This men’s Final Four promises monster lineups, but UConn is a different kind of beast

Three Final Four spots were claimed by Sunday afternoon, representing great teams and respected men’s basketball brands but just two combined national championships.

Duke and Connecticut squared up for the final spot with 11 titles between them. The winner of the East Regional final would be distinguished from the other three teams in Indy — Arizona, Illinois and Michigan — either way. When UConn won it on what is instantly one of the most dramatic shots the NCAA Tournament has seen, in the only dramatic Elite Eight game this year, we had a double outlier.

Three monstrously large teams looking to transform light trophy cases. One team that doesn’t play the same brand of big bully ball that’s increasingly en vogue but is looking for its third championship in four years. That would make seven overall for UConn, putting it past North Carolina for sole possession of third place all-time, behind only UCLA (11) and Kentucky (8).

“I mean, the ’23 and ’24 teams, they just smashed everybody,” Huskies coach Dan Hurley said after the latest legendary Duke-UConn chapter. “We just ran through this tournament like it was nothing. So (this is) more of a team that had to be clutch, that’s had to be clutch the whole year.”

It’s been another chalky NCAA Tournament, but not as chalky as a year ago when all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four for the second time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. It would have felt much more preordained had Duke not squandered a near-certain win. Incredibly. For the second year in a row.

Arizona, Duke and Michigan have been the best teams all season, sitting atop the polls and passing around the top three spots in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency rankings. It was Michigan 1, Arizona 2 after Sunday’s games, setting up perfectly for the national semifinals nightcap in Indianapolis between the Wolverines and Wildcats.

This is the matchup we haven’t seen this year that we most want to see. But it would be a mistake to do what some will do this week and label it the de facto national championship game.

UConn had the toughest path to Indy, beating No. 1 seed Duke and No. 3 seed Michigan State in Washington, D.C., the only Final Four team to play the highest possible seed in all four wins. The Huskies beat Florida this season, won at Kansas, beat St. John’s by 32 and lost 71-67 to Arizona without center Tarris Reed Jr. UConn also beat Illinois 74-61 on Nov. 28 in Madison Square Garden.

But Illinois is a different team. Freshman guard Keaton Wagler played 14 minutes in that Black Friday game, scoring three points on three shots, and was still building toward the dominant playmaker he has become. Brad Underwood’s team had some issues finishing close games and getting key stops at times this season, but now it’s doing both and continuing to rely on the nation’s No. 1 offense — and tallest lineup.

“I think it’s important, I think it can wear on people, it can make things difficult,” Underwood said Saturday after his team (average height of 80 inches) beat No. 9 seed Iowa to take the South Region. “We’ve relied on that all year being the biggest team in the country.”

Duke’s ouster robs the Final Four of the second-tallest team (79.3 inches), but Arizona is No. 7 (79.0), and though Dusty May’s Wolverines are just 28th (78.7), that’s because they don’t have massive guards. The Wolverines’ jumbo starting three-four-five lineup of Yaxel Lendeborg (6-9), Morez Johnson Jr. (6-9) and Aday Mara (7-3) dominates and makes Michigan the most imposing of the teams that have embraced going big again.

UConn is sizable overall as well, just behind Michigan (78.6 inches on average) at 30th nationally. But senior power forward Alex Karaban, who assisted on freshman Braylon Mullins’ shot destined for a billion replays, is a perimeter-oriented player. The Huskies are a bit different stylistically. Very different in terms of pedigree.

Illinois is in the program’s first Final Four since 2005, seeking its first championship. Arizona is in its first Final Four since 2001, seeking a second title to go with the one Lute Olson’s Wildcats won in 1997. Michigan has one championship as well, in 1989 with interim coach Steve Fisher making sure Glen Rice got as many shots as possible.

Michigan and Illinois winning Saturday would deliver a rematch of the 1989 Wolverines-Illini Final Four classic and ensure an end to the Big Ten’s title drought, which stretches back to Michigan State winning it all in 2000 in Indy. Some will want to anoint the winner of the Michigan-Arizona semifinal. But that would be putting too much stock into how Illinois played during a rough patch in February and not enough into the response.

And it would be forgetting another reason UConn is the one of these teams that’s not like the others. Hurley isn’t just the only coach working in Indy this weekend who has won a national championship; he’s one of 16 in the history of the sport with two. And he’s started getting lucky again.