Let’s quickly lay out the case for Michigan as a historically great team: The Wolverines finished the season as the highest-rated champions in the history of Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, which date back to the 1996-97 season. They played the toughest schedule in the country, per KenPom, and finished the season 37-3 — the fewest losses of any champion since 2012 (not including the weird 2020-21 season, when Baylor went 28-2). The Wolverines were also the first team in 50 years to win all their Big Ten road games, despite the Big Ten being the best conference in the sport.

I’ve been a Dusty May stan since he took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four. I wrote about the Owls’ Sweet 16 and Elite Eight wins over Tennessee and Kansas State for The Ringer. I was blown away by how thorough and complete that FAU team was. The Owls didn’t look like a Cinderella; they were better than their name-brand opponents.

Florida Atlantic. To the Final Four. (Almost made the championship game, too.) It’s no surprise he was able to win two more games with Michigan, with all their resources. But it wasn’t an easy task: When May took over two years ago, the men’s hoops program was in shambles before May got there, going 8-24 (3-17 in Big Ten play) in Juwan Howard’s final year.

The Wolverines turned things around quickly through the transfer portal. Lendeborg is one of the all-time awesome college hoops stories. He played the first three years of his college career at Arizona Western, a community college in the most southwest corner of the country. May spotted him because FAU and UAB used to play against each other in Conference USA.

While Michigan’s other starters came from high-major programs, they weren’t exactly tearing it up elsewhere. Aday Mara, the 7-foot-3 center who for my money was the best player in the NCAA Tournament, only started nine games in two seasons at UCLA. Power forward Morez Johnson Jr. only got eight starts at Illinois.

BTW, how are people at Ohio State feeling about firing their coach at roughly the same time that Michigan fired Juwan Howard, leading to Roddy Gayle Jr. transferring from OSU to Michigan and having a huge block and tip-slam in a national championship game? Pretty bad, right?

The Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player award went to point guard Elliot Cadeau, who The Athletic called “player development personified.” Cadeau was a 5-star recruit who was kinda disappointing at North Carolina. He became a consummate point guard at Michigan, a killer “take-what-the-defense-gives-you” guy who never scored 20 points in a game this season but made the offense tick.

We usually talk about the transfer portal as a negative. But this perfect Michigan basketball machine shows the positive side of it. From late bloomers to high-major misfits, Michigan’s championship roster was built out of parts that didn’t quite work elsewhere. In another era, those players might have ended their careers as disappointments; in this one, they became legends.

The Bruins’ leading scorer in the national championship game was Gabriela Jaquez, a senior who dreamed of playing for UCLA growing up. The Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player was Lauren Betts, also a senior. Their point guard, Kiki Rice, was a senior who spent four years playing for the Bru—

—you know what, I’ll save us some time. They were all seniors. Every player who scored a point for UCLA in the national title game was a senior. Every player who scored a point in UCLA’s Final Four win over Texas was a senior. The last bucket by a non-senior Bruin came in the second quarter of UCLA’s Elite Eight win over Duke.

An institution totally dominated by seniors? What is this, the Senate??!?!?!? Folks.

And these aren’t just any seniors. All these players are going to be in the WNBA next month. (Oh yeah, btw, the WNBA season starts next month. They don’t give these players a lot of time to relax.)

Here’s a recent CBS mock draft (important to pump those out, because the draft is NEXT WEEK): Betts is projected 4th overall; Rice 5th. Jaquez, Gianna Kneepkens, and Charlisse Leger-Walker are all projected first-rounders, and Angela Dugalic is projected to go off the board in the second.

And they play together. UCLA won the national championship with stunning defense. Entering the Final Four, Texas’ season-low in scoring was 64 points. UCLA held it to 50. Entering the national championship game, South Carolina’s season-low in scoring was 60 points. UCLA held it to 51.

This was a theme. Iowa scored a season-low 45 points against UCLA in the Big Ten Championship Game. USC scored a season-low 50 points in its regular season finale against its cross-town rival. USC’s previous season low was 52, also against UCLA. Cal Baptist also had a season-low 43 against UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

If you’re keeping track: Three of UCLA’s six NCAA Tournament opponents scored season lows. If we go back to the end of the regular season, five of the Bruins’ final 10 opponents scored season lows. Do you realize how nuts that is? Half of their opponents down the stretch had their absolute worst offensive performance of the year because of UCLA!

Betts, Leger-Walker, and Jaquez celebrated the title with their signature dance routine, which they first performed with UCLA’s dance team at the halftime of a regular-season home game:

Gotta be a little bit devastating to see the team that just completely shut down your offense do a fun little dance afterwards, right?

It may seem frivolous, but I have to imagine that the connections run deep within a team that is able to coordinate dances together — not to mention play so well together, and defend so perfectly. Those bonds are not something you can whip up quickly.