In 2 whirlwind years, May had taken Michigan from the depths of despair to the sport’s summit, winning the proud program’s second national championship. The championship snaps a 26-year title drought for the B1G, with the Wolverines’ dominant 6-game romp through March Madness firmly cementing Michigan’s meteoric return the nation’s basketball elite in Ann Arbor.

The scene playing out on the confetti-strewn Lucas Oil Stadium floor was almost unthinkable just 2 years ago.

Michigan was coming off a disastrous, injury-plagued 8-win season and had fired program legend Juwan Howard, a brutal blow at a program that finally felt at peace with the stormy, complicated history of the the Fab Five.

Michigan needed a spark, a jolt of energy to drag the dust off the B1G Championship banners and of course, to put Michigan in position to make the lone national championship banner, hanging since 1989, feel less lonely.

There was certainly hope when the Wolverines won a coaching hire battle for May, then a coveted mid-major head coach who reached the Final Four at Florida Atlantic in 2023. If May could turn a beach town college basketball backwater into a consistent winner, surely he could win at a place with the resources and institutional commitment of Michigan, athletic director Warde Manuel thought at the time. But hardly anyone felt May would pull this type of turnaround off in just 2 years.

In another era, a 2-year turnaround from 8-win team with a threadbare roster to national champion would feel like too heavy a lift, the stuff of fan fiction.

In the current era of college sports, with NIL packages, unprecedented television dollars driving record-setting administrative spending on athletics, and a transfer portal overflowing with talent looking for their next best opportunity, a quick flip from the poor house to the penthouse is firmly within reach. All that’s required is an influx of cash, coaching, and roster building savvy.

May is the latest example, joining Indiana’s Curt Cignetti in orchestrating B1G basement to championship turnarounds in just 2 seasons. He did it with smart roster building, first and foremost, a skill that’s easier said than done.

“Every Power 5 program in America mines the portal to elevate their talent level, fix perceived roster deficiencies, get older, better,” former Power 5 head coach and current ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg told SDS earlier this season. “It’s the programs with staffs that still understand the portal isn’t about throwing money at a problem who excel. You have to get the right guys. That requires thought.”

Does money help? Of course. It’s essential. But even $22 million rosters fail when they aren’t put together thoughtfully.

To build a Final Four roster, you need at least 2 other things. First, you need an idea of how you want to play. Second, you better spend time on your evaluations and make sure you get the right fit.

The first part has never been an issue with May.

His high-tempo style helped him outwit more-talented rosters at Florida Atlantic, but in his mind, he always hoped to play bigger, to control the glass and add rim pressure to a style that already pressured opponents by pushing tempo and trying to score before defenses got set.

“We want to play fast, but we know if we rebound the ball well, we can push and get up the floor before those physical, tough defenses in our league and the ones you see in March get set,” May said this week. “And we knew coming in if we had the size and physicality to rebound, to protect the paint, and the speed to get up the floor, we felt like our chances of scoring would be greater.”

Contrary to the prevailing narrative this week, Michigan wasn’t a wholly portal driven roster. The best rosters in college basketball usually are not, and Michigan’s championship team proved the rule.

Blending program veterans like Nimari Burnett, LJ Cason (who came with May from Florida Atlantic and understood May’s culture and style) and Will Tschetter, May integrated specifically targeted recruiting (freshman Trey McKenney, who buried a dagger to all but seal the championship game on Monday night) and portal pieces to complement the no-nonsense defense and toughness of the guys already on the roster.

“If you are worried about what portal player rankings say, as opposed to whether a player fits what your program needs, you’ve already lost,” Florida head coach Todd Golden, who won the 2025 national championship by assembling a roster brimming with talent other teams passed over but Golden and assistant Jonathan Safir, the program’s functional general manager, felt fit Florida’s high-tempo, 2-big man style of play. The Gators didn’t have a top 100 player on their team, but won 36 games en route to the national championship. “You get the evaluations right, and fit and style are 2 big parts of that process,” Golden told SDS.

May and his staff understood that blueprint entirely. The players Michigan added were players May felt fit, irrespective of their portal ranking or reputation elsewhere.

“We took 4 guys out of the portal,” May said Sunday. “If you listen to the college basketball gospel, we took 17 of them, and that’s all we have.”

Only Yaxel Lendeborg, an elite rebounder and 3-level scorer who transferred from UAB and blossomed into a Consensus First-Team All-American this year in Ann Arbor, was coveted by every program in the portal.

Every other take had “questions” within the narrative.

Take Elliot Cadeau, a castaway disappointment at blueblood North Carolina, lamented for low 3-point shooting percentages and the cardinal Carolina sin of not being Marcus Paige or Kendall Marshall. Could he shoot? Could he contribute defensively? Asked and answered.

All Cadeau did in Year 1 in Ann Arbor is shoot a career-best 38% from 3, average 10.6 points and 5.9 assists per game, and help run one of the sport’s most efficient offenses (4th, per KenPom). Cadeau saved his best for last, scoring 19 points in the national championship game on a night when Lendeborg was limited by an injury.

Morez Johnson Jr. was a raw talent, the kind of guy whose athleticism jumped off film but whose limitations offensively made analysts and coaches alike wonder about his high level impact. Johnson nearly doubled his scoring average this season after transferring from Illinois and blossomed into the B1G’s leader in effective field goal percentage, a testament to his intelligence and willingness to take the smart shot, not every open one.

May’s masterpiece, though, may have been Aday Mara. The 7-foot-3 center’s potential went unrealized at UCLA under Mick Cronin, but this season, the Spaniard nearly tripled his career production, averaging 12.2 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.6 blocks and 2.5 assists and anchoring the best defense in the nation.

May, a former student manager at Indiana who credits Bobby Knight’s meticulous approach to recruiting and preparation as a key influence on his approach to everything from talent evaluations to coaching, deflected credit this week.

