15-0 National Champs - Conner Wolfe

Michigan State has returned to where it naturally belongs. Firmly under Michigans foot with it's head buried in the mud.

National Championship Game Picks 🏆 The final one of the season 🥲

Shootaround sights

Dear Americans, Your President is a Pedophile

NCAA Tournament wins by Big Ten team since 2013: Michigan — 30 MSU — 24 Purdue — 19 Wisconsin — 17 UCLA — 17 Oregon — 16 Illinois — 11 Maryland — 8 Iowa — 7 OSU — 7 Indiana — 6 USC — 5 Northwestern — 3 Minnesota — 2 Nebraska — 2 PSU — 1 Rutgers — 1 Washington — 1

Michigan is 17-2 in tournament-style games in two years under Dusty May. It is a staff full of elite teachers. But it also has a roster full of elite learners, too. Spoke to an assistant on the key to U-M's success in quick turnarounds: on3.com/teams/michigan…

Yax, Roddy and LJ are on Tik Tok live asking people if they would eat ass for 10 milly.😂😂😂 We are so locked in for tomorrow. Michigan by 20

Dusty May had Michigan players adjust to football stadium depth perception — by having them shoot at Michigan Stadium. “Worst case scenario, these guys went out and shot some hoops in the middle of the Big House,” May said.

FWIW: Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg just walked past our @CBSSportsHQ shot looking very comfortable in sandals and pajama pants. Said hello. Seemed in good spirits. No noticeable limp.

Playing for it all.

TONIGHT!

#Michigan skyrockets up the leaderboard for 2027 EDGE Uhila Wolfgramm (@UhilaMFW4) following weekend experience in Ann Arbor (VIP) "No doubt it's at or towards the top right now." 247sports.com/college/michig…

Excellent write up

@ohiosportsonly @BuckeyeNatty @JonRothstein They were also the favorite in those 5 games. They are not this time around.

@BuckeyeNatty @JonRothstein UConn has 5 championships since the last time a big ten team won it all. Have some faith

TODAY'S NATIONAL TITLE GAME: UConn/Michigan

@BiggieSmal33833 @BuriedTreys Both are playing so it's a moot point

@BuriedTreys Question: which is the worse loss for their team? Solo or Yax?

