INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Game of the year? This wasn’t even the game of the night.
Michigan overpowered Arizona early and humbled the ’Cats for 40 long minutes Saturday, turning their highly anticipated Final Four matchup into a 91-73 Wolverines dunkfest-slash-highlight reel.
Junior center Aday Mara scored a career-high 26 points and grabbed nine rebounds. About the only question in this one concerned the health of Wolverines forward Yaxel Lendeborg, a first-team All-American who landed on an Arizona player’s foot, rolled his ankle and sprained his knee, but still had 11 points over 14 minutes.
He vowed he’d be ready for Monday’s title matchup against UConn, a 71-62 winner over Illinois in the early semifinal that was billed — wrongly — as the undercard to this battle of No. 1 seeds.
“It’s going to take a full 40 minutes of fighting,” Lendeborg said.
This one was over in about five.
The Blue blew through their fifth straight March Madness opponent by double digits while becoming the first team to break 90 points five times in a single tournament.
It was all quite a shock, considering Michigan and Arizona came in with the nation’s top two defenses, a pair of top-five offenses and somewhere between eight and a dozen NBA stars between them.
But it was the Wolverines (36-3) who looked like pros, running to a double-digit lead only 5:31 into the contest, then swatting (three blocks) and slamming (nine dunks) Arizona into oblivion.
“These guys have such, I guess, extensive background in playing high-profile basketball games,” said Michigan coach Dusty May, who was spotted at courtside earlier in the evening, scouting UConn-Illinois for a Monday night game he sensed he’d be part of. “We just felt like we are battle-tested.”
The game plan against the Big 12 champion Wildcats (36-3) couldn’t have worked any better.
Michigan packed the paint on defense, basically giving the team that averaged the fifth-fewest 3-point attempts in the country this year free rein from long distance, then daring Arizona to create inside. The Wildcats failed at both.
Koa Peat had a quiet 16 points and 11 rebounds for Arizona, which shot 6 for 17 from 3, 36% overall and had two assists and nine turnovers over a first half that ended with them trailing 48-32. Sparkplug Jaden Bradley got his fourth foul 94 seconds into the second half and finished with 13 points, most in extended garbage time.
Arizona’s only two losses before this were by four and by three back in February. The Wildcats trailed by nine less than 2:30 into this one.
“No one has been able to do that to us all year,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, who got a contract extension over the weekend, presumably to keep him from going to North Carolina.
Making it all the more impressive for Michigan was that it started this runaway without Lendeborg, who committed two fouls within five seconds of each other less than 90 seconds into the game, then landed on Motiejus Krivas’ foot a little later and went to the locker room for ice.
Lendeborg called the injury “a weird feeling” but promised, “there’s no way I’m missing the game on Monday no matter what goes on.”
In fact, he returned for the second half and made two quick 3s to push Michigan’s lead past 20. He was on the bench — and the stationary bike — for good with 5:19 left, enough time for rest and ice to get ready for UConn, which is going for its third title in four seasons.
Michigan is going for only the program’s second championship (1989), though its most famous team — the Fab Five, which made the final twice in the early ’90s — was in the building to helm an “alt-cast” of this Michigan celebration.
Some of this — the dunks, the alley-oops, the rim hanging and jersey tugging (but no baggy shorts) — might have reminded them of them.
Freshman Trey McKenney made four 3s and had 16 points for the Wolverines. Elliot Cadeau overcame a bout with his nut allergy to compile a crazy stat line: 13 points, 10 assists, six turnovers, five rebounds and four steals on 5-for-17 shooting. Even with that, Michigan finished 47.8% from the floor and 12 for 27 from 3.
Asked why he kept Lendeborg in for as long as he did, May recalled UConn’s second-half comeback from 19 down against Duke in the Elite Eight.
“We felt like the game was still in hand,” May said.
Not really.
What sufficed for drama down the stretch was whether May’s team would join Jerry Tarkanian’s 1990 UNLV juggernaut as only the second team to hit triple digits at the Final Four in the modern era.
The Wolverines emptied the bench with a few minutes left and came up short, but no matter. Everybody knew who the better team was in this one. That it got figured out so early was the real shock.
“It’s tough for me to process this right now,” Peat said.