“When you bring a group this talented together and they decide from the beginning that they’re going to do it this way and they never waver and they never change, that’s probably the most uncommon thing in athletics now,” May said.

Michigan’s coach, though, deserves plenty of the credit for building the first team in NCAA Men’s Tournament history to score 90 or more points in 5 straight games, including work-of-art romps over Tennessee in the Elite 8 and a mighty Arizona team in the Final Four.

There’s time to lament the portal, the death of Cinderella, the lack of high level drama at this Final Four, which never really featured a truly nip-and-tuck back-and-forth game.

That can wait for another day.

Right now, the mood is Hail to the Victors, played to the beat of one of the most impressive roster-building projects and 2-year turnarounds in the history of college basketball.

A championship story and a coach in May who, at 49, might just be getting started.

The post Michigan’s 2-year title turnaround under Dusty May a reminder of what the right hire and portal make possible appeared first on Saturday Down South.

These are among the biggest questions waiting to be answered on college basketball’s biggest stage this weekend.

Here are the 5 stories SDS is watching as the eyes of the sporting world descend on Lucas Oil Stadium this Saturday night.

No, Arizona-Michigan isn’t the “real” national championship

The narrative is that the winner of Saturday’s second semifinal, between Arizona and Michigan, will be crowned national champion in a 40-minute coronation on Monday night.

The basis for the narrative is enticing. After all, with fellow 1-seeds Duke and defending national champion Florida out of the way, the Wildcats and Wolverines are the best teams standing. They were also consistently 2 of the top teams all season, and enter the Final Four ranked first (Michigan) and second (Arizona) in KenPom and Torvik.

Before you buy into the notion it is, consider a host of Final Fours where the “real” national championship game turned out to not be that at all, with surprise outcomes and even better basketball games coming on Monday night. At The Pit in Albuquerque in 1983, for example, the buzz around the Final Four was that the titanic showdown between Houston’s Phi Slama Jamma and Louisville’s Doctors of Dunk was for a championship. The semifinal was memorable for the incredible level of pace and athleticism on the floor, but someone forgot to tell Jim Valvano and NC State that Houston won the title by defeating Louisville on Saturday night. The Wolfpack upset heavily favored Houston, winning the national championship on one of the most famous plays in college basketball history.

That scenario is the most famous rebuttal to “the real national championship is on Saturday night” arguments we’ve heard all week surrounding Arizona and Michigan, but there are other compelling retorts and interestingly, both occurred in Indianapolis.

Take 2010, when the overwhelming betting favorites to win the national title, Duke and West Virginia, squared off in one semifinal while the other semifinal featured a Cinderella story in Butler and an overachieving Tom Izzo Michigan State team. Duke hammered Bob Huggins and the Mountaineers, but the game Monday night against Butler proved far more difficult. With Duke clinging to a 2-point lead with 3.6 seconds to go, this Gordon Hayward shot nearly won Butler the national championship. Nearly.

The other stunner came in 1991, when the expectation was unbeaten UNLV would meet Dean Smith’s UNC in title game tilt for the ages on Monday night. Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke, an 8-point underdog, somehow upset UNLV in the Final Four, ruining everyone’s Monday night plans. While the Duke-UNLV game was a rematch of the national championship game a year prior (won handily by UNLV), making it a spotlight game in its own right, the 2 highest seeds at that Final Four were Smith’s Tar Heels and Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels. When Roy Williams’ Kansas team upset North Carolina to reach the championship game, the door opened for Krzyzewski to win his first national title at Duke.

In other words, narratives are fun, but the games get played. Indianapolis has seen some storied upsets hosting this event (another came in 2006, when underdog Florida upset UCLA to win the Gators their first national championship) and this weekend may end up looking no different.

Sure, but who has the edge? Arizona or Michigan?

Your faithful basketball bard believes Dusty May might be the best tactical coach in the sport right now, a masterful offensive mind and, as we saw at FAU and now at Michigan, a thoughtful roster builder. Tommy Lloyd’s no slouch, of course, and here’s the thing: Arizona is healthier.

There’s an argument, I suppose, that the Wolverines haven’t missed their best shooting guard, LJ Cason (40% from 3 this season) that much since his season-ending injury. The data supports this line of thinking, at least in part, as Michigan connected on a staggeringly good 45 of its 101 shots from beyond the arc in winning its regional and advancing to Indianapolis.

The flip side is that in its lone NCAA Tournament game against a top 25 defense (the Elite 8 vs. Tennessee), Michigan shot just 10-of-27 from distance, and even that was far better than the collective 30% (20-for-66) Michigan shot without Cason at the B1G Tournament, where the Wolverines lost the final to Purdue.

Is it possible that Michigan continues to shoot the lights out, even in a football stadium with its strange shooting backdrops, against a tremendous Arizona defense (2nd in KenPom defensive efficiency). It is absolutely possible!

It just doesn’t seem likely, and that’s likely to cause Michigan problems against an Arizona team that thrives at taking away your post presence and makes you hit shots to beat them. The Wolverines do all that, too, of course, and arguably better than Arizona, thanks to the incredible interior defense of Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr., and Yaxel Lendeborg. But Tommy Lloyd’s team has the more explosive guard play, with 2 guys in Jaden Bradley and Brayden Burries, who can get you a late shot clock bucket when your sets and actions break down, and another player, Koa Peat, who creates mismatch problems against even elite bigs (see his opening night masterpiece against National Defensive Player of the Year Rueben Chinyelu to get an idea of what I mean).

In March and April, in games decided by a possession or 2, give me the team with more playmakers almost every time. That favors Arizona Saturday evening.

Here’s a look at the Kalshi market for Saturday’s Arizona-Michigan game:

Which Solo Ball shows up for UConn?

Danny Hurley is undoubtedly looking at a Final Four rematch with Illinois, who UConn hammered 74-61 in November, as a decidedly winnable game. That confidence is well placed, too, as long as Tarris Reed Jr. continues to shine the way he has throughout the NCAA Tournament. The senior has averaged 21.5 points and 13.5 rebounds per game in the NCAA Tournament, earning 3 KenPom game MVPs and shooting an extremely efficient 60% from the field. A few more gems from Braylon Mullins would help, too, and yes, I’m going to post this in anything I write about UConn this week.

