INDIANAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Game of the year? This wasn\u2019t even the game of the night.<\/p>\n
Michigan overpowered Arizona early and humbled the \u2019Cats for 40 long minutes Saturday, turning their highly anticipated Final Four<\/a> matchup into a 91-73 Wolverines dunkfest-slash-highlight reel.<\/p>\n 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>, a first-team All-American who landed on an Arizona player\u2019s foot, rolled his ankle and sprained his knee, but still had 11 points over 14 minutes. <\/p>\n He vowed he\u2019d be ready for Monday\u2019s title matchup against UConn, a 71-62 winner over Illinois<\/a> in the early semifinal that was billed \u2014 wrongly \u2014 as the undercard to this battle of No. 1 seeds.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to take a full 40 minutes of fighting,\u201d Lendeborg said. <\/p>\n This one was over in about five.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It was all quite a shock, considering Michigan and Arizona came in with the nation\u2019s top two defenses, a pair of top-five offenses and somewhere between eight and a dozen NBA stars between them.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys have such, I guess, extensive background in playing high-profile basketball games,\u201d 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\u2019d be part of. \u201cWe just felt like we are battle-tested.\u201d<\/p>\n The game plan against the Big 12 champion Wildcats (36-3) couldn\u2019t have worked any better.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Arizona\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one has been able to do that to us all year,\u201d said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, who got a contract extension<\/a> over the weekend, presumably to keep him from going to North Carolina.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 foot a little later and went to the locker room for ice.<\/p>\n Lendeborg called the injury \u201ca weird feeling\u201d but promised, \u201cthere\u2019s no way I\u2019m missing the game on Monday no matter what goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, he returned for the second half and made two quick 3s to push Michigan\u2019s lead past 20. He was on the bench \u2014 and the stationary bike \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Michigan is going for only the program\u2019s second championship (1989), though its most famous team \u2014 the Fab Five, which made the final twice in the early \u201990s \u2014 was in the building to helm an \u201calt-cast\u201d of this Michigan celebration.<\/p>\n Some of this \u2014 the dunks, the alley-oops, the rim hanging and jersey tugging (but no baggy shorts) \u2014 might have reminded them of them.<\/p>\n Freshman Trey McKenney made four 3s and had 16 points for the Wolverines. Elliot Cadeau overcame a bout with his nut allergy<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Asked why he kept Lendeborg in for as long as he did, May recalled UConn\u2019s second-half comeback from 19 down against Duke in the Elite Eight.<\/p>\n \u201cWe felt like the game was still in hand,\u201d May said. <\/p>\n Not really.<\/p>\n What sufficed for drama down the stretch was whether May\u2019s team would join Jerry Tarkanian\u2019s 1990 UNLV juggernaut as only the second team to hit triple digits at the Final Four in the modern era.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough for me to process this right now,\u201d Peat said. <\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket<\/a> and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Game of the year? This wasn\u2019t even the game of the night. Michigan overpowered Arizona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,3984,9368,52,3041,1408,1994,3787,4027,6453,50,8,3285,3054,3980,9370,5935,4820,922,920,4294,9367,9369,5936,5933,9,1199,6848,7,54,6522],"class_list":{"0":"post-13947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-wildcats","10":"tag-arizona-wildcats-mens-basketball","11":"tag-az-state-wire","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-college-basketball","14":"tag-college-sports","15":"tag-connecticut","16":"tag-ct-state-wire","17":"tag-elliot-cadeau","18":"tag-general-news","19":"tag-headlines","20":"tag-in-state-wire","21":"tag-indiana","22":"tag-jaden-bradley","23":"tag-jerry-tarkanian","24":"tag-march-madness-ncaa-tournament","25":"tag-mens-college-basketball","26":"tag-mi-state-wire","27":"tag-michigan","28":"tag-michigan-wolverines","29":"tag-michigan-wolverines-mens-basketball","30":"tag-motiejus-krivas","31":"tag-ncaa-mens-bracket","32":"tag-ncaa-mens-division-i-basketball-championship","33":"tag-news","34":"tag-sports","35":"tag-tommy-lloyd","36":"tag-top-stories","37":"tag-u-s-news","38":"tag-yaxel-lendeborg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}