Michigan shocks Wisconsin to win Big Ten tournament
The Michigan basketball team crammed a lifetime worth of memories into one magical week, and they received a treasured souvenir as a keepsake.
After defeating No. 24 Wisconsin 71-56 on Sunday to win their first Big Ten Tournament championship, the eighth-seeded Wolverines held high the hardware that accompanied the feat.
Before helping cut down the net, Michigan coach John Beilein gathered his players to deliver an emotional message.
“What I told them is, ‘You’re going to come back 20 years from now and that trophy is going to sit there and you’re going to tell your grandkids about those five days and what happened. You’ll love it forever.”’
The Wolverines began their journey with a scary skid off the airport runway in Michigan. They ended it by overwhelming the second-seeded Badgers, who had won three straight — including the regular season finale against Minnesota — by a total of 55 points.
Between the aborted flight and their final unexpected victory, Michigan beat Illinois, eliminated top-seed Purdue and sent home No. 4 seed Minnesota.
“It means so much to all of us,” senior guard Zak Irvin said. “All of the adversity that we’ve been to throughout the whole tournament, we stuck together as a family and got the job done.”
And so, the first Big Ten Tournament in the nation’s capital ended with a surprise champion cutting down the nets at Verizon Center. Michigan won the title in 1998 but had it vacated due to NCAA sanctions.
Tournament MVP Derrick Walton Jr. scored 22 points, D.J. Wilson added 17 and Irvin had 15 for Michigan, which had lost 17 of its previous 20 games against Wisconsin. The Wolverines shot 56 percent and were 10 for 23 from beyond the arc.
As a reward, Michigan will be the No. 7 seed in the Midwest and open the NCAA Tournament against Oklahoma State.
Sterling Brown scored 18 points to help send No. 12 SMU (30-4) streaking into the NCAA Tournament with a victory over No. 15 Cincinnati (29-5) in the American Athletic Conference championship game. Tournament MVP Simi Ojeleye added 14 points, Jarrey Foster had 13 and Ben Moore scored 12 for Mustangs, who won their 16th straight game and second AAC title in three years.
De’Aaron Fox scored 18 points, and No. 8 Kentucky (29-5) won its third straight Southeastern Conference Tournament championship by beating Arkansas (25-9). Myles Stephens had a career-high 23 points and eight rebounds and Princeton (23-6) won the inaugural Ivy League Tournament, beating Yale (18-11) to clinch its first berth in the NCAA Tournament since 2011. Jared Terrell finished with 20 points and E.C. Matthews added 19, including a decisive runner with 55 seconds to go as Rhode Island (24-9) earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1999 with a 70-63 victory over Virginia Commonwealth (26-8) in the Atlantic-10 title game. Jordon Varnado had 18 points and 12 rebounds and Troy (22-14) defeated Texas State (20-13) in the championship game of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.