But the real wildcard for the Huskies and their hopes to win a third national championship in 4 seasons is Solo Ball. It’s been a tough year for the junior guard, who has shot a career worst 29% from beyond the arc on high volume (243 attempts), a nearly 12 percentage point drop off from a season ago. But Ball has shown signs of life in some of UConn’s biggest wins. He was brilliant in a win over Florida in the Jimmy V Classic in December (19 points, 3-8 from 3), excellent in a road win at Kansas in December (17 points, 3-7 from 3), and led UConn in scoring with 15 in the aforementioned comfortable win over Illinois. Ball has made just 3 of 21 attempts from deep in the NCAA Tournament, but his ability to get hot keeps him on the forefront of most scouting reports.

Hurley knows what he’ll get from Reed, Mullins, and program legend Alex Karaban. What he coaxes out of Ball this weekend will define this 2-game tournament for the Huskies.

Can Illinois guard actions again for 40 minutes?

It’s no secret where Brad Underwood’s team was limited all season. The Illini didn’t just take a few possessions off defensively. They had entire nights where they refused to guard a soul. The Illini surrendered 1.2 points per possession or more in February losses to Michigan State, Wisconsin, UCLA, and Michigan, all of which contributed to a team in the 1-seed conversation much of the year falling to the 3 line come Selection Sunday.

The good news for Ilini fans is that the team saved its best defense for March. In the South Regional in Houston, the Illini held Houston and its brilliant backcourt to just .94 points per possession, overwhelming the smaller Cougars with their size and length. Then they guarded an Iowa team that runs better actions than almost anyone in America to just 1 point per possession in a 71-59 comeback victory in the Elite 8.

It was the kind of defensive display that many did not believe Illinois had in it, regardless of its immense size.

Saturday night against UConn, the Illini will need to do it again. Like Iowa, the Huskies run actions on nearly every possession, punishing switches and aggressively attacking mismatches. Unlike Iowa, UConn has the skill from position 1-5 to punish all manner of Illinois mistakes. The Huskies also have a point guard in Silas Demary Jr. who can scrap with the physicality of Illinois while exploiting the defensive inadequacy of the Illini’s star guards, who are dynamic offensively but have been beaten consistently off the bounce by bigger, stronger guards this season.

The way Illinois can score, it’ll never be out of a basketball game. The championship ceiling will be determined by whether the Illini guard.

Who are the 5 best players at the Final Four?

When you get to the final weekend, there are elite players everywhere. Last season, the Final Four saw 3 Consensus First Team All-Americans play on semifinal Saturday (Cooper Flagg, Walter Clayton Jr., Johni Broome).

This year only 1 survived (Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg), but both Keaton Wagler of Illinois and Jaden Bradley of Arizona earned consensus honors, albeit not First-Team. Those 3 players are all engines for their squads in different but vital ways.

Lendeborg might be the best player at the Final Four, with the size and speed to play anywhere on the floor, a vexing problem for opposing coaches all season. Lendeborg averaged 25 points, 8.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists, shooting 61.4% from the field and 52.6% from 3-point range in winning Most Outstanding Player in the Midwest Region. If he plays like that in Indianapolis, Michigan will hang a second national championship banner.

Wagler can create space for himself and score at will, and he’s saved his best basketball for last, posting a double-double against Houston and then taking the Iowa game over late (25 points) to send Illinois to the Final Four for the first time in 20 years.

Bradley, the Big 12 Player of the Year, is a tenacious perimeter defender who keeps Arizona organized offensively and doesn’t try to be anything he is not. For example, Bradley will drive and look to shoot midrange, where he’s clinical, rather than force perimeter shots (he attempted just 66 3s this season), because he knows he’s masterful at drawing contact in the lane and getting to the free-throw line, where he hits on 80% of his free-throw attempts. He also does not turn the ball over (2.7-1 assist-to-turnover ratio), a vital thing for an Arizona team that controls the offensive glass (5th in offensive rebounding percentage) and as such, is dominant simply by getting shots up at the rim.

The other 2 spots go to big men. Tarris Reed Jr. of UConn has been arguably the best player in the NCAA Tournament to date, and given UConn’s lack of size comparative to the monstrous teams in the Final Four with the Huskies, he might be the most vital player to any team in Indianapolis. Koa Peat has played his best basketball for Arizona during the final month of the season, and after dominating Arkansas with 21 points on a tidy 8-of-11 from the field in the Sweet 16, he dazzled with 20 points and 7 rebounds and tremendous interior defense in Arizona’s comeback win over Purdue in the Elite 8. Along with Wagler, he’s been one of the nation’s best freshmen all season, and it is fitting to see both players in the spotlight on the season’s final weekend.

The post 5 stories and matchups that will define the Final Four appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Wade, 43, stole the Sweet 16 spotlight on Thursday by announcing a return to LSU, the same LSU that fired Wade for cause in March 2022 due to multiple NCAA Level I violation allegations dating back to 2017, including failing to report NCAA violations, failing to cooperate with an infractions investigation, providing (then) impermissible cash payments to players as well as others to impede disclosure of information of NCAA violations in contradiction of NCAA unethical conduct legislation, and failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance with NCAA rules within the men’s basketball program at LSU.

In other words, Wade wasn’t dismissed from LSU simply for making a “strong-ass offer” to then recruit and later LSU star JaVonte Smart or for paying players, even though both of those actions were against the rules at the time Wade engaged in that conduct.

Writing off Wade’s conduct as merely “paying players” is an incomplete statement at best and a naive view at worst.

No, Wade was fired for repeatedly making “strong-ass offers” to players, paying people to not talk about the fact he was paying players, actively refusing to cooperate with an NCAA investigation, obstructing an NCAA investigation and his school’s ability to cooperate with the NCAA, and openly flaunting NCAA rules.

