Back to the NCAA Newsfeed

Michigan's Clinical Takedown of Villanova Shows Rebuilt Wildcats Have a Long Ways to Go

VILLANOVA, Pa. — By the end of the night, the script had fully flipped, the vestiges of a championship rendered irrelevant in what was only a rematch in the nominal sense. “This was a November win,” head coach John Beilein cautioned. His Michigan team had just delivered a 73–46 win, a measured bruising of Villanova that doubled as April’s championship game redux. The recasting of the matchup suited them, the Wolverines playing an ugly foil to avenge a 17-point defeat while their opponents christened a revamped Finneran Pavilion with little style to speak of. Beilein is right—it’s too soon to call anything—but it was evident what changed in seven months’ time.