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Dusty May cultivated a roster with few weaknesses in quick succession, bringing glory to the Maize and Blue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first got to the league three years ago, they talked about how we want to compete in everything,\u201d Petitti said. \u201cObviously, resources matter. You have to be honest about it. But you still need great coaching. You still need a commitment to winning and performing at a high level and coming together and building and developing players. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s ever going to change. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe commitment to the coaching and getting the right people and the right student-athletes to believe in what their coaches are doing \u2014 I think you\u2019re seeing that across pretty much everything we play.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is impossible to ignore the fact that the Big Ten is dominating the national landscape in the NIL era. Much ink has been spilled about its schools having massive fan bases and very wealthy alumni, including billionaires. Now that NCAA rules permit paying athletes, Big Ten schools have had incredible levels of success. Michigan coach Dusty May joked last month that he\u2019d have to go off the record to be free to fully explain what was going on prior to the legalization of NIL that determined who won titles. The insinuation was that it was the teams who paid players under the table.<\/p>\n
But money doesn\u2019t determine the actual winner of the NCAA Tournament. Otherwise, the nation\u2019s most expensive roster would have been the one cutting down the nets. Michigan spent money, yes. But it wasn\u2019t the biggest spender, and the players the Wolverines grabbed out of the portal were leaving their prior schools for a reason. UNC fans weren\u2019t upset to see Elliot Cadeau gone, and UCLA didn\u2019t seem to know how to use Aday Mara effectively, either. Yaxel Lendeborg was a big get, but he was also still coming from the mid-major level, at UAB.<\/p>\n
Michigan\u2019s all-transfer starting lineup is a testament to how you can win in college basketball in the modern era with players making an immediate impact in one season. But the UCLA women\u2019s basketball team just won a title with six seniors, most of whom spent all or the majority of their careers with the Bruins. The Indiana football program won with a core group of players that were initially recruited to James Madison and a quarterback who came from a sub-.500 Cal team. Resources to retain and attract players are certainly part of the equation, but they don\u2019t automatically mean you get the best players in the country. They also don\u2019t automatically mean that you\u2019ll win the most important games of your season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to win,\u201d Petitti said. \u201cThere [are] a lot of great teams out there, and this tournament is a real gauntlet. \u2026 We\u2019ve had a lot of great teams over the years, a lot of great coaches and players, and sometimes not everything goes your way. But I think this year, we felt good about how deep we were as a league in basketball, but also how elite we were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league was deep, and that was reflected in the six Sweet 16 teams, five Elite Eight teams and half of the Final Four. But the one cutting down the nets reflected that the Big Ten\u2019s best was also the nation\u2019s best. That doesn\u2019t always happen in the survive-and-advance NCAA Tournament, but it obviously did this year. <\/p>\n
As for Petitti? He\u2019ll enjoy the two trophies gained this week, but he\u2019ll quickly turn his attention to the Frozen Four, where he\u2019s got two teams competing to earn another.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re just on to the next one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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