The Winners and Losers of the Men’s Final Four
Dan Hurley keeps winning (and chirping), Michigan looks unstoppable, and being tall remains a pretty good strategy
Who shined brightest in the Final Four? Who fell short? And what will we remember from this men's NCAA tournament? Let’s dive into a special edition of Winners and Losers.
Losers: TV Prognosticators
Dan Hurley loves two things: winning basketball games and talking shit, and Saturday night gave him the chance to do both. After watching his team thoroughly outplay (slightly) favored Illinois in a 71-62 win, Hurley was still thinking about media predictions on the game.
“I just couldn't be more proud of my guys and how hard they fought, when most people probably didn't think we were going to win the game,” Hurley said in his postgame presser. “At least [based on] what I saw on TV today. TNT and some of the different prognostications. So it was great to win the game and I had to throw some shade.”
Hurley is being a bit dramatic there—Illinois was only a slight favorite, giving just 1.5 points—but it was surprising how easy it was for UConn to take control of the game and force it to be played on its terms. It was a physical, 64-possession grind. The Illini may be comfortable playing in a slower, half-court game, but they were ill-prepared for Connecticut’s physical on-ball defense. After the game, Hurley compared the Huskies defensive game plan to man coverage in football. He asked his guards to hold up on an island, with minimal help coming from teammates, in order to limit Illinois’s opportunities from beyond the arc. The Big Ten squad still managed to jack up 26 3-pointers, but they were the kind of shots Hurley wanted.
Jake Davis, who led the country in offensive rating this season, according to KenPom, took just one 3 and clanked it off the rim. Keaton Wagler launched 10 3s and most of them came off the dribble and often deep behind the arc. Ben Humrichous made one of his three attempts. Meanwhile, David Mirkovic and Tomislav Ivisic went a combined 3-for-10, or 30 percent, from deep.
The length of UConn’s backcourt defenders really seemed to give Illinois’s gifted scorers issues. Silas Demary Jr., who’s playing on a sprained ankle, made Wagler very uncomfortable. Solo Ball, Braylon Mullins, Jayden Ross, and Jaylin Stewart won their matchups on the wings, and turned the Illini’s off-ball players into nonfactors. Davis and Kylan Boswell scored just eight points combined and made only one of their seven shots from the field. Tarris Reed Jr. and Alex Karaban matched up perfectly with Ivisic and Mirkovic. There aren’t many teams that can match up with Illinois—but Connecticut was one of the few.
With the Huskies guarding their yard and winning their individual matchups, most of Illinois’s shots came off isos or from ball handlers in the pick-and-roll. The Illini had very few spot-up opportunities and finished with a puny three assists.
UConn’s effort on the offensive end was equally impressive. The players ran Hurley’s intricate sets with a sharpness we haven’t seen from a Huskies team since the back-to-back title-winning teams. They didn’t commit their first turnover until the midpoint of the second half and finished with only four, compared to 14 assists. I don’t know whether Hurley could have coaxed a better game from his team.
Hurley can be a bit of a shithead on the sideline—and his antics have directly led to losses and nearly cost his team this trip to the Final Four—but we can’t let that overshadow this historic run he’s been on these past four seasons. Connecticut is a staggering 18-1 in the past four NCAA tournaments, and that lone blemish was a two-point loss to the eventual title winners. If Hurley can finish the job on Monday night, he’ll have three rings. We have quite literally never seen anything like this in modern college basketball. Maintaining this level of excellence in the most chaotic era of roster building makes the feat even more impressive.
Michigan will be a healthy favorite over Connecticut in the title game, but I’ll tell the analysts who have to offer up a prediction the same thing Hurley told a referee last season: Don’t turn your back on him. He’s the best coach in the fucking sport.
Winner: Solo Ball
I don’t think it’s too harsh to say that UConn’s point guard was one of the most disappointing players of the college basketball season. He was coming off a breakout sophomore campaign in which his scoring average jumped by over 10 points and his 3-point accuracy improved by 9.5 percentage points. Unfortunately his junior season was another reminder that improvement is not linear. Ball’s scoring average dropped and his 3-point shooting regressed. The player who was expected to lead Connecticut this season ended up being the fourth or fifth best player on the team.
