The Men's Final Four Is Set

All that talent at Arizona and Michigan. All that momentum and good vibes at UConn. And somebody has to play the part of the unheralded "little guy." At the Final Four next weekend, that role belongs, improbably, to Illinois. In a sign of the times, the Illinii—a Big Ten team with more wins in the conference over the last seven seasons than any other program—will pass for something resembling Cinderella when college basketball's biggest party kicks off in Indianapolis on Saturday, the AP reports. The first challenge for coach Brad Underwood's team will be stopping a hard-charging UConn juggernaut that came from 19 points down and got a game-winner from the logo with 0.4 seconds left from an Indy native—Braylon Mullins—to make its third Final Four in the last four years.

The last two times the Huskies reached this point, they won the championship. "It's a UConn culture, a UConn heart," coach Dan Hurley said. "We believe we're supposed to win this time of year." All these teams do. Arizona, led by Brayden Burries, and Michigan, with Yaxel Lendeborg, have up to nine NBA prospects between them. The Wildcats opened as slight favorites—at plus-165 to win the championship, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. That was a shade ahead of the Wolverines, who are plus-180 after their 95-62 romp over Tennessee on Sunday. But, in one of a few strange twists on the odds chart, the Wildcats are 1 1/2-point underdogs to Michigan in Saturday night's marquee semifinal, a matchup of No. 1 seeds.

Illinois is a 1 1/2-point favorite over UConn and, in reality, it's the Huskies, at plus-550, who are the biggest long shot in Indy. Even so, the fact that Illinois—the flagship university in the nation's sixth most populous state and a school with an enrollment of nearly 60,000—feels most like this year's out-of-nowhere underdog speaks more about the current state of college hoops than the Illini themselves. They are a No. 3 seed—the highest number at the Final Four in two years. (UConn is a 2. Last season, all four No. 1s made it.) Read more about the upcoming matchups here.