UConn / Michigan Before diving into the game, we have a couple injury notes in this one. Yax left last game with a knee/ankle, went back to the locker room two separate times, but returned to hobble through a couple 2H mins even with the game already safely decided. He seemed pretty confident that he would play, but what percentage health-wise is he? Because I am pretty damn sure it’s nowhere near 100%, especially with how those things can swell overnight. Solo Ball also popped up wearing a boot with what Hurley described as “some kind of foot sprain”. With how steel-trap that staff can be with injury info, there’s a chance we don’t get much clarity on this until closer to tip, but that sure doesn’t sound good. Last year, that would have been a huge hit to this offense, but there are some pretty damning on/off splits to his name this year. For anybody in the country who shot at least 150 3PAs the last two years, Solo has the #1 (largest) fall-off in 3P% YoY. He just hasn’t been the same elite shooter, but when facing that Michigan assault, it is ALL hands-on deck from the perimeter, so it certainly isn’t ideal even with the lack of efficiency. Neither guy was listed on the most recent injury report I saw, so I would expect both to play. Bit of a guessing game as to how healthy they are The pace in this game will be a MASSIVE factor. UConn wants to slow things down to a halfcourt crawl while Michigan is a different breed of transition wagon altogether. I’m obviously not one for ‘single-factor handicapping’, but there is a pretty good chance I can tell you the outcome of the game just by looking at the possession count. If this thing gets up into the low 70’s possessions, that means the Wolverines were able to get out and run and are probably controlling the game most/all of the way. UConn absolutely must slow them down On the UConn side, I was actually somewhat surprised that ShotQuality backed up their Final 4 win given how poorly Illinois shot from the perimeter (23% on 26 3PAs). I expected to see a slightly closer margin of victory, but a lot of that had to do with SQ clocking UConn at 7-19 (37%) at the rim, which was their worst mark of the season in that department according to their numbers. Sidenote, SQ is a tad more liberal with the distance they consider ‘rim’ vs Torvik, so BT was slightly different yet still had UConn 6-15 at the rim. StatBroadcast had them 4-11 on Layups+Dunks. I’m harping on this a lot because while Illinois may be slightly more sturdy on the interior, they also don’t have anywhere near the athleticism of the Yax/Morez pairing nor the length of Mara, so a lot will fall on the pure shotmaking of the Huskies. We saw what happens if your offense is reliant on getting to the rim against Michigan. Godspeed. They just completely packed up maybe the best rim assault in the country last game. Wolverines are 9th Nationally in Defensive Near Proximity Frequency, 4th in Average Defensive 2PA Distance, and 2nd in 2PD%. UConn, however, is perfectly fine not being reliant on getting to the rim (outside of Tarris post touches). Look back at when the Huskies played Zona early in the season while short-handed. They only had 11 attempts at the rim per BT with 20 midrange attempts and 25 3PAs. Could see a similar-looking shot diet here, which they are more than capable of executing. Outside of letting Purdue shoot 15-19 at the rim in the B10 Tourney Championship, Michigan’s rim protection has been pretty immaculate. We had concerns with how Illinois’ frontcourt would fare chasing the UConn shooters around, and it was clearly a problem from the jump as Mullins got two exceptionally clean looks early on from Mirkovic & Davis lagging through screens. In theory, you typically want to try and attack a similarly sized front court in the same manner, but there is one massive difference between the Illinois/Michigan defenses. The footspeed of Morez & (even <100%) Yax is in another stratosphere compared to the Balkan Bros, so Michigan should hold up better in that regard as they are a team who is much more comfortable switching those actions than an Illinois team who runs a passive drop coverage specifically in order to stay out of switches/rotations defensively. Michigan is elite defending off-ball screening actions whereas Illinois was one of the worst P5s, especially among the teams at the top. Michigan will probably drop Mara to battle Tarris inside and likely switch 1 through 4, so while it’s not as passive of a defensive coverage as Illinois, there are still some similarities with the game-to-game scout. I think if we see UConn ball screening, it’s likely coming later in the shot clock after they have run their sets and hopefully gotten a switch mismatch. While it certainly wasn’t Demary’s most efficient shooting performance in the Final 4, him being healthier is extremely crucial as not only their best on-ball option but also their best POA defender to try and slow Cadeau’s playmaking down. Hurley said he’s still a “shell of himself” offensively fwiw. The Michigan side is much more straightforward because we saw what they can do when their 3’s are falling. They entered the Final 4 shooting 44% from 3 in the tourney. They then shot 44% from 3 against the #2 team on KenPom and absolutely smashed them. Back at Player’s Era, they beat then-#1 KenPom rated Zaga by 40 behind shooting 48% from 3. When they are hitting perimeter shots, there isn't really much recourse for opponents whatsoever. But against Duke back in late February, they shot 24% from 3, were outrebounded 41-28, Mara had foul trouble, and yet, somehow still were in the game the entire way even though they were ultimately edged out down the stretch. UConn cannot pose the same type of interior threat that Duke can, but their offenses are pretty similar in terms of how much they do away from the ball. UConn’s defense is annually elite under Hurley at limiting drive & kick opportunities, as they typically surrender a low Assist Rate & 3PRate on the defensive side. That’s a must b/c Michigan is most dangerous out in transition or when they're hitting step-in 3's. I would guess that the Huskies play it similarly to how Zona did where they're totally content having Cadeau beat them in the midrange off the bounce. He is averaging nearly 9 assists per game over the last 6 but was 2-10 inside