Michigan Is Nasty

Before but most strikingly after dropping two games in Big 12 conference play, their only losses on the season, Arizona really had been both consistent and consistently dominant, running up one of the most lopsided point differentials in Division I, an average of 17.3 points per game. They really did spend ten straight weeks atop the AP Poll during the winter. All of these things were true. And then the horn sounded and Michigan put in a four-man crew of deep-cut bench players that included Coach Dusty May's son, Charlie, and Howard Eisley, Jr. How long the game had been decided by that point is both debatable and academic. Arizona, which had never trailed by more than a dozen points all season long, was down 10-1 before three minutes of clock had elapsed, by 16 halfway through the first half, and trailed by as many as 30 in the second half. The most anticipated game of the tournament, between two top seeds that had ranked at or near the top of every metric, advanced and otherwise, all season long, was instead a walkover more or less from the jump. Michigan got whatever it wanted on offense and crowded, overwhelmed, and denied Arizona on the other end; a too-late outbreak of shot-making pulled Arizona's shooting percentage up to 37 percent and the margin of victory down to 91-73, but those numbers barely do justice to how thoroughly Michigan controlled both ends of the floor. A shorter way to describe all this is that even this game, against one of the best and most balanced teams in college basketball, swiftly revealed itself to be Just Another Michigan Game. That is, it fit with the historic dominance that Michigan has displayed both this March—the win made them the first team ever to score 90 or more points and win by double digits in five straight NCAA Tournament games—and throughout a year in which they were instantly and undeniably much better than even the most optimistic preseason assessment suggested. Michigan blasted some impressive early season competition back before the calendar turned to 2026, and remained dominant in Big Ten play thanks to one of the best defenses in college basketball, an offense that was both metronomic and electric, and by serving up some hearty helpings of cheerfully brutal physicality. That the same could have been and frequently was said about Arizona coming into Saturday's game only made the gap between the two more startling to behold as it opened and then widened further.