Dan Hurley Forces Rethink From Kenny Smith Before NCAA Title Game

Sometimes, it only takes one game to undo everything you thought you knew. That’s exactly what happened to former NBA champion, now basketball analyst, Kenny Smith. Just days after making his pick for the national championship, he had to backtrack and flip the script after the Final Four games.

“I’m going to go against my bracket board,” he said on the NCAA Inside March Madness show. “I had Michigan winning there. I think, after watching this today, UConn is going to be the national champ again.” Interestingly enough, Smith never thought the Huskies would make it to the final. His original bracket had Michigan and Michigan State to meet for the national title. But after UConn defeated the Spartans in the Sweet Sixteen, he leaned toward Michigan, especially because of Yaxel Lendeborg.

Interestingly, the Michigan Wolverines were without Lendeborg in their Final Four game, and yet they still dominated Arizona in a 91–73 win. This is a wider margin of victory compared to UConn’s 71–62 defeat of Illinois. Yet Smith, from what he saw, feels the Huskies showed enough signs for him to think they can go all the way. As he puts it, “I think that their versatility on the outside is going to give Michigan more trouble than you think, than most people would think.”

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Smith believes that Dan Hurley’s UConn has an advantage when it comes to shooting. And that will serve as a bigger threat than what the Wolverines faced against Arizona. As he puts it, “They’re going to shoot the ball with some proficiency, and that will separate them from what happened tonight. They have a three-ball, where Arizona has no three-ball tonight.”

And of course, he was, to a large extent, right in his assessment. UConn actually doubled Arizona’s three-point output on that Final Four night. They’ve also got some high-volume shooters in Alex Karaban, Solo Ball, Silas Demary Jr., and Braylon Mullins. Mullins has especially become their most clutch shooter in the…

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Publish date : 2026-04-05 21:59:00

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