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INDIANAPOLIS — The Big Ten has a chance at a hat trick that hasn’t been accomplished in close to two decades.
Michigan’s 91–73 dismantling of Arizona put the Wolverines in the national championship game on Monday for the first time since 2018. The program’s last title came in 1989.
It would be the conference’s first national title in basketball since 2000, when Tom Izzo’s Michigan State team beat Florida. But the conference has bigger ambitions.
UCLA’s women’s basketball team will also play South Carolina in the national title game on Sunday. Factor in Indiana football’s championship season, and it could be the first time a conference has won national titles in those three sports in the same year since 2007.
It makes for a busy few days for conference commissioner Tony Petitti and a rare feat that few of his peers can claim for themselves.
The most recent comparison is the 2006–07 academic year, when Florida’s football and men’s basketball teams won championships while Tennessee’s women’s hoops won the first of two consecutive titles under legendary coach Pat Summit. While conference realignment has trimmed the Power-5 to four, the SEC last reached that mark before schools started switching allegiances, underscoring how difficult it is to achieve despite the consolidation.
In January, Indiana defeated Miami in the College Football Playoff to give the conference its first national title of the academic year. Now the challenge is on for the Big Ten to bring home a couple more.
In South Carolina, the UCLA women’s team will face a Gamecocks team that defeated previously unbeaten Connecticut on Friday, depriving the Huskies of their own attempt at a double dip. And the Wolverines will have to go through Connecticut, which is seeking to be the first men’s program to win three titles in four years since John Wooden’s legendary UCLA teams in the 1970s.
Michigan coach Dusty May was already getting a head start on the Huskies by scouting their game against Illinois before his own team took the court on Saturday night.
“I saw about 32 minutes,” May said of Connecticut following his team’s victory on Saturday. “I see a team peaking at the right time.”
It will be a couple years before the financial impact of this season is publicly known, but the conference’s dominant season will be a boost to its books.
In May 2025, the Big Ten reported $928 million in revenue in 2023–24, according to tax documents, surpassing its rival SEC by about $90 million. While both conferences are trending toward $1 billion in reported revenue, the SEC has failed to have a team appear in either the men’s Final Four or the CFP title game this season, costing it some of the money it usually receives.
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