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Michigan muscles its way to program’s 2nd NCAA basketball title, beating UConn
Michigan celebrates after defeating UConn in the NCAA college basketball tournament national championship game at the Final Four, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Indianapolis.
Michael Conroy/AP
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Michael Conroy/AP
INDIANAPOLIS — High-scoring Michigan had to get down and dirty to dig out the national title Monday, making only two 3-pointers all night but still muscling its way to a 69-63 victory over stingy, stubborn UConn.
Elliot Cadeau led the Wolverines with 19 points, including the team’s first 3, which came 7:04 into the second half. The second, from freshman Trey McKenney, came with 1:50 left and felt like a dagger, giving the coach Dusty May’s team full of transfers a nine-point lead.
To no one’s surprise, UConn fought to the finish. Solo Ball banked in a 3 to cut it to four with 37 seconds left — and after two missed free throws, UConn’s Alex Karaban (17 points) barely grazed the rim on a 3 that would’ve cut the deficit to one with 17 seconds left.
Michigan also got outrebounded 22-12 on the offensive glass by a UConn team that would not go away. Not until McKenney sank two free throws to bring Michigan’s shooting from the line to 25 for 28 for the night could the Wolverines (37-3) kick off the celebration for the program’s second title — the other coming in 1989.
But this game had a 1950s feel to it.
“If you’d told me we would shoot it this poorly and (be) dominated on the glass and still find a way to win, I don’t know if I would have believed you,” May said. “This team just found a way all season.”
Michigan’s Trey McKenney, left, and Elliot Cadeau celebrate during the second half of the NCAA college basketball tournament national championship game against UConn at the Final Four, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Indianapolis.
Michael Conroy/AP
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Michigan had to fight for everything. The Wolverines missed their first 11 shots from 3, finished 2 for 15 from there and won despite the struggles of their best player, Yaxel Lendeborg. Ailing with a hurt knee and foot that kept him from elevating, the graduate transfer from UAB finished with 13 points on 4-of-13 shooting.
Truth be told, it wasn’t anyone’s prettiest night.
UConn’s hopes at becoming the first team since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty to win three titles in four seasons came up short, done in by massive foul trouble and its own terrible shooting.
Coach Dan Hurley’s team shot 30.9% from the floor and missed its first 11 shots from 3 in the second half.
Braylon Mullins, the hero of the Duke win that put UConn in the Final Four, finished 4 of 17, though he made a pair of late 3s that kept the game in reach.
UConn (35-5) covered the 6 1/2-point spread, and Hurley kept his players out on the court to watch the podium get set up for the presentation of a trophy heading not to Storrs, but Ann Arbor.
Members of Michigan celebrate after defeating UConn in the NCAA college basketball tournament national championship game at the Final Four, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Indianapolis.
Michael Conroy/AP
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Michael Conroy/AP
About the only consolation: The Huskies clogged things up, slowed things down and made Michigan beat them at their game.
The Wolverines came in as the first team to crack 90 points in five straight high-flying tournament blowouts. They didn’t hit 70 in this one but, in almost every way, it was the prettiest of them all — the one that gives them what even Michigan’s most famous teams, the Fab Five, couldn’t manage — namely, a natty.

Style points aside, this was a championship built from outside — the best team money could buy.
All five Wolverines starters played college ball elsewhere, and all but Nimari Burnett came to Ann Arbor this season. That’s the product of the transfer portal that May has shown no reluctance to use. His ability to form a makeshift group into a winner is still the value of a coach and a culture.
“They might be still calling us mercenaries but we’re the hardest-working team,” Lendenborg said. “We’re the best in college basketball and we’ll be one of the greatest ever.”
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One Person Who Appears to Be Missing From King Charles’s U.S. Itinerary: Prince Harry
One meeting that appears to be absent from King Charles III’s carefully planned schedule in the United States this week is any reunion with Prince Harry.
On a four-day state visit intended in part to repair bruised U.S.-British relations, Charles’s itinerary currently includes no plans to see Harry, his 41-year-old son, who lives in California with his wife, Meghan, and their two children.
Buckingham Palace officials declined to comment when asked whether the king and his younger son would meet. Charles and Queen Camilla are scheduled to be in Washington on Tuesday and New York on Wednesday before departing on Thursday.
The family fell out publicly when Harry, who holds the title Duke of Sussex, withdrew from royal duties in 2020 and relocated to California in an act of self-exile. In the years since, their relationship has been tested again and again.
Harry wrote a tell-all memoir about growing up in the royal family and produced a six-part Netflix series about his relationship with Meghan, which detailed his rift with his brother, Prince William, with whom he remains estranged. And he pursued a lawsuit challenging the decision by British authorities to withdraw his family’s publicly-financed security protection during their visits to Britain.
In an interview last May, Harry told the BBC that the lawsuit — which he lost — had become a “sticking point,” further distancing him from his father. He expressed concern for the king’s health, following his father’s diagnosis with an undisclosed form of cancer the year before.
“I would love reconciliation with my family,” Harry said in that interview.