The gravity and frequency of Wade’s unapologetic rule-breaking resulted in a 2-year show-cause penalty for the young coaching star and, once hired at McNeese State (now McNeese) in March 2023, a 10-game suspension. In a different era, that would have been that for Wade, at least at LSU, an institution that saw its reputation and name dragged through the mud as a result of Wade’s unscrupulous conduct.

At one point, Wade not only violated NCAA unethical conduct bylaws when he made payments to his former fiancée in direct proximity to her requests for money to avoid disclosure of potential impermissible benefits and activities, he was dishonest to LSU about whether that happened. Worse, by the time the FBI college basketball investigation wiretaps were released and the NCAA’s investigation into LSU was underway, Wade delayed full production of records and documents and knowingly provided false or misleading information regarding his knowledge of and/or involvement in possible violations of NCAA legislation.

Hiring back a person who engaged in this type of recklessness in your employ would be virtually unthinkable in any other line of work. Imagine an AmLaw 100 law firm hiring back a hot shot young partner that bribed witnesses not to talk, obstructed or impeded case investigations, and played by a different set of rules than every other opposing lawyer, and then openly lied to the firm about it once caught?

It wouldn’t happen, and for good reason. After all, once someone shows you repeatedly who they are, is there really any reason to look them in the eye, shake hands, and trust again?

The difference in the billion dollar industry that is college basketball, of course, is that Wade wins enough to forgive and more importantly, forget, all manner of past sins.

At McNeese State, Wade won 58 games in 2 short seasons, romping through the midmajor ranks of the sport and winning a NCA A Tournament game over Clemson in 2025, one of that March’s marquee upsets. Throughout last spring’s run with McNeese, Wade was lauded for his candor and honesty as rumors swirled that he’d get another Power 5 coaching spot.

“We’ve addressed it head on,” Wade told the media before McNeese played and won its first round NCAA Tournament game. “We’re all on the same page.”

Days later, after McNeese lost to Purdue, Wade departed for NC State and Bill Armstrong, one of Wade’s longtime lieutenants at LSU, took over at McNeese.

Redemption earned? Not quite.

Wade inked a $2.5 million contract at NC State (well over what the Pack initially paid Final Four coach Kevin Keatts, who was fired prior to Wade’s hiring) and was provided with a NIL budget over $11 million to build the Wolfpack into the consistent winner that Keatts failed to deliver, despite the memorable Final Four run. Wade failed, going just 20-14 with one of the most expensive rosters in college basketball before flaming out against a smaller, less-talented, less-expensive Texas Longhorns team in the First Four in Dayton.

NC State started the year 18-6 before losing 8 of its final 10 ball games, an epic collapse which came, coincidentally or not, after LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry publicly suggested LSU may move in a different direction than fourth year head coach Matt McMahon, who was under .500 at LSU, at least in part due to a rash of unfortunate injuries and a NIL budget that pales in comparison with league powers like Kentucky, Arkansas, and defending national champion Florida.

Perhaps Wade was distracted. Perhaps NC State just didn’t get the roster build right. Either way, the buck stops with Wade, who wasn’t good enough in Year 1 in Raleigh given the resources and roster at his disposal.

LSU, though, remembers a different Wade, one who won a SEC Championship in 2019 (prior to a suspension for cheating) and reached a Sweet 16 in 3 NCAA Tournament appearances.

At a program that’s been in the doldrums of the SEC since unceremoniously and absurdly firing head coach John Brady in 2008, just a year and a half removed from a Final Four appearance, the risks of a second go-round with Wade outweighed the irrelevant nature of the program’s present.

After all, no one cares about paying players or strong-ass offers in the NIL era. On the contrary, that’s part of the job description.

Wade’s undoubtedly a winning coach.

He’s built winners at Chattanooga, VCU, LSU, and McNeese, and taken 4 programs (VCU, LSU, McNeese, and NC State) to the NCAA Tournament, even if he’s just 5-8 in tournament games as a head coach.

The Tigers also appear to have meticulously planned to make Wade’s return comfortable. Wade was welcomed Thursday by a familiar face, LSU’s new president, Wade Rousse, formerly at McNeese, and Heath Schroyer, who hired Wade at McNeese, was named the deputy AD at LSU in charge of the basketball program. These realities, coupled with a promise to dramatically increase LSU’s NIL for basketball to a figure of $10 million or more, suggest an administrative alignment and commitment to Wade that was never afforded to Matt McMahon. McMahon, by the way, was left hanging in the breeze for 2 weeks while LSU waited to pluck Wade from Raleigh– a dirty way to get rid of one of the best people in the sport, but just one more sordid detail in this whole messy affair.

Will it work?

If you are LSU, and you’ve hired a guy whose recklessness and lack of scruples dragged your institution through the mud once, it better.

There are red flags, though, and they extend beyond the long shelf life of the loud criticisms of Wade’s character.

For one, even if LSU spends north of $10 million on NIL, that would be less than what NC State spent this year, where Wade struggled in a weaker ACC.

The facts suggest that Wade’s best coaching jobs have occurred either at the mid-major level or at his peak at LSU in 2019, when Wade was paying players and operating under a different set of rules in acquiring talent than the majority of the programs around him. The NIL era removes that edge from Wade, and programs like Kentucky, Arkansas, and Florida all spend more on basketball than SEC and will continue to do so even if LSU’s rumored increased financial commitments come to fruition.

Beyond the financial aspect, Wade now joins a vastly improved SEC than the one he won where he won the league title in 2019.

It’s no coincidence that Wade’s last 3 teams at LSU, while all NCAA Tournament-worthy, were less good than his SEC title winner. That’s in part due to the influx of elite coaching in the league, notably Alabama‘s Nate Oats and Tennessee‘s Rick Barnes, both of whom remain fixtures at the top of the league standings. Throw in Bucky McMillan, who has a head start and better resources at Texas A&M, Sean Miller at Texas, and Chris Beard, a Final Four head coach already at Ole Miss, and you get an idea of how competitive it will be for Wade.

