Michigan goes from worst to first with help from unlikely sources: How the Wolverines won the Big Ten title

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The celebration began the moment the horn sounded, echoing through the tunnels of State Farm Center after No. 3 Michigan’s 84-70 dismantling of No. 10 Illinois clinched the program’s first outright Big Ten regular-season title since 2021. Coach Dusty May chest-bumped anyone within arm’s reach. Seven-foot-three center Aday Mara galloped toward the locker room, tapping his ring finger and demanding championship jewelry. Illinois transfer Morez Johnson, who had spent the week absorbing taunts and torrents of angry texts after his phone number leaked, hoisted the gleaming trophy and marched it straight into enemy territory.

Above the din, guard Nimari Burnett kept repeating the mantra plastered on every wall inside Michigan’s practice facility: “Those who stay will be champions.” The words, immortalized by legendary football coach Bo Schembechler, have become the heartbeat of a roster that two seasons ago staggered to an 8-24 record and a 97-68 humiliation in this very building.

“We have a lot of memories in that locker room; none of them good,” forward Will Tschetter said, recalling the nadir of the Juwan Howard era. “To come back, get this dub and clinch the thing outright—means the world.”

When May arrived last spring, neither Tschetter nor Burnett knew whether they would be part of the rebuild. “You think, ‘Oh man, they might want to clear house,’” Tschetter admitted. Instead, May told them he needed their experience and their buy-in. Both stayed. Both sacrificed. Burnett, once the primary ball-handler, accepted a 3-and-D role and has started all 29 games. Tschetter has oscillated between seventh and ninth man without complaint, knocking down second-half triples Friday that sealed Illinois’ fate.

“We kept those guys because we believed in who they are as people,” May said. “They dove in from Day One. Nimari played point on that 8-24 team; now he’s probably our fifth playmaker. Will’s been a star in the role we asked him to play.”

The on-court dividends were impossible to miss. Johnson, tormented all week by Illini fans, responded with 19 points and 11 boards against his former program. Mara added 19 after halftime, rattling the rim with a succession of dunks that turned the arena into a mausoleum. Michigan outmuscled, outran and outworked Illinois on both ends, reinforcing its new identity as the bully of the Big Ten.

Burnett sensed the transformation back in September, when the roster’s size and physicality first came together. “Easy to say now,” he joked, cradling the championship net. “But I stayed for days like this—believing in Coach May, believing in the plan.”

The plan has delivered. From 8-24 to outright Big Ten champions, Michigan’s worst-to-first ascent was engineered by stars who arrived as role players, by transfers who absorbed venom and answered with venomous play, and by a coach who convinced a fractured locker room that staying was the first step toward history.