INDIANAPOLIS — For Michigan, nothing mattered. Nothing mattered — except for those nets.
The Wolverines couldn’t think about anything else. The world around them was barely there. It was them, their opponent, and a battle to see who would be given an opportunity to take a pair of scissors and cut down the white, nylon nets on opposite sides of the 94-foot floor inside Lucas Oil Stadium.
That was the goal which has been the constant since Dusty May and his staff assembled this year’s team. Stats don’t matter. Individual agendas are not a factor. Anything besides being NCAA champions is completely beside the point.
Michigan was focused, driven and unselfish. It never wavered, not even for a moment, and secured its second national championship in program history with a 69-63 victory over UConn.
Despite a 38% shooting night, a 13% mark from 3-point range and being out-rebounded, Michigan found a way. The Wolverines had scored 90-plus points in each of their five tournament games to reach the national championship but managed fewer than 70 here.
And still, Michigan couldn’t be beaten.
Nothing would faze this team, not even the fact that it experienced its worst shooting performance of the entire season — all 40 games, with none worse than what was seen on the biggest stage in the sport.
The title game had all the ingredients of a Wolverine loss. UConn’s gameplan was being executed nearly to perfection, as it was an ugly, physical game where both teams were brought down to earth.
In NCAA Tournament history, teams were 0-50 all-time in the NCAA Tournament when they shot less than 40% from the field, less than 15% from distance, scored less than 70 points and got out-rebounded.
Now, there’s a one in front of that 50. Michigan is the exception to the rule. There was no denying May’s team a championship, not on Monday night, not with the will to win that Michigan had.
“All year we’ve been just finding ways to win,” NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player, Elliot Cadeau, said after being crowned a champion.
Michigan had to search for a way to win like it never had before. A group with their top four scorers all newcomers, the Wolverines hadn’t been tested like this all season — and certainly not in the NCAA Tournament.
They had steamrolled their way to the national final, collecting wins of 21, 23, 13, 33 and 19 points. But a matchup with UConn brought something entirely different, and it challenged everything that Michigan was about.
“It was scary,” Roddy Gayle Jr. said postgame. “Especially seeing zero 3-point shots go in 28 minutes into the game.”
Michigan didn’t make a 3-pointer until there was a little under 13 minutes to go. Its lights-out shooting from the second half of the national semifinal was long gone, and the Wolverines had to find other ways to be successful.
They leaned on their toughness, their “grittiness,” as Will Tschetter put it, and found ways to be successful no matter how many shots didn’t fall. Michigan used a team effort on defense to generate stops, while it took a size advantage in the frontcourt to find something, anything on the offensive end.
But above it all, its focus on the ultimate goal, and the bonding together willed the Wolverines to a championship.
“We all came together to win,” Tschetter said. “It was kind of a culmination of the whole season coming into one game.”
Togetherness, toughness and mental fortitude — all characteristics of this national championship team. Throughout the season, the Wolverines obviously worked on shooting, their sets and specific basketball Xs and Os, but that’s not what won them the national championship game.
“When you bring a group this talented together and they decide from the beginning that they’re going to do it this way, and they never waver and they never change,” May said, “that’s probably the most uncommon thing in athletics now, and it’s a tribute to their character.”
It was their mentality. The sheer will to win even though things weren’t going their way.
“That was our main goal, win, win, win,” Tschetter added.
He mentioned that this didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of offseason work for everyone to buy into the vision and the mindset that would define this Michigan team. And a lake house — one in northern Michigan on the shore of Lake Charlevoix — served as direct preparation for this moment.
Tschetter said the team — players, managers and coaching staff included — studied the box score from the 2025 Big Ten Tournament championship game between Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Wolverines won, but the lesson wasn’t exactly about the final score. It was about everything else.
“It was like, ‘Anyone remember how many points Roddy Gayle had in this game?’” Tschetter said. “I mean, no one can remember how many points Roddy Gayle had or how many points that I had that game.”
Nobody knew, but the box score did. Gayle had two points and Tschetter totaled six. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered besides the fact that Michigan got to cut down the nets as Big Ten champions.
That was the lesson during the team’s retreat over Labor Day weekend, and 31 weeks later, the test came.
The Wolverines hadn’t shot as poorly as they did against UConn since that Wisconsin game for the Big Ten title. Players such as Gayle, Tschetter and Nimari Burnett all knew what it would take to win a game like that, while the new pieces learned throughout the 40-game journey that led Michigan to the national final.
And when it came time to decide who would walk away with the 2026 national championship, the Wolverines were prepared.
At halftime, Michigan failed to make a 3-pointer in the first 20 minutes for the first time all season, but spirits were high in the locker room, and May decided to call back to their retreat in northern Michigan.
Tschetter said May reminded the team about the box score, about the forgotten stats — everything that’s fleeting over the course of a game.
“He’s like, ‘All that matters is that we’re cutting down nets in 20 minutes,’” Tschetter added.
And 20 minutes of basketball later, Michigan could finally celebrate. Its preparations paid off. Every practice, every team meeting, every single action that led to this moment culminated in the greatest prize of all: a national championship.
And once it was finally over, after the confetti had finished falling to the floor, Michigan could finally do it.
On a maize-and-blue ladder, each Wolverine climbed the steps, took a pair of orange scissors and snipped a piece of nylon from the nets of the national title game in Indianapolis.
Step by step, piece by piece, both nets were slowly taken away. And when it was over, two baskets stood 94 feet from each other with no nets to speak of.
Those will be taken home by Michigan. Since it assembled this team, nets were what the Wolverines were after, and they earned them with a gutsy performance against the Connecticut Huskies.
All the details, every single number in the box score can be thrown away — except for two:
Michigan 69, UConn 63.
Every member of Michigan’s team contributed. From Cadeau, Tschetter, Gayle and Burnett, to Morez Johnson Jr., Aday Mara and Trey McKenney, all the way through the role players, walk-ons, managers and staff — everyone had the same goal in mind. And once it was all over, Michigan’s star, Yaxel Lendeborg, may have said it best:
“All they cared about was winning … and look where it led us.”