And all of that is before you mention Florida’s Todd Golden, who at 40 is a national title winner already and one of the top 5 coaches in the sport. Put plainly, even with additional investment, Wade will be battling against stormy headwaters from Day 1 in Baton Rouge.

That’s a different scenario than the one facing Lane Kiffin, the football coach LSU plucked away from Ole Miss in a month-long melodrama last winter. Kiffin, after all, has proven adept at dominating the portal era, building winner after winner at smaller programs and justifying his bravado and bluster.

Wade?

He took a massive amount of money at NC State, promised Year 1 would “not be a rebuild”, and then unraveled and berated everyone from reporters to players for wondering why results weren’t better in Year 1. Then, as recently as Thursday, Wade looked NC State Athletic Director Boo Corrigan in the eye and discussed what he’d need to be competitive next year in Raleigh.

A day later, Wade resigned at NC State via an email from his agent, the latest example of Wade simply failing to meet the truth head on with an institution that placed him in a position of trust.

Meet the new Wade. Same as the old Wade.

Now, the new Wade is back at his old job, LSU, hoping to reclaim old glory. Expectations to achieve what he did before, and perhaps greater, will be higher than ever.

The chances it all ends in undignified humiliation?

If you ask NC State, they’ll tell you the chances humiliation happens when you trust Wade are high.

If you ask LSU, the risk of the Will Wade experience is worth it, as long as it comes with winning.

The post A strong-ass hire at LSU, but at what cost? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

Davis’s termination came in spite of the fact that he won 70% of his games during his tenure at Chapel Hill, including a national championship game appearance in 2022 and an ACC regular-season championship in 2024. Ultimately, Davis’s inconsistency and back-to-back Round of 64 exits in 2025 and 2026 led outgoing athletic director Bubba Cunningham and incoming athletic director Steve Newmark, along with Carolina chancellor Lee Roberts and the UNC administration, to believe a change was necessary.

The departure of Davis sends ripples throughout the sport, creating an opening at arguably the best job in college basketball and doing so at a time when there is no obvious replacement within the “Carolina family” — a first since well before the retirement of Dean Smith in October 1997. While Newmark will lead the search, UNC stated it will hire the search firm Turnkey ZRG to assist, the same firm that helped Indiana football hire Curt Cignetti and helped the Florida Gators hire head basketball coach Todd Golden. A core group of Carolina boosters, along with former players and coaches, are also expected to have their say in the hire, which Carolina is unlikely to rush.

The decision to part ways with Davis was not unexpected, with Carolina initially hopeful that Davis would resign willingly and accept a job elsewhere in the administration, according to 2 Carolina sources who were granted anonymity to speak candidly with Saturday Down South. Once that effort failed, UNC made the decision to terminate Davis.

“We appreciate all that Hubert has done for Carolina as a player, assistant coach, head coach and community leader — he has helped make special memories we will never forget,” UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said. “This was not an easy decision because of Hubert’s tremendous character and all he has given to the program, but we must move forward in a way that allows our team to compete more consistently at an elite level.”

To compete at an elite level again, UNC expects to cast a wide net in its coaching search, focusing on both the collegiate and professional ranks with the most vital predicate being that the Tar Heels will hire a coach who has won — consistently — at the highest levels of basketball.

One notable name not being considered, according to an industry source, is Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats, who is perceived to have “considerable baggage” off the court in addition to a $10 million buyout if hired prior to April 1.

Florida’s Golden, a fashionable betting favorite, has an even larger buyout ($16 million before April 15), and is considered “decidedly unlikely,” according to an industry source and a source at the University of Florida. Golden, who a season ago became the youngest head coach since legendary NC State coach Jim Valvano to win a national championship and followed that up this season with a 1-seed and SEC regular-season championship, is happy with family and professional life in Gainesville, where Florida’s administrative commitment to winning in basketball is higher than ever before.

“Carolina is Carolina, but Golden already has a destination job,” said an industry source close to Golden. “You only move your family if you can’t get what you want at Florida, and that’s not a concern.”

With Oats and Golden, the top 2 coaches in the SEC and among the best college coaches in America, unlikely to bolt for Carolina blue pastures, who will Carolina zero in on in the next few weeks? Here’s a look at a few names likely to be on Carolina’s list.

Billy Donovan, Head Coach, Chicago Bulls

Donovan is 60 years old and has not coached in college for a decade. That said, the college game has tracked the NBA game increasingly over the past few years and, with his reputation as an offensive innovator and NBA experience, Donovan would immediately become one of the top coaches in college basketball if he returned to the college hardwood. What’s more, with the Bulls likely to miss the playoffs and with multiple years expected in Chicago’s rebuild, Donovan may be interested in going a different professional direction.

“There is meaningful interest on Carolina’s end and Donovan is certainly willing to listen,” an industry source told SDS on Monday. “There’s also a wide bridge between meaningful interest and hired.”

Donovan just signed an extension with the Bulls last summer and has lamented the NIL era from afar, but he’s also been candid about his frustration with the Bulls’ long rebuild process. With a GM in place and immense resources, Donovan would be immune from the recruiting frustrations that haunted him late in his tenure at Florida, where he won 2 national championships and built the Gators into a national power. Will that be enough to get him back in college basketball? It would certainly be awesome for the sport.

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Mark Byington, Head Coach, Vanderbilt

Byington has exceeded every expectation in 2 years at Vanderbilt, advancing to 2 NCAA Tournaments and winning 47 games in 2 seasons at a program that won just 50 games in the 3 years prior to his arrival in Nashville. A bright offensive mind who plays a fun, high-tempo brand of offense, Byington also has North Carolina and ACC roots, having played at UNC-Wilmington in the 1990s and serving as an assistant at Virginia and Virginia Tech. Byington’s never made a Sweet 16, but at just 49 years of age, he’s a rising star in the industry and might be worth a swing if bigger names like Donovan decline.

