The Final Four and the NCAA Tournament national title game are just a few days away and the final predictions are pouring in. While Jay Bilas may not get to root for the Duke Blue Devils anymore, he still has strong opinions on who will hoist the trophy.
Appearing on The Triple Option podcast this week, Bilas gave his thoughts on who would win the UConn-Illinois and Arizona-Michigan games.
For UConn-Illinois, he predicted that UConn would get the win as long as they shoot better than they did against Duke in the Elite Eight. He feels that, while UConn are not as good as their last two title teams, they're good enough to beat Illinois and win the title.
“Even though Illinois is favored in the game (according to) Vegas, I’d favor UConn in the game,” Bilas said. “What UConn has done over the last several years, I mean, since 1999, UConn has won six different national championships under three different coaches. … (This year’s) UConn is not as good as those two (2023-24) championship teams, but they’re good enough to win this thing. They just need to shoot it better than they did against Duke.”
The real championship?
As for Arizona-Michigan, Bilas was reluctant to call a winner but feels that the winner of the game would win the title. He feels that Arizona have plenty of advantages but that Michigan can get the win if they play a perfect game.
“Arizona is legit, but so is Michigan. Those are, in my view, the two best teams...” Bilas said. “But Arizona is kind of old school and they’re an inside-out team, they don’t shoot a ton of 3s, what they do is they get to the foul line. They beat you up physically and get to the rim, and if you’re going to be physical with them, you’re going to wind up fouling them and spend the majority of the game at the foul line… Michigan is going to have to play good defense without fouling, because if they put Arizona at the foul line, that’s going to be advantage Arizona.”
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UConn defeated Duke on a thrilling game-winning shot to advance to the Final Four while Illinois, Arizona and Michigan all solidly beat their opponents in the Elite Eight to reach this point.
Heading into Saturday, Illinois is favored by 1.5 points over UConn while Michigan are favored by 1.5 over Arizona.
