A team for its time: Transfer-laden Michigan wins the NCAA title over gritty UConn
The Wolverines start five transfers, the first time that's happened in NCAA history. But likely not the last. It's a new day in college sports.
They are the ultimate team of their changing times, a champion built out of the ashes of 8-24 three years ago by using the portal, NIL and all the tools now available to college coaches and administrators.
Michigan, the national champion after Monday night’s 69-63 rock fight against gritty UConn, became the first-ever team to win the whole thing while playing five transfers at the five starting spots.
It took Dusty May, son of Eastern Greene High School, all of two seasons to replicate at Michigan what he accomplished at FAU. Except this time his team took the final step, and they did it by beating UConn at its own game. Is Darian DeVries watching? Because as we’ve seen from Curt Cignetti and now May, it can be done quickly. Overnight, even.
The old heads tend to prefer homemade teams, teams like Purdue who grow their own, develop and retain top players for all four years. We like players who know the words to the alma mater. But we live in very different times, times that long since passed by Tommy Tuberville and all the dopes who are freaking out because now the players have the power and the freedom. As they should.
Seriously, for all the bitching and moaning about the big money that has come to revenue-producing college athletics, does anybody have a sour taste about a bunch of transfers coming together under a terrific head coach and producing a championship? I mean, isn’t that sort-of what IU did in football? Did knowing that Yaxel Lendeborg makes millions somehow reduce your enjoyment of the NCAA Tournament? Did Fernando Mendoza’s paycheck diminish your joy?
I didn’t think so.
There’s nothing wrong with building the way that May built his team in Ann Arbor. College basketball has become a year-to-year proposition. The old ways can still work – see Purdue – but more and more, we’re going to look at this Michigan team as the archetype.
