Finalists get chance to shine

ATLANTA — The hoops teams at Louisville and Michigan are used to being overlooked.

The Cardinals may be a national powerhouse, but they’re still considered second fiddle in their own state. The Kentucky Wildcats are the blue bloods of the bluegrass, while Louisville settles for being viewed as more of a blue-collar school.

The Michigan basketball team knows what that’s like. Football rules on the Wolverines’ campus — rightly so, said Tim Hardaway Jr., given that program’s long, storied history.

“We still have a ways to go,” said Hardaway, Michigan’s junior guard. “Football has a lot more national championships than we do.”

Well, it’s kind of hard to overlook either team now. Louisville and Michigan will meet Monday night in the NCAA championship game.

The Cardinals (34-5) have lived up to their billing as the tournament’s top overall seed, blowing through their first four opponents before rallying from a dozen points down in the second half to beat surprising Wichita State 72-68 in the national semifinals.

Football may come first at Michigan (31-7), but the Wolverines haven’t exactly been pushovers on the hardwood. They won a national title in 1989, beating Seton Hall in overtime, and they’ve lost three other times in the championship. The school is best known for the Fab Five, that group of five stellar recruits who led Michigan to back-to-back final appearances in 1992 and ’93.

This team is cut from the same mould, with three freshmen starters and two other first-year players who made big contributions in a semifinal victory over Syracuse.

“The Fab Five was a great team. I mean, a really great team,” said freshman guard Caris LeVert, who came off the bench to score eight points against the Orange. “They did some great things for our school.”

But these guys can do something the Fab Five never did — win it all.