The Final Four is set as UConn stuns Duke to join Illinois, Arizona and Michigan

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 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.)

This year's meeting of 1 vs. 1 — Michigan vs. Arizona — is a heavyweight matchup of power teams from power conferences meeting with everything at stake.

It’s a far cry from a mere three years ago, when mid-majors Florida Atlantic (coached by Dusty May, who now leads the Wolverines) and San Diego State crashed college basketball’s biggest party.

Since then, NIL and the transfer portal have reshaped the contours of player movement, another spasm of realignment has made the big conferences bigger (Arizona, now in the Big 12, was in the Pac-12 in 2023), and the high-achieving underdogs who used to make March Madness what it is have gone into a slump.

Double-digit seeds won a total of five games in this tournament (not counting the play-in round). Two years ago, they won 11 and sent one team (N.C. State) to the Final Four.

Not surprisingly, Underwood — the coach who landed on the Illinois radar a decade ago by coaching double-digit seed Stephen F. Austin to a pair of upset wins in the tournament — views his program’s trip to the Final Four more as destiny than a once-in-a-lifetime story.

It is, however, the first trip for Illinois since 2005, when it lost to North Carolina in the title game.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant,” said Underwood, whose teams have won 96 Big Ten games since 2019-20, two more than Purdue. “I’ve never doubted us getting to a Final Four would happen. I have thought we have had other teams capable. But I also know how doggone hard it is to do it.”

The Big Ten knows all about this. Both Illinois and Michigan have a chance to deliver a title for the conference for the first time since Michigan State won it all in 2000.

The Illini, led by the so-called “Balkan Bloc” — a cohort of players with roots in Eastern Europe — have a potential NBA lottery pick of their own in guard Keaton Wagler.

Even so, the best-known name on the Illini roster might be Andrej Stojakovic, whose father, Peja, was a three-time NBA All-Star. Illinois is the third school in three years for the younger Stojakovic, who spent one season at Stanford and another at Cal before joining Underwood’s crew.

The task for Illinois: Figuring out who to key on across a roster that has five players who average double figures, led by Tarris Reed Jr.

The Wildcats-Wolverines game is a high-powered matchup of programs that have shown there’s more than one way to amass talent in the era of the unlimited transfer portal and big-money name, image and likeness deals.

Four of the five starters for Tommy Lloyd’s Wildcats began their careers in Tucson; the fifth, Big 12 player of the year Jaden Bradley, moved over from Alabama and has been with the Wildcats for three years.

Meanwhile, the top four players in minutes played at Michigan — Lendeborg, Morez Johnson Jr., Aday Mara and Elliot Cadeau — all arrived from the transfer portal.

In a twist that makes perfect sense these days, both coaches parlayed roots in the mid-majors to a spot on the sport’s biggest stage. Lloyd spent decades as a top assistant for Mark Few at Gonzaga before heading to Arizona to rebuild the program after the ouster of Sean Miller in 2021.

May led FAU to the Final Four before heading to the Michigan program that had thrived, then collapsed, under former Fab Five star Juwan Howard.

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

UConn guard Braylon Mullins (24) celebrates after a basket against Duke during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

UConn forward Tarris Reed Jr. (5) reacts after the team's win against Duke in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Arizona forward Ivan Kharchenkov smiles on the stage after a win over Purdue in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 28, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Kelley L Cox)

Illinois' Zvonimir Ivisic cuts part of the net after an Elite Eight game against Iowa in the NCAA college basketball tournament Saturday, March 28, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Michigan's Yaxel Lendeborg (23) celebrates after defeating Tennessee in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

UConn guard Braylon Mullins, right, celebrates his game winning basket with guard Malachi Smith (0) during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament against Duke, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

SEATTLE (AP) — By the time Emerson Hancock’s first start of the 2025 season ended, he had recorded just two outs.

Once Hancock’s inaugural outing of 2026 concluded, though, a few very different figures lit up the scoreboard at T-Mobile Park.

Six innings.

No runs.

And most impressive — no hits.

Not only did the Seattle Mariners starter pick up his first win of the season Sunday in the team’s 8-0 victory over the Cleveland Guardians, Hancock also proved to himself in a very concrete way that he has made sizable steps forward since the spring of 2025.

After all, Hancock won a spot in the Mariners’ rotation in large part because of a spring training injury to Bryce Miller.

“A year ago, right now, we’re having a completely different conversation. Things went completely different,” Hancock said with a laugh. “But, I think that’s just part of this game. And you’re going to struggle, there’s going to be ups, there’s going to be downs.”

There were no “downs” to speak of Sunday, at least not according to the 30,800 fans on hand who rewarded the sixth overall pick in the 2020 amateur draft with a standing ovation after he worked a 1-2-3 sixth inning.

In the process, Hancock joined Félix Hernández as the only Mariners pitchers to strike out nine or more in a hitless outing of at least six innings. Hernández did so when throwing a perfect game in 2012.

Hancock’s nine strikeouts were a career high, a figure buoyed in large part by a four-seam fastball that generated nine swings-and-misses. Paired with a sweeper that Hancock spent a lot of time refining in the offseason, Hancock’s fastball kept Cleveland’s hitters off balance all evening.

“You’re playing the speed game and the break game,” Hancock said. “It’s something slower, it’s something that is breaking a lot through the zone. And if you can throw it in the zone, it can help a ton. And then the heater for me, I’m just trying to see it as the mask and just kind of rip it.”

Hancock effortlessly maneuvered through Cleveland’s lineup. The only baserunners the 26-year-old right-hander allowed came when he walked José Ramírez in the first inning and hit CJ Kayfus with a fastball in the sixth.

But after six innings and 97 pitches, manager Dan Wilson decided Hancock was done, and there was no consideration to seeing if he could produce the seventh no-hitter in Mariners history.

“What he did today was really good execution,” Wilson said. “Really hard to take a guy out after no hits, six innings. But, pitch count was where it was.”

Guardians rookie Chase DeLauter lined a clean single leading off the seventh against reliever Cooper Criswell to break up Seattle’s bid for a combined no-hitter.

Across the board, Hancock’s velocity was down relative to last season, too. He and Wilson chalked that up in part to it being early in the season. It didn’t help that the temperature hung in the low 40s all game on a chilly late afternoon in the Pacific Northwest

As much as the elements may have shortened Hancock’s start, though, they only added to its brilliance. From the outset, third baseman Brendan Donovan was impressed with Hancock’s willingness to attack hitters, evidenced by the right-hander throwing first-pitch strikes to 12 of the 19 batters he faced, as well as not allowing a batted ball against him to leave the infield.

“I feel like he had confidence in everything that was coming out of his hand,” Donovan said. “Mixing speeds, locations, high levels. Kind of in and out, down, everything seemed to be working for him.”

Such an assessment could not be applied to Hancock’s first start of the 2025 season, one he ultimately finished coming out of the bullpen as Seattle’s starting rotation got healthier. But if Hancock can spin the ball the way he did Sunday more frequently, Wilson will have tougher decisions to make beyond whether he should keep the righty in the game.

“What an incredible performance by Emerson Hancock,” Wilson said. "It was impressive.”

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/mlb

Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Emerson Hancock walks back to the dugout after facing the Cleveland Guardians during the fifth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Emerson Hancock throws against the Cleveland Guardians during the first inning of a baseball game, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Emerson Hancock throws against the Cleveland Guardians during the third inning of a baseball game, Sunday, March 29, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)