Last September, Charles and Harry met for the first time in 19 months, an encounter that some hoped represented a rapprochement. The BBC reported that they spent around an hour together, having tea privately in Clarence House, the king’s London residence.
In the months since, the rift has been overshadowed by another, more damaging family scandal. The king’s brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested amid allegations that he had shared confidential government information with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew, whose royal titles were previously stripped over his ties to Mr. Epstein, has denied wrongdoing.
Andrew’s withdrawal from royal life has contributed to an image of a shrunken and fractured royal family. Speaking days after Andrew’s arrest with Britain’s Channel 4 News, Harry did not directly address the subject of his uncle but acknowledged, with an awkward chuckle, that there had been “a lot of stuff in the news.”
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Feds conducting raids connected to welfare fraud investigation in Minnesota
Federal law enforcement agencies are conducting a series of raids connected to the Somali fraud investigation in Minnesota on Tuesday morning, federal authorities have said.
The raids are not part of an immigration enforcement operation.
“Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” a spokesperson for the Department of Justice said.
At least 22 federal search warrants were executed in Minnesota on Tuesday morning, a senior Justice Department official told NBC News. It was not immediately clear how many total raids occurred.
At least one of the raids appears to be at the Somali Senior Center and Adult Day Services facility, as federal law enforcement can be seen going in and out of the building.
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King Charles Will Speak of ‘Reconciliation and Renewal’ During Address to Congress
King Charles III of Britain will acknowledge on Tuesday that his country has had its differences with the United States, but he plans to tell a joint session of Congress that the “two countries have always found ways to come together,” according to a preview of his remarks by Buckingham Palace.
The king’s speech is a centerpiece of his first visit to the former colonies as Britain’s monarch. It comes at a fraught time for the relationship between the two governments, with President Trump mocking Prime Minister Keir Starmer for refusing to join the war in Iran.
But in his speech, the king plans to say that the story of the two countries over the past 250 years has been marked by “reconciliation and renewal,” and has produced what he will call “one of the greatest alliances in human history.”
The king and Queen Camilla began planning for their American trip months before the tensions emerged between Mr. Trump and Mr. Starmer. And British officials and representatives of Buckingham Palace have repeatedly said the king does not get involved in day-to-day politics or foreign policy.
But privately, officials have said they are hopeful that the core message in the king’s speech might help to soothe tensions between the president and the prime minister. The palace said he will argue that shared democratic values are woven deeply into the fabric of both countries.
Palace officials said the king will briefly reference the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday, offering sympathy to Mr. Trump and those who attended.
But he will focus on the things the United States and Britain have done together. In particular, palace officials said, he will speak about cooperation in the Middle East and Ukraine and will take note of the NATO defense pact and the submarine partnership with Australia and the United States.
Mr. Trump has been particularly brutal in his assessment of the British Navy, calling the country’s battleships “toys.” The palace said the king will speak with particular pride about the Royal Navy and its successes.
Mr. Trump has said he is a fan of the royals, often citing the fact that when he was 6, he watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the king’s mother.
The royal couple’s arrival at Joint Base Andrews kicked off two days of pomp and circumstance in Washington. The king, dressed in a blue suit, and the queen, wearing a pink coat dress, listened as the U.S. military band played the national anthems of Britain and the United States.
The king and queen were greeted by the State Department’s top official in charge of protocol. They walked through an honor cordon of U.S. military personnel before heading to the White House for their first formal stop.
There, the royal couple met briefly with Mr. Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, and viewed a new White House beehive.
The hive, on the South Lawn, is shaped like a miniature White House and is the home for two new bee colonies. Mrs. Trump last week unveiled the latest work of presidential apiculture, the science of maintaining honey bee colonies for pollination, honey production and wax.
The first official White House bee colonies were installed in 2009 by Michelle Obama, the first lady at the time. The bees supported pollination of the White House vegetable garden that Mrs. Obama created as part of her push for healthy eating.
Hives installed by Mrs. Obama support as many as 70,000 bees during peak summer months, according to the White House, and can produce up to 225 pounds of honey a year. The Trump administration said Mrs. Trump’s new hive could increase production to over 255 pounds of honey annually.
The visit to the White House beehive is a nod to the king’s longstanding interest in environmental issues and conservation.
There are four beehives in the gardens around Buckingham Palace and two more outside Clarence House, the official residence of the royal couple. The official royal website notes that the queen produces honey that is sold at the store Fortnum & Mason to raise money for charity.
Monday’s events concluded with a garden party for the king and queen at the British Embassy. The guest list included White House officials like Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, and his wife, Katie Miller; the House speaker, Mike Johnson; and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The president and the king will have a private meeting on Tuesday before the king addresses Congress in the afternoon. Mr. Trump will host a state banquet for the royal couple on Tuesday evening.
The king and queen will head to New York City on Wednesday morning, where they will lay a wreath at the Sept. 11 memorial and participate in a gala that evening. The king will also visit a youth organization in Harlem, and the queen will participate in an event at the New York Public Library.
On Thursday, the royal couple will lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery and travel to rural parts of Virginia.
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