Tommy Lloyd, Head Coach, Arizona

Like Golden at Florida, Lloyd is already at a “destination job.” Also like Golden, Lloyd plays a style of basketball (think, Roy Williams high tempo, big man heavy) that resonates in Chapel Hill.

Only 51, Lloyd has done wonders in Tucson, posting a Lute Olson-like 146 wins with 6 regular-season and conference-tournament titles between the old Pac-12 and current Big 12. He’s coaching a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament this season, and could finally get over the Sweet 16 hump this weekend if Arizona gets past Arkansas. One of the best recruiters in America, Lloyd has also adapted to NIL, using the portal and the same international evaluation skills that he used to help build Gonzaga into a power as Mark Few’s top lieutenant.

This might be the best hire if Donovan declines — the only catch is Carolina may have to wait until mid-April, well into the portal season, before Lloyd makes his decision.

T.J. Otzelberger, Head Coach, Iowa State

Otzelberger has worked wonders in Ames without a fraction of the resources he’d have in Chapel Hill. He’s a defense-first coach, which would be a bit different at Carolina, but the Cyclones identify and develop talent as well as anyone in America and the results speak for themselves, with an 124-52 record over 5 seasons with a Big 12 Tournament title and 3 Sweet 16 appearances and counting for Iowa State.

Only 48, Otzelberger has also coached top-20 offenses over the past 2 seasons, a nice rebuttal to the notion that he’d play joyless rockfight ball in the Dean Dome. Like Donovan and Lloyd, the timing could be messy, as the Cyclones are still playing in the NCAA Tournament. But Otzelberger is likely the most affordable big-name option, with just a $4 million buyout and less star power than other big-name options.

Dusty May, Head Coach, Michigan

Would May, who just arrived in Ann Arbor 2 seasons ago, really bolt the Wolverines, especially if he reaches the Final Four or wins a championship in Year 2?

“A little like Todd (Golden), he’s at a destination job where you get what you want when you win,” an industry source told SDS on Tuesday morning.

One of the best tacticians in the sport, May blends tremendous defensive nous with an excellent understanding of roster construction in an NIL world. He’d modernize Carolina’s talent evaluation operation instantaneously and, with Carolina’s vast resources, would likely be even more effective in blending the portal with high school recruiting, a modern day roster building must. With a $7 million buyout, he’s less cost-prohibitive than other high-profile options, but it’s hard to imagine he leaves Ann Arbor if he’s a national champion come next month.

Ben McCollum, Head Coach, Iowa

Want an outside the box name? McCollum is intriguing. He’s won 4 national titles, although they all came at the Division II level, a figure that might not impress the old guard Carolina fans who remember the good old days with Dean and Roy. Then again, Dean Smith was a young assistant when he took the Carolina job from Frank McGuire. His hoops IQ and savvy turned out okay.

McCollum, who just put together a masterclass of coaching while upsetting top seed and defending national champion Florida in the NCAA Tournament last week, has only 2 years as a Division I head coach. He also plays a methodical, slow tempo that isn’t always easy on the eyes and seems best suited to teams suffering from talent differentials. But McCollum only wins, and at both Drake and Iowa, he’s blown past analytical expectations, getting every ounce of water out of the talent sponge. At Carolina, he’d have the immense talent to match his coaching acumen. That was a good recipe for Dean Smith. Perhaps it would be again for Carolina?

Here’s the latest Kalshi market for who will be the next North Carolina head coach:

The post Hubert Davis is out at UNC. Who could replace him in Chapel Hill? appeared first on Saturday Down South.

The NCAA Tournament is the greatest single event in American sports for a reason. Games like Iowa’s stunning 73-72 victory over defending national champion Florida on Sunday night in front of 14,717 mostly crushed Florida fans at Benchmark International Arena are precisely what make March compelling.

A final possession 3 in a virtual road game to send Iowa to its first Sweet 16 this century? In Year 1 under head coach Ben McCollum? And the 3 came off an assist by an All-American who started his career in Division II basketball, with zero Division 1 interest?

Are you kidding me? That’s the stuff of March dreams, played out on not only on televisions and pulsating arenas but in the imaginations of countless kids hooping on city blacktop playgrounds and matted dirt backyard farmhouse baskets alike, a symphony to the unifying dream of the NCAA Tournament and its grip on the American landscape.

Unless you are on the losing side, and the dream is a nightmare.

In that case, with immense respect for the poet TS Eliot, March is the cruelest month.

For Florida, the dream of repeating as national champions ended with a thud in Tampa, just a short 2-hour drive from its Gainesville campus.

The close of the game, from the Alvaro Folgueiras game-winning 3 to Florida’s ill-fated final possession (we’ll get there!), has understandably received the bulk of the attention in the stormy aftermath of Florida’s shocking tournament exit.

But the truth is Florida dug the hole that cost it the game in the first 30 minutes, falling behind by as many as 12 midway through the second half behind sloppy first-half turnovers and a leaky pick-and-roll defense that Iowa exploited again and again for baskets at the rim.  

The Gators committed 6 turnovers in the first 7 minutes, helping Iowa build an early 10-point lead and more critically, belief that it could play with the SEC Champions, even in a hostile environment.

Once Iowa had the lead, it became easier for Ben McCollum’s team to control tempo, which the Hawkeyes did masterfully thanks to the patience and perfection of their All-American point guard, Bennett Stirtz. While he didn’t shoot well (5-16 FG, 0-9 from 3), Stirtz was a maestro running Iowa’s offense all evening, keeping the Hawkeyes organized and calmly getting them into the ball-screen and pick-and-roll looks they wanted against Florida’s switching and drop pick-and-roll coverages. The senior, who started his career as a Division II player with zero Division I interest, simply could not be sped up by the reigning national champions. He finished with 5 assists and 0 turnovers while playing all 40 minutes, and Iowa scored 20 points in the pick-and-roll in building its 33-31 lead at the half.

