Michigan's season ended with an NCAA title. It started with winning the transfer portal.

College basketballMichigan's season ended with an NCAA title. It started with winning the transfer portal.Monday marked the first time in NCAA basketball history that a team with an all-transfer starting five won the championship.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Michigan's Trey McKenney celebrates with Elliot Cadeau after scoring a 3-pointer against UConn in the national championship game in Indian.Andy Lyons / Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 7, 2026, 12:55 AM EDT / Updated April 7, 2026, 12:56 AM EDTBy Andrew GreifIt was 1989, and the word was out. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Only weeks before Michigan began playing in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the team’s coach had accepted a job at another school. Though the coach had planned to leave at the season's end, Michigan's athletic director, famed football coach Bo Schembechler, immediately dismissed the coach and replaced him with someone deemed more loyal. “A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan,” Schembechler said.The line only grew more memorable when the Wolverines, weeks later, won the school’s first basketball national championship. Over time, the quote became something of an unofficial job requirement in Ann Arbor.Thirty-seven years later, Michigan won its second national title Monday night when it beat Connecticut 69-63 — and this time, being part of Michigan basketball no longer required a maize-and-blue pedigree.Wolverines coach Dusty May was an Indiana man, one who had spent his college years as a student manager learning from iconic coach Bob Knight, a longtime Michigan rival. And May deployed a starting five this season made up entirely of transfers. It was the first time in NCAA basketball history that a team with an all-transfer starting five won the championship.Celebratory confetti was still falling inside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis when Yaxel Lendeborg, a transfer from...