Michigan was still one of the most incredible stories in college basketball

Michigan lost by 17 points to Villanova in the national championship game on Monday night, and never really threatened after the Wildcats were able to DiVincenzo their way out of a 21-14 deficit. Michigan was also facing their first opponent better than a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a fact that could take the sheen off the Wolverines’ magical run if you let it.

It would be easy to point at Michigan’s lackluster outing and say they shouldn’t have been on the court with Villanova, that they were the beneficiaries of a particularly mad March Madness, especially on their half of the bracket, where only three teams seeded No. 5 or better made it to the Sweet 16, and just one team seeded high than No. 9 — Michigan — made it to the Elite Eight.

But doing so would do a grave disservice to the efforts both teams gave on the court in San Antonio. Michigan more than proved their championship bona fides by dominating the Big Ten late in the regular season and finding ways to win with offense and defense. And the fact that Villanova was able to outstrip such a well-rounded team in the biggest game of the season (and damn near everyone else before that) speaks to how freakishly good the Wildcats were.

Everything seemed to turn around for Michigan in January, when the players who would eventually take over in March started to assert themselves. Before the season began, the Wolverines still didn’t know whether they had a point guard, if Kentucky transfer Charles Matthews would ever stop turning the ball over, or if senior Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, a longtime trusted role player, could lead the team now that he had the spotlight.

Michigan was a team with serious questions — coaches picked the Wolverines to finish tied for fifth in the Big Ten before the season — and systematically it answered every one. Zavier Simpson took over the point guard position by becoming such a tenacious defender, it negated the fact that he shot barely over 50 percent from the free throw line. Matthews, meanwhile, stopped turning the ball over, and proved during the NCAA Tournament that he has the capability of getting to the rim almost at will. He was named the Most Outstanding Player of the West region after scoring 16.6 points per game over the Wolverines’ first five games, often creating offense when none of his teammates could.

As for Rahkman, his tournament was somewhat bittersweet. There’s no question he’ll cherish what his team accomplished this past March for a long time, but he himself often struggled to find his shot. In the semifinal bout against Loyola, he went 0-for-5 from beyond the arc and 2-for-11 for the game, often forcing shots in hopes of jarring himself back into rhythm.

If there is some silver lining for Michigan in the title game, it’s that vintage Rahkman finally returned. He was the best player off the dribble on the court not name Donte DiVincenzo, driving and squirming through the lane to divine angles and make layups that hadn’t fallen in what felt like eons thanks to the way the NCAA Tournament elongates time. He finished as the game’s second-highest scorer with 23 points on 8-for-13 from the field — all five misses being three-pointers.

It was nice seeing Rahkman be scintillating again after seeing him save Michigan so many times this season. Rahkman was Matthews before Matthews found his footing, conjuring points when a good but surprisingly inconsistent John Beilein offense wasn’t functioning properly. Michigan blog MGoBlog noted a phenomenon in which Rahkman’s effectiveness rarely dipped even when all the scoring pressure was on him. In fact, the more Michigan leaned on Rahkman, the more it won.

As his career rounds the last bend, Abdur-Rahkman finally emerges from the shadow of the role player. He’s not an all-conquering, all-usage Trae Young, but going from 16% usage to 20 over the last 7 games has corresponded to a 5-2 stretch where the only thing preventing 6-1 with a win at Purdue was Purdue shooting 80% on halfcourt shots—170 ORTG was not sufficient to win game MVP or, like, the game. Michigan’s two worst offensive performances in that stretch by some distance where the two low-usage MAAR games against Northwestern’s zone.

And with Rahkman serving as the team’s veteran backbone, the Wolverines played perhaps as objectively well as nearly any team in the country not named Virginia or Villanova over the second half of the season. They won 11 of their last 12 games before the NCAA Tournament, including 11- and 9-point wins over No. 2 Michigan State and No. 8 Purdue, respectively, to win the Big Ten Tournament.

They were the thing every optimistic fan hopes for before the season begins, what happens when every daydream comes true. Anybody who has a favorite team can list the five or six things that if they just break our way will win a championship. For Michigan, nearly every one of those items on that list was checked off, with the addition of a frighteningly effective defense that finished No. 3 in Kenpom’s efficiency ratings.

The one box left blank was the one about not going up against a nigh-unstoppable offensive team also riding a two-month hot streak. Villanova-Michigan was billed as the ultimate perimeter battle — the Wildcats’ unlimitedly versatile backcourt against Michigan’s pugnacious ball stoppers — and it lived up to the hype for the first 10 minutes of the game before DiVincenzo nerfed any debate.

But that should be a testament to Villanova — a team that made every team look silly, including No. 1 seed Kansas, who gave up 18 three-pointers on Saturday night (the Wolverines gave up 10) — and say little about Michigan, a team that if it was at its best, could look just as unstoppable, as it did in two double-digit wins over Michigan State this season, or in a 99-point onslaught against Texas A&M in the Sweet 16.

Of course, no team is always perfect, though few have ever been as flawless as consistently as the Wildcats were this season. Michigan, however, found ways to counterbalance its weaknesses by encouraging star turns by all of its players and emphasizing defense to incredible effect, ensuring they would be competitive against any team that wasn’t equipped with a small army of three-point shooting borgs.

It’s hard to believe that a certain portion of the Michigan fanbase wanted John Beilein fired in the midst of last season. It isn’t hard to believe, however, that one of college basketball’s most adaptable coaches heard the criticisms about his teams and admitted he needed to find a specialist — hello assistant coach Luke Yaklich — to take defensive responsibility off his hands.

The decision was just one of many that managed to pan out — seemingly improbably, but maybe not improbably at all — for Michigan to make their way back to the title game for the second time since 2013 — except this time without multiple obvious NBA Draft picks, and certainly no Player of the Year winner like Trey Burke.

Would it have been even sweeter if Michigan had toppled Villanova? Well, yes, but a lesser miracle is still a miracle. This loss no doubt stings for the Wolverines, but with time context will cut through the barrier of emotions that may be obscuring the bigger picture:

Before the season, the Wolverines had absolutely no right to be in San Antonio to play in the last game of the season. And the fact that they were was about so much more than a favorable draw.

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