Florida created good looks throughout the first half against Iowa’s aggressive defense, but Florida missed 6 first-half layups and multiple open 3s, unable to exploit its athleticism advantage.

Most surprisingly, Iowa controlled the glass for much of the game as well, limiting Rueben Chinyelu, the best rebounder in college basketball, to just 1 rebound and ultimately playing level with Florida on the glass, 27-27, with 10 offensive rebounds to Florida’s 9 overall.

Denying Florida extra possessions proved vital in what was the slowest tempo game the Gators played all year—just 61 possessions—maximizing the meaning of every extra trip or shot.

Florida showed its championship resolve down 12, with Thomas Haugh and Alex Condon scoring 29 of their collective 40 points in the second 20 minutes, and the Gators ultimately stormed back to take the lead 69-66 on a Condon layup with just 2:40 remaining. Tavion Banks, who was Iowa’s most effective interior scorer all evening, scored on a dunk to cut it to 1, but when Xaivian Lee drove and scored on a layup and Alex Condon dove for a loose ball steal, the Gators had the ball and a 3-point lead with under 90 seconds to play.

That’s when things fell apart.

Boogie Fland drove aggressively and appeared to have a layup, only to take contact and lose the ball out of bounds. After review, Iowa was awarded the ball, and Stirtz drove and scored over Fland to cut the Florida lead to a point.

The Gators then lost their patience offensively, with Thomas Haugh attempting 2 dagger 3s and missing both, even though Florida built its rally on attacking the paint and getting to the free-throw line.

Still, when the Gators forced a stop and Isaiah Brown went to the free-throw line with under 10 seconds to play, Florida felt good about its chances of winning. Then Brown, just a sophomore, missed 1 of 2 free throws, opening the door slightly for Iowa to win in regulation.

That’s when Florida, one of the nation’s best defenses all season long, played its worst defensive possession of the season.

Florida stayed in the press that helped it slow Iowa’s offense and get the Gators back in the game, intending to foul the Hawkeyes and send them to the free-throw line with a chance to tie the game.

Unconventional as it may seem, there’s sound logic to the decision. Even if Florida fouled Stirtz, an 84% free throw shooter, the Iowa senior was having an off-shooting night. Maybe he misses a free throw under pressure with a roaring crowd. Even if he does not, Florida has the ball, a chance for a final shot, and the guarantee of overtime in a virtual home game against an Iowa team plagued by late-game foul trouble.

Of course, that depended on Florida executing. It did not.

It started with a curious decision to guard the inbounder, given Florida’s intent to foul. Fland compounded Florida’s problems by trailing a screen, allowing Stirtz to get a head of steam moving downhill. Xaivian Lee was screened by Tate Sage and did himself no favors by stepping up to the screen instead of over to help on Stirtz. Folgueiras’s man was Thomas Haugh, who had to step up to prevent a rim run for Stirtz, As soon as Stirtz made the pass to Folgueiras, Florida’s process failed — regardless of whether the shot went in or not.

“We didn’t do a good enough job containing Stirtz, helping (Fland) recover or switch,” Todd Golden said following the loss.

“The idea was to keep the ball out of Bennett’s hands, let him throw it to somebody else. So, we wanted a face guard and throw it to somebody else and then take a foul and put one of their role players in a pressure situation. But they ran a little kind of double stagger, got him loose. We just didn’t make a good enough play off the ball there to stop him from getting down the court, and then we had to make a split-second decision and we just didn’t make the right one. Again, I think we had a good plan in terms of what we were trying to do, but we didn’t execute it very well. They still had to step up and make a tough shot in a big moment, and they did that.”

Iowa made its final shot.

Florida failed to get one.

In a cruel irony from last year’s national championship game, which the Gators won by preventing Houston from even getting off a shot, Florida guard Xaivian Lee got downhill on a beautifully designed hammer action only to take an awkward driving angle and, with Folgueiras arriving with late help, elect to pass.

The pass was mishandled by Haugh and Florida’s season over. In truth, even if Haugh handled the pass well, he almost certainly does not get a shot off in time.

In tears after the game, Haugh bravely faced the media, but uttered few words.

“They just played harder than us. Made more plays and shots in the end. I don’t know,” a red-eyed Haugh said, hands over his head.

What else was there to say?

Haugh will forever be a national champion, one of the 5 best players to ever wear a Florida uniform and just the second Consensus All-American the storied program has ever produced. None of that eased the pain Sunday night.

Not for Haugh. Not for anyone in orange and blue.

This one will hurt and haunt Florida for a long time.

That’s March.

The greatest and cruelest month of all, summed up in 2 Florida basketball seasons and epitomized in 8.9 seconds of college basketball.

The post In 8.9 seconds, Iowa’s stunning win over defending national champion Florida shows the great and cruel side of March appeared first on Saturday Down South.

That was just fine with the Gators.

Patience has been a theme all year with this team,

The 5-4 start, with heartbreaking (Duke, UConn, Arizona) and head-scratching (TCU) losses demanded it. The new faces on the roster played like they needed it.

If you ask Todd Golden and his coaching staff, it’s never been a title defense anyway.

“What’s won is done” became a theme for a championship program with a new team intent on writing its own story.

Golden never wavered in his belief in this group.

“This was a new team,” Golden told SDS late last month. “Winning is hard. I think it took me a little longer than expected to kind of figure out what the best way for us to play was. I think we had guys who were alphas at other places trying to figure out who would take what shot, who would finish possessions, who would take 3s. We had returners playing new roles. We have a lot of talented guys that were trying to figure each other out. It took time.”

The Gators figured each other out, and by Friday night, this new team determined to write its own story looked ready for the big-time stage of March.

Florida jumped to an early lead, and while 16-seed Prairie View A&M used a flurry of 3-point jump shots to tie the game at 15 early in the first half, the Gators rattled off an 18-point run to put the eventual outcome to bed well before halftime.