the arc (the passes off the backboard counted as shots aside). If you subscribe to the Postseason Dan Hurley stuff, then these quick turnaround spots on short prep is typically where I want to play on guys like that. In the last 4 years, UConn is 9-0 ATS and 8-1 S/U on less than 2 days rest in the NCAA Tournament by an average cover margin of 10.94 ppg. That is, shall we say, quite exceptional. I think how much you factor this comes down to how you view this year’s team compared to the b2b Championship teams who looked a lot more like Michgan looks this year. Frankly, just with how different this UConn team is compared to their b2b Championship Juggernaut teams, I personally don't put THAT much into it although it certainly doesn't hurt The Yax factor is tough to make heads or tails of. There is a part of me that thinks Michigan could run some zone/matchup zone wrinkles so that he only has to guard a space rather than chasing those shooters all over the court. They hardly ran any during the year, so I wouldn't 'expect' it, but we may see a more packline-y zone type defense. There is a chance that he’s not much healthier than he was in that 2H when he couldn’t do anything other than being a corner 3P shooter. He also could be healthy enough that Michigan runs their typical stuff both ways, although I think that is much less likely. If Yax is compromised, I would guess that Michigan’s offense runs heavily through Cadeau off the bounce or Mara in the high post and probably utilizes a little more of Roddy Gayle or McKenney’s stout frame at the wing When you talk about UConn’s path, it starts at the 3P line. No real way around it when talking about a matchup against the juggernaut that Michigan has shown themselves to be. Given the Huskies are not an exceptional shot volume team, it is likely they’ll need to outshoot Michigan from the arc to have a chance. If the Huskies get outshot, then they’ll need a multitude of other factors falling in their favor including limit possessions, match/beat them on the glass, Michigan kicking the ball away. And even that may not be enough if they lose from the arc. Kicking the ball away is another interesting point. While both teams rank around 160th in TO% nationally (slightly above average), they have certainly had their issues during parts of the year with keeping TOs down. It's ESPECIALLY critical for UConn to limit their turnovers b/c that is the quickest way to let Michigan get out and run like we saw against Arizona. Think there is some strong correlation to side and total in this matchup. If you like UConn to cover in this spot, it's much more likely that the game is lower scoring and vice versa for Michigan 7 is obviously pretty stiff for a spread in a title game, but I don't know if I am willing to step in front of that Wolverine freight train. So long as Michigan doesn't get brutally shot varianced from the perimeter, they should be in the driver's seat to be in control of this game. They obviously have additional ceiling upside when you have proven to beat elite teams in the manner they have this year. Unfortunately, it's tough to speculate on props when you have injuries to guys of Yax's & Solo's minute load up in the air. A lot of where you end up on props will be driven and/or heavily determined by how healthy you think those 2 guys are. All 3 of the primary interior players (Reed, Mara, Morez) all have double-double upside, but all come with plenty of their own foul risk. I will say that foul risk is significantly lower on the Michigan side b/c what comes along with UConn's jumpshooting-heavy shot diet is a low offensive FTRate outside of basically Demary/Reed. And I haven't touched on the FT line but should mention that UConn being outside the T300 on both sides of the ball means they're likely to lose the FT volume battle on top of being a worse FT% shooting team. I could definitely envision a scenario where UConn hangs around all game but doesn't cover b/c of late FTs and missed 3s on their side. The most favorable matchup here would be the UConn 3P shooters, who should get plenty of Catch & Shoot opportunities with the way Michigan plugs gaps defensively. They're also the Huskies' best path to being competitive in this game. So if you like UConn, you probably have to feel good that at least one of these guys gets hot from the perimeter. I have NO idea what UConn does against Morez Johnson. I imagine they'll have to send help at some point, but you can't pull off Mara without allowing a free oop, nor do you feel good about digging a perimeter defender down with the way Michigan is shooting it. There is a slight possibility we even see some "Break In Case of Emergency" Reed + Reibe lineups to try and play them straight-up with some size/physicality. Morez could also foul so I wouldn't go crazy on his stuff Boils down to the Huskies needing to hit perimeter shots and keeping the game in the halfcourt, otherwise we'll be crowning one of the more dominant teams of the past decade

Just throwing this out there: Michigan Football won the National Championship against a team named the Huskies 3 years ago.

@DrDCH @itsAntWright That's a bingo. Never want to give Michigan any credit.

@itsAntWright I find it amusing that 90% of American said the Michigan Arizona winner is the national champ. Michigan dominates Arizona and now UConn is the pick. All metrics point to a Michigan win. It won’t be easy and Yaxel injury is a concern, but Michigan should win.

A lot of rat poison on the timeline today Alex Karaban and Dan Hurley are going for their third ring in four years.. UConn’s best shooter grew up a Michigan fan.. UConn’s enforcer is a Michigan recruit UConn has six rings in seven Final Four appearances This isn’t Tennessee

@IzeIntheSky @itsAntWright Yax's health isn't questionable. He was practicing with the team today and will be good to go for the game.

@itsAntWright Feels like every stat or historical trend would say Michigan wins this game at this point but that goes out the window against UConn + questionable Yax health

Oh my god Dusty and Danny rubbed foreheads during their joint interview with @AdamZuckerCBS

Lebron lol

“Well, when God gives you the raspy voice, height, and lack of vertical jump he’s gotta bless you with something.” 😂 Dusty May on Dan Hurley’s comments regarding his age/looks.