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Good morning! Take a six-shot lead on life today. Inside:
Hoops: What next for Michigan, UCLA and CBB?
Congrats, UCLA and Michigan. You’ve just won the women’s and men’s basketball national championships. Now it’s time to start worrying about your roster.
The portal window is already open: See the 50 best men’s players here and a women’s portal ranking here. Yes, Dusty May is already doing work for Michigan, having landed Tennessee big man J.P. Estrella to get a jump on 2026-27.
Let’s talk at a high level about where things stand for next season:Â
- In our way-too-early men’s top 25 (compiled right before the portal window opened this week), Illinois is No. 1, followed by Michigan, Arizona, Florida and Duke. The top of the sport is so competitive right now, but Michigan has a real chance to run it back. See CJ Moore’s full ranking here, and we’ll check in with him in a second.
- In the way-too-early women’s top 25, UCLA takes a big on-paper tumble, down to No. 25. Literally all of the Bruins’ top contributors are out of eligibility, led by All-American center Lauren Betts. Texas, UConn, USC, South Carolina and Notre Dame comprise the early top five from Sabreena Merchant, who’s also here for a quick chat.
I had questions for CJ and Sabreena about our defending champs. CJ wrote one of my favorite hoops stories of the year, about walking out of the arena with May after Michigan’s title. May made this look so easy, but, of course, it isn’t. Can Michigan’s approach be copied?Â
💬 Other programs will definitely try to replicate the Michigan formula. Mainly, getting bigger. Because of the block-charge rule change three years ago, having size to protect the paint has never mattered more. That’s what Dusty May and his staff aced. The concern with going big is how it will impact spacing offensively, but Michigan still had enough skill on the floor to make it work. That’s what will be so hard to replicate. Bigs are also expensive. May was able to identify two guys who came off the bench for their previous teams — Aday Mara and Morez Johnson — and turn them into starters. Finding players that talented who are maybe underutilized elsewhere is not easy. So, yes, others will try, but it’s very difficult to build (and afford) a frontline that deep and talented.
The Wolverines should be in the mix again next year. UCLA, on the other hand, appears due for a step back with so many departures. But I still found it notable that Cori Close became the first new national champion head coach since 2017, when Dawn Staley won her first title. Long-term, do the Bruins have staying power at the tippy top of the sport?
💬 It feels almost sacrilegious to suggest that a program could enter the tier of UConn or even South Carolina, especially since UCLA is losing six seniors who accounted for every single point the Bruins scored during the Final Four. But there is a power vacuum on the West Coast since Tara VanDerveer’s retirement at Stanford, and now that one NCAA banner will hang in Pauley Pavilion, it is a lot easier to entice California kids to stay home to play college basketball, particularly if that comes with hefty NIL checks. I’d say there is a 6-in-10 chance a powerhouse pops up in L.A. — but it could be under Cori Close at UCLA or what Lindsay Gottlieb is building at USC.
Heady times in Southern California. Let’s keep moving.
News to Know
Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
McIlroy storms to record lead
If the 2025 Masters was a white-knuckle psychodrama where Rory McIlroy kept getting knocked down and clawing his way back up, this year’s version is so far giving Bob Ross vibes. McIlroy was the picture of relaxed mastery on Day 2, carding a 7-under 65 and taking a 36-hole record six-stroke lead over Patrick Reed and Sam Burns while the likes of Scottie Scheffler shot a 74, Bryson DeChambeau tripled 18 to miss the cut, and Robert MacIntyre flipped Augusta National the bird. There are 36 holes to play, and nobody knows better than McIlroy the potential for the wheels to come off, but for now, let’s just enjoy that this man is in a happy place and doing things like this:
More News
- The tankingest team in the tankingest season is officially the Wizards, who clinched the league’s worst record and highest draft floor. They’ve lost 25 of their last 26.
- Victor Wembanyama is eligible for postseason awards after he returned from a left rib contusion to drop 40 against Dallas. See who still isn’t with our eligibility tracker.
- Boston tied the record for most 3s in a game. Again!
- Minnesota Duluth’s Max Plante won the Hobey Baker Award as the top player in men’s college hockey — and looks like he’ll stick around another year before joining the Red Wings. More here.
- The Broncos’ owners bought a 40 percent stake in the Rockies. Details here.
- The bat on the new bronze statue of Ichiro Suzuki broke during its unveiling, which is frankly not in accord with what I understood about metal. A funny watch/read.
- Tigers center fielder Parker Meadows was diagnosed with a concussion and a broken bone in his left forearm after that scary collision Thursday. He also got five stitches in his cheek. Yikes. Full story here.
đź“°Â Find more news here 24/7.
Watch Guide
Greg Fiume / Getty Images
📺 Masters: Third Round
2 p.m. ET on CBS
Moving day will determine whether there’s any drama tomorrow. Find early coverage on Paramount+, the ESPN App, Masters.com and various other streaming destinations. I’m writing our Golf Briefing newsletter this week. Join for free, and we’ll be back here with a final-round lookahead tomorrow.
📺 NCAA hockey: Men’s championship
5:30 p.m. ET on ESPN
If it’s anywhere near as compelling as the semis, where Wisconsin and Denver knocked out the tournament’s top seeds, this will be a good watch. A Denver championship would be its third in five years, while Wisconsin is going for its first (men’s) title in 20.
đź“ş MLB: Red Sox at Cardinals
7:15 p.m. ET on Fox
The Cardinals are … surprisingly interesting? A weak pitching staff means it won’t last forever, but Jordan Walker’s resurgent bat is a fun story, and they beat Boston last night. The Red Sox continue to try to climb out of the hole they dug by starting 2-8.
Get tickets to games like this here.
Pulse Picks
Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
We’ll start with a few Masters items Alex has enjoyed this week.
Of the many cultural quirks of the Masters, I think the unwritten rules of how players sign flags (and how they don’t sign flags) might be my favorite.
Ian O’Connor on Rory, who looks totally unburdened now that he doesn’t have to worry about the career grand slam. Note that Ian wrote this on Thursday, when McIlroy was merely tied for the lead and not six shots clear of the whole field. Good intuition!
Brody Miller on Robert MacIntyre, one of the most emotive and enjoyable players in professional golf, who probably took his whole act a bit far this week.
Special shoutout to one of my favorite writers, Kevin Van Valkenburg of Fried Egg Golf, for this story about the long relationship between Augusta National and the sporting press.
Onto the rest of today’s picks:
NASA is pumping out sick pics of our solar system during Artemis II’s mission. Want a phone background of a lunar eclipse, or a clear close-up of how Earth looks from the moon? NASA’s got you with its wallpaper album. — Lauren Merola
My Pulse Pick this week is the Texas Rangers’ new hat, which I will be buying immediately. Thank you for your time. — Patrick Iversen
To the person I saw on my recent commute carrying nothing but a bag of Sumo oranges and a giant multipack of allergy meds: I see you. I am you. Thankfully, Wirecutter’s experts have a few simple upgrades that can help keep seasonal sneezes at bay — starting with ditching your feather duster. — Brittney Ho
John Carreyrou is the investigative journalist who turned Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes into icons of fraud. Now he thinks he’s found the creator of Bitcoin. Do you agree? Great read. — Chris Sprow
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: The story of Red Sox rookie Tyler Samaniego’s emotional debut.
📫 That’s all for now! Say hello at thepulse@theathletic.com, and check out our other newsletters.