Colin Cowherd & Jason Timpf’s National Championship Breakdown

Welcome back to the Colin Cowherd podcast.

Jason Timpf of Hoops Tonight joined me on the pod to discuss tonight’s NCAA Tournament National Championship game between UConn and Michigan.

Okay, let’s talk college basketball. It was a tough loss for you as a big Arizona guy, but this has been such a great season.

Personally, I picked Michigan to win the whole thing. I had them beating Florida, but I watched them a lot all season because I’m in Big 10 country. I probably watched them at least six or seven times.

I mean, they beat Gonzaga badly. Teams beat Gonzaga all the time – they just don’t blow Gonzaga out. They also don’t blow Arizona out. Like, Michigan is really good. If they’re hitting their jumpers, they could beat UConn by 15 or more.

And UConn is unbelievable in their own right.

Is Michigan an All-Time Great Team?

It’s funny when people ask, “Is this the best college basketball team ever?” This is when it helps to be my age.

No, they’re not a Top-10 team ever. They are a top three team in the last 5-10 years. There was a team that had Hakeem and Clyde Drexler that didn’t even win a national championship. I mean, you can go back and look at that Phi Slama Jama roster.

There was a St. John’s team that had Mark Jackson, Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, and Walter Berry. Didn’t win it all either.

Michigan is what college basketball was in the 80s and 90s: old, big, and good players front to back, with a dominant center.

I mean, I watched the Ralph Sampson Virginia teams for years.

Cowherd’s Michigan vs. UConn Prediction

But I will say this – UConn is just physical. They make they make people pick up the dribble as much as any defense in the country. Teams are just constantly picking up the dribble on the perimeter. They get lost.

But Michigan has the power to push back.

For the officials on Monday night, this is going to be one of the hardest games to call. You could foul both teams out eight minutes in.

I like Michigan to win because of what Aday Mara has become – he was averaging five points per game for UCLA. Now he’s an offensive hub.

Timpf on Arizona’s Loss to Michigan

I was worried about that game from the beginning of the tournament when I saw that we were lined up with them in the semifinal because Arizona physically dominated everybody, all year long.

It’s not like an over-the-top size thing like Kevin Durant shooting over you or Nikola Jokic hitting hook shots. It’s like, we’re going through your chest over and over again. There’s not a lot of refined skill in their front line.

So I looked at Michigan as the neutralizing factor for that size, except all of their bigs are more skilled.

Mara is more skilled than Krivas. Yaxel Lendeborg is legitimately like if you took Rui Hachimura and put him back in college basketball right now. They also have Morez Johnson, who can shoot the ball and put it on the floor when needed.

Their bigs were every bit as big as they needed to be to match Arizona’s physicality, but then they also had the over-the-top skill that Arizona’s bigs did not have.

What really swung that game towards a blowout was how badly the perimeter players for Michigan outplayed Arizona’s perimeter players. Jaden Bradley ends up getting in foul trouble early. I didn’t like a couple of the calls that he picked up, but that ended up taking him out of the game. Brayden Burries started like 0-8 from the field. Like, he just couldn’t make a shot.

I thought Elliot Cadeau was kind of forcing things a little bit, but he was bringing a confidence to the game and generating a lot of shots – even though he had some misses and some turnovers.

Overall, he was bringing a verve to Michigan’s offense and it was working.

Timpf on UConn’s Path to Winning

UConn was killing Illinois by running Mullins that same double drag coming off the left side of the floor.

One of the reasons why that works is Illinois did not want to bring their bigs out. They had their bigs hanging back.

As long as he can shake free coming off those screens, he’s going to get that shot. He had a couple early in the game and he hit the dagger coming off the left wing that ended the game.

Mara is going to do the exact same thing. He’s going to be sitting back. One of the downsides with that front line on Michigan is they’re a little slow-footed. Hurley is going to put those dudes in the blender. If Michigan makes mistakes with their slow-footed bigs against that type of action, they’re going to get some clean looks.

It really comes down to if UConn can hold up physically enough on the front line, like if they don’t just get absolutely annihilated by Michigan’s size and if Michigan doesn’t quite shoot as well as they did against Arizona. Michigan shot insanely well in that game, like there was a magnet ball out there. It was very hard for me to watch.

But for UConn, if Michigan doesn’t shoot super well and Dan Hurley can put them in the blender and guys like Mullins can hit threes, I think they’ve got a really good shot at an upset.