As has been the case all season, the key for the Gators was magnificent defense.

Florida never let the Panthers find a rhythm, icing ball screens, denying post entry passes, and defending beautifully against a steady diet of Prairie View isolation actions. After Prairie View tied the game at 15 with 13:41 remaining in the opening stanza, the Gators put together a 45-6 stretch of basketball, limiting Prairie View to just 2 field goals on 21 attempts, forcing tough midrange jumpers, contesting late shot clock drives, and denying the 3-point line.

Florida then did what it does best, rebounding Prairie View misses and turning great defense into instant transition offense on the other end. The Gators made 16 layups and dunks in the first half, punishing an exhausted Panthers team playing for the sixth time in 10 days.

Florida scored at a staggering 1.71 points per possession clip in the first half and outscored Prairie View 38-0 in the paint. So thorough was Florida’s dominance it created one of the all-timer lines in NCAA sideline interview history in its wake. Asked what the Panthers needed to do to slow Florida’s momentum, Prairie View head coach Byron Smith lamented, “We need some help from the Lord. They are really good.”

That the Gators are again really good — and absolutely a threat to return to Indianapolis and another Final Four — is a testament to a coaching staff that consistently imparts belief.

Replacing arguably the greatest backcourt in SEC history, many staffs might have panicked after portal additions Boogie Fland (Arkansas) and Xaivian Lee (Princeton) struggled out of the gate.

Golden and his staff stayed the course, adjusting the offense to play through big man Alex Condon more and reducing both the volume and workload on Fland and Lee to create and make shots.

It worked.

After an SEC opening night loss at Mizzou, the Gators won 16 of their final 17 conference games, winning the top-ranked conference (per KenPom and Bart Torvik) in college basketball by 3 games and earning a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season.

During that stretch, the Florida guards have consistently delivered.

Lee buried a step back triple to seal a pivotal, momentum-shifting win at Vanderbilt in January. Boogie Fland anchored the perimeter for one of the nation’s top 5 defenses (per Torvik) and after starting the season a miserable 18% from 3 through February 14, Fland has shot 43% (13-30) beyond the arc since, adding scoring punch to a Florida offense needing balance to be elite.

Throw in SEC Sixth Man of the Year Urban Klavžar and emerging wing Isaiah Brown, and suddenly the Gators were a complete team, one that could keep defenses honest from deep and punish you consistently inside.

That version of the Florida backcourt showed up on Friday night. Fland was sensational, scoring 16 points on a perfect 6-6 from the field, adding 4 assists and committing just 1 turnover. Lee was steady, burying 3 trifectas and dishing out 5 assists against 0 turnovers. And Klavžar and Brown combined 18 points on an efficient 7-9 from the floor, all while playing outstanding defense and taking care of the basketball.

That version of Florida’s guards is very capable of being a winning complement to the dominant Florida frontcourt, just as Florida’s frontcourt was to the brilliant backcourt a year ago.

But it’s Florida’s ferocious frontcourt that gives these Gators championship capable bite.

The trio of Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu, and consensus All-American Thomas Haugh were as advertised against Prairie View. Condon scored 13 points and had 5 assists, adding 3 blocks as Florida outscored the Panthers 64-10 in the paint. Haugh had 14 points, 7 assists, and 4 rebounds, keying Florida’s game-clinching first half run with transition layups and passing. The best of all, though, was Chinyelu, who posted his school-best 19th double-double in the victory, with 14 points and 13 rebounds and a game-best plus-43 in box-plus minus.

The end result was the second-largest victory in NCAA Tournament history, a 59-point shellacking that felt like a statement of intent from the reigning champs.

You want the title? Come and get it.

It was also a needed confidence boost for Florida, which saw a season-long 12-game winning streak snapped by Vanderbilt in a lopsided semifinal loss at the SEC Tournament.

“We needed to play better,” Todd Golden told the media after the win, referencing Florida’s turnover-plagued, poor shooting weekend at the SEC Tournament. “Obviously as we’ve talked about a lot back in Gainesville, we don’t ever want to lose, to kind of learn from that and get better. We want to continue to win. But when you do, you’ve got to take some things from it and find ways to improve, and I think we did that this past week. Our guys were really attentive at practice. They did a really good job of focusing on the areas that we as a staff thought we needed to improve upon. We played with great intent tonight. When we do that, we’re pretty tough.”

Florida will need to be tough on Sunday.

Iowa is an outstanding team, under-seeded according to predictive metrics and led by a no-nonsense rising coaching star in Ben McCollum and an All-American caliber point guard in Bennett Stirtz. The Hawkeyes turn you over and don’t turn it over, and they impose their plodding, methodical tempo on games, magnifying the meaning of every possession and trauma of every turnover.

It will be a fight for 40 minutes.

Will Florida pull off the Round 2 victory and advance to the Sweet 16? Here’s what the latest Kalshi market says about Sunday’s game in Tampa:

The Gators survived a scare in this spot last year, besting UConn by 2 points in the final minutes. Alex Condon remembers and promises the Gators will lean on that when challenged on Sunday.

“This next game, it will start to get really real,” Condon told SDS after the win. “We need to come in with our best form, play smart and play the way we can play.”

The way they can play is championship good.

A mean brace of big alligators, writing their own March story.

The post Writing their own March story, this group of Gators makes an opening round statement in Tampa appeared first on Saturday Down South.

It’s tough to win NCAA Tournament games even in the best of circumstances, when your team enters the NCAA Tournament healthy, balanced on both sides of the basketball, and free from distractions off the court. Throw one of those variables out of balance, and the degree of difficulty rises.

Throw all of them in flux and you become a maelstrom of March mystery ripe for an upset.

Or so you’d think, until you watch the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Entering the NCAA Tournament this week, there were plenty of reasons to doubt the Crimson Tide.

On the court, the Crimson Tide struggle to guard and l