On April 6th, the Michigan Wolverines defeated the UConn Huskies by a score of 69-63 to win their second National Championship in program history.
Michigan had scored over 90 points in every March Madness game leading up to the national championship, and while they only scored 69 points against UConn, they showed that defense wins championships. The Wolverines were led by Elliot Cadeau with 19 points, Yaxel Lendeborg with 13 points, Morez Johnson with 12 points, Trey McKenney with 9 points, and Aday Mara with 8 points.
This Michigan roster is going to go down as one of the best teams in college basketball history, and they will have one of the best stories as well.
Due to the transfer portal, teams can fill gaps in their roster by purchasing players, and that’s exactly what head coach Dusty May did. Out of the nine rotation players for the Wolverines, only three began their careers at Michigan. All five starters for Michigan began their careers elsewhere and transferred in later. Those players include Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina), Nimari Burnett (Texas Tech), Yaxel Lendeborg (UAB), Morez Johnson Jr. (Illinois), and Aday Mara (UCLA).
Two years ago, Michigan was in a bad place. They had just finished the season with an 8-24 record and finished dead last in the Big Ten. Michigan proceeded to fire head coach Juwan Howard and started the search for their next head coach. They landed on Dusty May, the hottest name in coaching at the time, and a hire that felt like everything had changed overnight.
In May’s first year, he led the Wolverines to a 27-10 record and a five seed in the tournament. They made it all the way to the Sweet 16 in year one of May’s tenure, which was a huge difference from the year before. During the off-season, May was working hard to retain the few returning players they had and get top talent out of the transfer portal. That was exactly what he did.
Dusty May brought in the #2-ranked transfer portal class according to multiple websites, and he had the Wolverines looking like pre-season favorites. In the initial AP preseason poll, the Michigan Wolverines were ranked as the #7 team in the country. Little did anyone know the type of season the Wolverines would end up having.
Now that Michigan is on top of the college basketball world until the next season tips off, it’s time to see if they can maintain that level of dominance again next season. Michigan will likely be losing a few players to the NBA draft and graduation, including Yaxel Lendeborg, Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr, Roddy Gayle Jr, and Nimari Burnett. It will be a lot to replace, but that’s the same thing they said after last season.
Congratulations to Michigan for being the first Big Ten team to win a national championship since 2000. Dusty May’s two-year turnaround will go down as one of the best rebuilds in college basketball history, and he deserves all of the love he will get. Michigan proved that you can bounce back from even the worst of seasons, and now everyone else will try to build a team like this year’s Michigan team did.