But it’s never too late to salvage a season, and Ball may have done that on Saturday night. He didn’t light up the scoreboard—finishing with just 13 points and a couple of assists—but he swished three 3s and played lockdown defense. This UConn team hasn’t been the offensive wagon it’s been in the past, as Hurley pointed out after the game, but when Ball is knocking down shots from the perimeter the Huskies can hit those past heights. If he has any sort of gravity, it opens up so much for UConn’s offense—driving lanes, cutting opportunities for smaller screeners, and openings for slips to the basket for bigger ones.
If Mullins is also hitting, Connecticut doesn’t lose. We haven’t seen Ball and Mullins get hot at the same time often, which has lowered the ceiling for an offense that ranks 27th in opponent-adjusted efficiency after three consecutive top-15 finishes, but we saw it in the biggest game of the season to date. Mullins followed up his legend-making performance against Duke by knocking down four triples against the Illini. That buzzer-beating shot seemed to unlock a new level of confidence for the freshman on Saturday night. If he can carry that over to Monday, and Ball gets a similar boost from his efficient outing, the Huskies will have a chance to pull off the upset and cut down the nets for a third time in four years.
Winner: Michigan’s Depth
I don’t need to see Monday’s title game to say this after watching Arizona get thrashed on Saturday night: Michigan is the best team of this college basketball season. I kind of resent how good the Wolverines looked against the Wildcats. We were promised a competitive game between two equally talented teams, and we got a 91-73 laugher that was pretty much over before the first media timeout of the second half. They made the Big 12 champs look like an overmatched mid-major, which confirmed what should have been clear from the very start of the season. There isn’t a better team in the nation than Michigan. That’s not to say Connecticut has no chance. You don’t count out a coach who’s won 95 percent of his past 19 tournament games. But no team can match the Wolverines’ A game.
Michigan, at its apex, isn’t just unbeatable. Keeping the game within 20 points feels like a win. I don’t think Saturday’s result exposed Arizona as fraudulent. That’s a legitimately good team that tore through a brutal conference schedule. The roster was deep, with a bunch of future pros, and one of the sport’s best coaches. Yet the Wolverines tore them apart.
And here’s the terrifying part: This wasn’t Michigan at its apex. Not with Yaxel Lendeborg limping around the court on a bad ankle and sprained knee for 14 minutes. Lendeborg scored 11 points in that limited playing time, but only five of those came after he rolled his ankle on a drive just before the under-8 timeout in the first half. Lendeborg sank his two free throws before heading back to the locker room. He did start the second half but made just one shot in nine minutes of court time. Even without its star, Michigan improved its scoring pace and dropped 43 points on the nation’s second-ranked defense, per KenPom.
Lendeborg going down gave Michigan's side characters a chance to step into the spotlight on the sport’s biggest stage and flaunt the team’s unreal depth. Freshman Trey McKenney has shown flashes of stardom this season, but he looked like one of the best players on the court in a game full of NBA prospects, scoring 16 off the bench. Roddy Gayle Jr. scored nine points and was all over the court defensively. Lendeborg is intent on playing on Monday night—and was healthy enough for a perfect recreation of Michael Irvin’s belt to ass celebration from the College Football Playoffs—but the Wolverines will likely need another big night out of the bench (which is down its sixth man, L.J. Cason, who tore his ACL in February.) Gayle has developed into a reliable shooter who’s good for two 3s a night. McKenney is an NBA-level talent who’s scoring 15 points a game, in only about 25 minutes of playing time, over his past three. Even if Lendeborg is compromised, Gayle and McKenney can replace him in the aggregate with Michigan’s other starters picking up the rest of the slack. Blowing out Arizona was proof of that concept.
The game may have been a dud from a competitive standpoint, but watching Michigan mow down teams in this tournament has been a blast. The Wolverines play attractive basketball and it’s rare to see a team this loaded with scoring talent share the ball so selflessly. The ball never sticks. You might expect a team with a bunch of stars to play more one-on-one ball, but giving up the ball is a lot easier when you’re passing it to another trustworthy scorer. There isn’t a player in the rotation who can’t put the ball in the basket. There are only a few teams in the country who can make a similar claim—and Michigan just bounced one of them out of the dance.
