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NCAAM Men's Final Aday Mara dropped a career-high 26 points to lead Michigan over Arizona in the national semifinals. Michael Reaves / Getty Images INDIANAPOLIS — Connecticut is the program chasing history. But Michigan is the team that actually compares to the peak of that potential history. Connecticut 2026 is trying to join Connecticut 2023 and 2024 to give Dan Hurley’s Huskies three championships in four years — only John Wooden’s UCLA and Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky (his run starting when the tournament consisted of eight teams) can say the same. Advertisement But Michigan 2026? Michigan 2026 is Connecticut 2024 — one of the most dominant teams we’ve seen in this sport. An inevitable monster. A monstrous inevitability. A Dusty May-led group that toyed Saturday with what was by all accounts and data an equally great team Saturday in the national semifinals. The 91-73 final score is a gentle description of what the Wolverines (36-3) did to the Arizona Wildcats (36-3) to set up Monday’s title game against the Huskies (34-5). Michigan 2026 is a team that, like Connecticut 2024, would have to do something, or many things, out of character to come up short of its net-cutting destiny. And I’m not sure this UConn team — for as tough as it is, for as impressive as it was in outlasting Illinois, for as theatrical as one more win would be — can even compare to the Purdue team that sort of hung with Connecticut 2024 in the title game before succumbing 75-60. Really, the best chance UConn has of winning its seventh championship and keeping Michigan from its second is if Yaxel Lendeborg’s left knee is worse off than it appeared late Saturday night. CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson reported during the game that he suffered an MCL sprain when he stepped on Arizona center Motiejus Krivas’ foot in the first half, rolling his left ankle in the process. Lendeborg returned to the game in the second half and said afterward that a sprain is the worst-case scenario. “I have to play, ” he said of Monday’s title game to roughly half of the sportswriters in America.   Even if the medical folks suggest otherwise, Lendeborg said, with a giant ice pack tied around the left knee, there would be time to rest after the season. Don’t miss that among all the reasons this Michigan team is great. Lendeborg was May’s prize portal addition out of UAB, a guy who told the Associated Press he was offered $7 million to $9 million to play at Kentucky (which Kentucky coach Mark Pope eventually refuted, but no one would refute he makes millions). He’s going to be a first-round pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. Advertisement And he’s about winning. He’s about finishing the job with this collegiate basketball team. Before the injury, Lendeborg was on the bench with two quick fouls Saturday, and when Michigan point guard Elliot Cadeau found Trey Mc Kenney for a dunk to go up 16-5, force an Arizona timeout and foreshadow the evening to come, Lendeborg was first off the bench, sprinting to celebrate with Mc Kenney. “When you have a first-team All-American potential player of the year that just wants to be one of the dudes, it helps everyone else fall in line and just accept their role, ” May said. Lendeborg brings the energy, attitude and talent that starts everything for Michigan. But on this night he played just 14 minutes, scoring 11 points because he knocked in a couple of 3-pointers in the second half when the game was already out of hand. The Wolverines obliterated the Wildcats, doing whatever they wanted, making a big and strong team look small and weak. No Yaxel required. They’ll probably need more Lendeborg to be comfortable against UConn. Though I’m not sure what the Huskies do with 7-3 Aday Mara (26 points, 9 rebounds against Arizona). I doubt they rattle Cadeau (13 points, 10 assists) the way they seemed to bother some of the Fighting Illini. Former Michigan big man Tarris Reed Jr. , who transferred to UConn in 2024, doesn’t just have to deal with Aday, he’ll also be looking at Morez Johnson Jr. (10 points, 7 rebounds) inside. And the Huskies might be looking at the Wolverine with the most upside when freshman Trey Mc Kenney (16 points) comes off the bench. It’s an absurd team, and it has moved past the season-ending injury to backup point guard LJ Cason — while Duke, the team that beat Michigan in a neutral-site classic in February and might have provided a better title game Monday, was undoubtedly diminished by its late-season injuries. Advertisement For all of Michigan’s riches, the play that stood out Saturday was when senior reserve forward Will Tschetter, who endured an eight-win Michigan season as a sophomore, thought he had a transition 3-pointer in the first half but got chased off. He put the ball on the floor, ducked in and snapped a diagonal pass to reserve guard Roddy Gayle Jr. in the corner. Swish. Michigan up 13. Arizona down bad, early. “We were humming at that point, ” Tschetter said. “I felt like (the Wildcats) were kind of awestruck in the moment. ” They were struck by more than awe in the end. Now UConn has history to chase. And Michigan has history to change. The Wolverines are now 8-1 in national semifinals. But a program whose lone title came in 1989 is 1-6 in national championship games. That program isn’t this team. This team is the first to score 90 points in the first five games of an NCAA Tournament and win all of them by double-digits, per CBS. This team has one of the best Ken Pom efficiency ratings in history. This team is plus-118 in points differential entering the title game, just eight behind the best of all time, Duke at plus-126 in 1999. This team, this team, this team. It’s too huge, too deep, too unselfish, too skilled, to not finish the job. Those 1999 Blue Devils, by the way, were shocked by UConn in the title game, the first of the Huskies’ six championships. When you’ve achieved as much as UConn has in the past 30 years, you can point to things like that and talk yourself into being capable of just about anything. And you’ll always have that history. May it be a comfort late Monday night. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Joe Rexrode is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football. He previously worked at The Tennessean, Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal, and covered the Pyeongchang, Rio and London Olympics for USA Today. Follow Joe on Twitter @joerexrode