim, and gave Arizona’s interior defense problems; it simply had no answer for all night.

“He was at the rim catching lobs, he was a force down low, he was a pressure release up top,” May said. “He’s such a smart basketball player.”

Freshman Trey McKenney buried four 3-pointers and finished with 16 points. Elliot Cadeau — who had spent the early part of Saturday managing a nut allergy before tip off — somehow compiled 13 points, 10 assists, five rebounds, and four steals despite shooting 5-of-17 from the floor. He was 2-of-14 at halftime, and the TBS broadcast team still called him the best player on the court.

“They have so much confidence in me,” Cadeau said. “I missed a lot of shots today. I had a lot of turnovers today, but I didn’t hear one thing about that from the coaching staff. It just helps me stay calm.”

When Lendeborg returned for the second half, Michigan’s lead was already past 20 and Arizona had stopped believing. He buried two 3-pointers in quick succession anyway, just to be sure, then climbed on the stationary bike with 5:19 left to get ready for Monday.

“There’s no way I’m missing the game on Monday no matter what goes on,” Lendeborg said.

The Fab Five — Michigan’s most famous team, the one that made back-to-back title game appearances in the early 1990s without ever winning — was in the building Saturday to helm an alt-cast of the game. Some of what they saw had to feel familiar: the dunks, the alley-oops, the rim hanging, the energy. The baggy shorts were gone, but the spirit was recognizable.

Michigan is going to the championship game for only the second time since those teams, chasing only the second national title in program history.

Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, who got a contract extension over the weekend — reportedly to prevent him from leaving for North Carolina — had little to offer after watching his program get handled in a way it hadn’t experienced all year.

“No one has been able to do that to us all year,” Lloyd said.

Arizona guard Jaden Bradley picked up his fourth foul 94 seconds into the second half and spent plenty of time on the bench. He finished with 13 points largely in garbage time. The Wildcats shot 36 percent from the floor, turned it over nine times before halftime alone, and struggled to generate paint pressure, let alone finish plays with efficiency. They needed it against a Michigan defense that was pre-rotating in help to pack the paint, daring them to shoot the ball. Arizona went 6-of-17 from deep.

Michigan shot 47.8 percent from the floor and 12-of-27 from three. The Wolverines finished as the first program in history to crack 90 points five times in a single NCAA Tournament, and they did it while their best player sat in the training room for most of the first half.

The bench cleared with several minutes remaining. Michigan nearly joined Jerry Tarkanian‘s 1990 UNLV team as the only programs to hit triple digits at the Final Four in the modern era. Michigan came up short of 100, which was the only thing that didn’t go its way Saturday.

(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

The One That Required a Miracle Worker

The early game was playing out the way Dan Hurley‘s teams always seem to, requiring grit and a rock fight, with his UConn squad surviving until someone made the play that mattered most.

Once, again, the player who stepped up was Braylon Mullins.

A week ago in Washington, D.C., the freshman guard from Greenfield, Indiana — a short drive from Indianapolis — launched a 35-footer with 0.4 seconds left to eliminate top overall seed Duke and send the college basketball world into a frenzy. Saturday, he pulled off something quieter but no less timely.

UConn led Illinois by 14 points with under 10 minutes remaining, then watched the Illini claw all the way back to within four. The Huskies were in foul trouble. Silas Demary Jr. was playing on a bum ankle. Alex Karaban, UConn’s decorated senior forward who had been to two previous Final Fours, was misfiring badly — he finished 1-of-8 from the field. The moment had every ingredient for a collapse.

Then Demary dove for an offensive rebound. And Mullins set his feet. And that was that.

The catch-and-shoot 3-pointer — Mullins’ only basket of the second half — landed with 52 seconds left and pushed the lead to seven. UConn closed it at the free-throw line.

“I think it just happened within the game,” Mullins said. “Seeing the first two go in, it just boosts all the confidence for you to keep shooting.”

He finished with 15 points. Reed Jr. was the game’s most consistent force, controlling the paint for 17 points and 11 rebounds. With 30 seconds left and UConn needing to run out the clock, Reed made eye contact with Hurley and nodded: let them foul me, Coach. I’ve got this. He knocked both down.

“Just trusting all the work I put in,” Reed said.

The effort Demary made to get that rebound — the one that set up Mullins’ dagger — deserves its own moment of appreciation. He was playing hurt, fighting through every possession on an ankle that wasn’t right, and he still dove for the ball when it mattered most.

“Being on a bum ankle but still being able to give it my all and leave everything out there for my teammates,” Demary said. “Just knowing that 50/50 plays, first one to the ball in that situation, it’s a great feeling.”

Illinois played well enough to win. The Illini held UConn to 35 percent shooting from the floor and forced the Huskies into two scoring droughts of nearly six minutes apiece. They outscrambled and outfought Connecticut for long stretches. Freshman Keaton Wagler, who finished with 20 points and eight rebounds, and Tomislav Ivisic, who added 16 and seven, gave Illinois a frontcourt presence that caused UConn genuine problems.

But the Illini went 6-of-26 from 3-point range and misfired on shot after shot at the rim — looks that had dropped all season, rattling in and out on the biggest stage the program had seen in 21 years.

Illinois hadn’t been to a Final Four since losing the national championship game to North Carolina in 2005. Brad Underwood, who turned 62 in March, was reaching this stage for the first time in his coaching career — a career that has taken him from Dodge City Community College to Kansas State to South Carolina to Oklahoma State to Champaign.

He wasn’t going to dress it up after the loss.

“I’m sad,” Underwood said. “If you want to know the truth, I’m sad.”

What made it more complicated was that Illinois had beaten UConn by 13 points earlier this season in a regular-season game — a fact Hurley was aware of, and one that shaped how the Huskies were perceived heading into Saturday. Most of the pregame conversation treated UConn as a slight underdog, which Hurley found amusing in his postgame press conference.

“Most people probably didn’t think we were going to win the game,” Hurley said. “Or at least a little bit of what I saw on TV today. So it was great to win the game. I had to throw some shade.”

Karaban, who struggled offensively but contributed four rebounds and four assists, now has 18 career NCAA Tournament wins — tying Bobby Hurley, Dan’s brother, for second all time. One more victory Monday and he becomes the first player since the John Wooden era at UCLA to win three national championships.

“To make history with Monday for him, I think that’s what we’re all trying to accomplish,” Mullins said. “It would be so special for him.”

Wagler and Mullins became the first pair of freshmen to each score 15 or more points in a Final Four game since Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing did it in 1982.

What Monday Holds

Michigan is going to its first national championship game since 2018. UConn is playing in its third in four years.

The Wolverines have beaten five straight NCAA Tournament opponents by double digits — a stretch of dominance that has no recent precedent in the history of the event. The Huskies have won 19 straight games from the Sweet 16 onward, a streak stretching back to 2009.

Lendeborg’s health will be the story to monitor heading into Monday. He said he’d play regardless. Whether he’s at full capacity against a UConn interior that just gave Illinois’s frontcourt genuine trouble is a different question.

Hurley didn’t spend much time worrying about what Michigan might throw at them.

“We’re a tough program,” he said. “We’re a group of fighters. We go into these games, we’re ready for battle. It’s a life-and-death struggle for us to get to Monday night for the opportunity to win a championship.”

Lendeborg already knew what it would take.

“It’s going to take a full 40 minutes of fighting,” he said.