Congratulations to the University of Michigan as the 2026 NCAA men’s basketball champion. Their win last night in the championship game was anything but a walkover, but the Wolverines prevailed in a grind it out game that ended in a 69-63 score. I said earlier that Arizona and Michigan were the two best teams that I saw; I underrated UConn with that statement; the Huskies are an awfully good team also.
Michigan coach Dusty May has been in that job for only two years, and he took over a team that had gone 8-24 in the season before he arrived. Michigan’s cumulative record in the past two seasons is a stunning 64-13 with a Sweet 16 appearance last year and a national championship this year. May began his coaching career as a student manager at Indiana when Bob Knight was the coach there; he worked at a variety of jobs with AAU teams and small schools until he got a head coaching job at Florida Atlantic in 2018. He was in that job for 6 seasons and never had a losing record. In fact, he had FAU in the Final Four in 2023 which was the Cinderella story of the season. It was that performance at FAU that got him the job at Michigan. Dusty May is only 49 years old and should be a force majeure at Michigan for quite a while.
Yesterday, I wrote about an Executive Order aimed at “fixing” some of the problems with college sports today. Michigan’s victory last night points to one of the things going on in college sports today that might be improved. Let me be clear; nothing here is meant as a criticism of Michigan or its accomplishment; Michigan violated no rules that I can see in doing what they did.
The starting five players for Michigan last night were all transfer students; each one of them played somewhere else in college basketball last year. Traditionally, that is a condition that could be seen as a stroke of genius for a professional team; traditionally, that is not the way collegiate sports were carried out. I am not advocating for a return to the days when virtually no one transferred at all; but I do think some restrictions might improve the continuity of many college teams.
In other college basketball news, the UNC Tar Heels have hired a replacement for Hubert Davis as their head coach. Michael Malone comes to Chapel Hill with NBA credentials as a championship winner there with the Denver Nuggets in 2023. Malone’s exposure to college basketball is short; he was an assistant at several schools back in the 1990s before joining the Knicks’ staff in 2001.
If I assume that the reporting on this coaching search is accurate, UNC had a more difficult time reaching an agreement with a new hire than I would have expected. North Carolina is a basketball blueblood; I thought they would answer calls from coaches’ agents along the lines of, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.” According to reporting, UNC made overtures to Tommy Lloyd (Arizona), Dusty May (Michigan), Nate Oats (Alabama), Ben McCollum (Iowa) and Scott Drew (Baylor) and all that interacting produced nothing tangible.
Well, actually all that did produce some tangible things; at least two of those coaches on the contact list got contract extensions at their current schools. I call that “Cashing the Hubert Davis dividend check”; when Davis was fired it opened up a seat at the head table of college basketball coaching and coaches in solid jobs could use their dismissal of interest in that open job as leverage with their current employers.
Hiring a coach with NBA credentials as opposed to collegiate credentials deviates in two ways from UNC tradition. This is – – as was announced at the outset of the coaching search – – an “out of the family hire” in Chapel Hill. Michael Malone arrives with no ties and no history with the school; the last time the team had a head basketball coach “from the outside” was in the 1950s when Frank McGuire was the coach. When McGuire left in 1961, UNC hired some guy named Dean Smith; for the next 64 years and the next four coaching hires, the head basketball coach at UNC has been someone from “in the family”.
Another way to look at Malone’s hiring at UNC is from a different perspective. Last year, North Carolina hired a football coach with championship credentials at the pro level; this year, they have hired a basketball coach with championship credentials at the pro level. Maybe this is a considered and thought-out strategy on the part of the folks who are driving the athletic bus in Chapel Hill.
Or maybe not …
Finally, consider this from author Curtis Tyrone Jones:
“It’s so hard to write a new story when you do everything by the book.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………