Loser: Shooting Efficiency
Ignore Saturday night’s box score, which may lead you to believe that Michigan point guard Elliot Cadeau had a rough night. And while he may have had a difficult time finding his shooting range, he did just about everything else at an elite level.
The junior, who started his career at North Carolina before transferring to Ann Arbor this past offseason, bossed the game from start to finish. He dished out 10 assists and just toyed with Arizona’s big men in the pick-and-roll. Aday Mara led the team with 26 points, but a lot of his makes were created by Cadeau, who assisted on three of Mara’s field goals and helped him get to the free throw line. He also came up with four steals, grabbed five rebounds, and knocked down three 3s. It was one of the best 5-for-17 shooting games you’ll ever see.
Cadeau’s shot inside the arc has been off, but he continues to be a consistent source of 3-point shooting, which is remarkable given how his career started. As a UNC freshman, he shot 19 percent from 3 and his jumper had gotten so broken that opponents started leaving him and daring him to shoot—a tactic that some coaches hilariously refer to as “dorking.” Cadeau is no longer dorkable. He’s shooting 38 percent from deep on the season and has hit 11 3-pointers during Michigan’s tournament run. And now that shots are falling, it’s even more difficult to stay in front of him. Arizona’s guards, including Big 12 all-defensive team selection Jaden Bradley, had no chance, and Tennessee’s didn’t fare any better in the Elite Eight.
If UConn guard Silas Demary’s ankle is anywhere close to 100 percent, he has the length and quickness to give Cadeau some problems, which could disrupt Michigan’s powerful offense. That’s really the only path to victory. If Cadeau is touching paint and creating easy opportunities for teammates—and also knocking down 3s—the Wolverines are scoring 90-plus. Backed by the nation’s most efficient defense, that will be enough to win a title on Monday night.
Winner: Height
I’m not breaking any new ground here by pointing out that size really seems to make a difference in college basketball, but I don’t know if there’s ever been a point in the modern game where that’s been more true. Every team in this year’s Final Four, and all four 1-seeds, are ranked in the top 30 in average player height, per KenPom.
Based on average height, this is the tallest season since 2007, which is as far back as KenPom’s height data goes. And these big dudes are skilled. Nation-wide offensive efficiency and effective field goal percentage are the highest they’ve ever been. And those numbers aren’t just inflated by increased 3-point rates and accuracy. Teams are shooting 51 percent on shots from inside the arc, which would be the best mark in a season since 1948, when the stat was first tracked.
Some of the best coaches in the sport have talked about the benefits of investing in bigger and stronger players who can own the paint, which is a bit of zag while the rest of the country zigs toward 3-point shooting. No coach has been more committed to that than Dusty May in the portal era. He took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four with big Vlad Goldin and then got to the Sweet 16 last year with a double-big lineup of Goldin and Danny Wolf. Now he’s got a triple big lineup. Lendeborg may play more like a wing with the Wolverines, but he started his college career as a true big who averaged over two blocks a game in his first season at UAB.
Arizona was technically the taller team Saturday, but Michigan held a height advantage at all three spots in the front court, with Mara (7-foot-3) vs. Motiejus Krivas (7-foot-2), Morez Johnson Jr. (6-foot-9) vs. Koa Peat (6-foot-8) and Lendeborg (6-foot-9) vs. Ivan Kharchenkov (6-foot-7). Those don’t feel like big margins on paper, but they felt big when watching those matchups play out. Mara had no problem getting his shots off over Krivas, which is typically not the case for Arizona’s opponents. Johnson isn’t really a post threat but was too quick for his defenders, who couldn’t keep pace with his rim runs. Lendeborg could have gone for 30 if he had been healthy and played the entire game. The Wildcats have a big team, and the Wolverines still managed to make them look small.
Having three big guys who can reliably get shots off at or near the rim is one of the keys to surviving a single elimination tournament, where cold shooting nights always seem to pop up at least once. Michigan ranks fourth nationally in 2-point field goal percentage while ranking second in 2-point defense, giving them the biggest margin between those two stats, per KenPom. If the Wolverines do finish this season off with a win on Monday night, that’s the stat that best explains how they did it. This may not be the biggest team in the country on paper, but it plays like it.
