UConn has lived on the edge en route to NCAA title game, but that may not work against a juggernaut Michigan team

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INDIANAPOLIS — Shortly after his team grinded out a 71-62 victory over Illinois to advance to Monday’s national title game, UConn coach Dan Hurley couldn’t resist poking fun at those who picked against the Huskies.

Unprompted during his press conference, Hurley pointed out that oddsmakers anointed Illinois a 1.5-point favorite over UConn even though the Huskies beat the Illini by 13 points five months ago. Hurley also noted that he saw more prognosticators picking Illinois than UConn when he flipped on the TV prior to Saturday’s game.

“I had to throw some shade about that,” Hurley said.

If Hurley thought the media provided bulletin-board material before Saturday’s game, wait until he sees the skepticism his team will face entering Monday night’s title game. Yes, UConn is an astounding 13-1 in Final Four games in program history. And yes, nobody with half a brain would count out a Dan Hurley-coached team in the NCAA tournament. But the Huskies will have to play a heck of a lot better than they did Saturday just to keep it close against No. 1 Michigan.

UConn struggled to put away Illinois despite the Illini shooting an anemic 6-for-26 from behind the arc and making sloppy mistakes they hadn’t made all season. How many times has Keaton Wagler airballed a wide-open step-back 3-pointer like he did Saturday? How many times has forward David Mirkovic turned the ball over dribbling it off his shoe?

The Huskies also benefited from some serendipitous bounces at one end of the floor and some demonic rim-outs at the other. Braylon Mullins banked in a 3-pointer that extended UConn’s lead to 10 in the final minute of the first half. Then Solo Ball sank a second-half 3-pointer that bounced impossibly high off the back rim and fell in. Meanwhile, Andrej Stojakovic provided a snapshot of Illinois’ shooting night when his second-half driving layup rolled all the way around and hung tantalizingly on the back of the rim before finally falling off the mark.

And yet despite all that, Illinois still managed to pull within four points three times in the game’s final five-plus minutes. It wasn’t until Mullins buried a clutch 3-pointer with 52 seconds left and Tarris Reed Jr., Silas Demary and Jayden Ross combined to sink 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch that UConn could exhale.

“Our defense sustained us,” Hurley said. “I mean, we had so many opportunities. We could have made 18 threes. We had twos at the rim. We could have played better offensively and finished plays more.”

By muscling past Illinois, UConn moved within a single victory of its third national title in the past four seasons and its seventh since 1999. The Huskies would be alone in third place for most championships, trailing only UCLA (11) and Kentucky (8).

Whereas Hurley’s 2023 team jelled into a powerhouse by March and his 2024 team flattened everything in its path all season, this year’s Huskies, as Hurley put it, “have had to be clutch.” They needed a miracle 40-footer from Mullins to cap a comeback from a 19-point deficit against Duke in the Elite Eight. They staved off Michigan State’s comeback bid in the Sweet 16. Heck, even their first-round matchup with Furman was a five-point game with less than six minutes to play.

The breathing room that UConn had Saturday was a product of its smothering defensive ball pressure. The Huskies fought over every screen to prevent Illinois from hunting favorable matchups, contested every shot at the rim and prevented the Illini 7-footers from overwhelming them on the offensive glass.

What let UConn down was its second-half offense — especially during a scoreless stretch of nearly five minutes while Illinois sliced a 14-point deficit to four. The Huskies missed an array of open jumpers and struggled to finish inside against Illinois’ frontcourt length.

That’s an ominous sign for UConn on Monday night against Michigan. Teams shoot a mere 44.3% in the paint against Michigan, the third-worst mark in the nation.

What that means is UConn will probably have to rely on running its shooters through off-ball screens to try to create open 3-point looks. If the Huskies sink only 34.6% of their threes like they have all season, it will be a long night. If Mullins, Alex Karaban and Solo Ball can catch fire, then it’s game on.

“We haven’t been a team of destruction,” Hurley said. “We’ve been a team that has had to grind out games.”

No one will give them much hope of doing it again against Michigan on Monday night.

They’ll have to play a lot better than they did Saturday to prove the doubters wrong.

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