INDIANAPOLIS — Illinois made its run, kept it close and their fans were loudest among the 72,111 at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday night.

But as the game began to wind down, there was only that familiar, eerie silence that settles over a football stadium as the UConn men, who have become a sort of grim reaper at these Final Fours, ran out the clock. Only the swells from the clusters of UConn fans could be heard by the end of their 71-62 victory in the national semifinals.

Another team with another set of reasons it was going to win had fallen prey to Coach Dan Hurley and the magic, sleep-inducing dust he spreads during the NCAA Tournament.

“He does a great job of figuring out what the other team does well and doesn’t do well, and taking it away,” said Jim Calhoun, the program’s original March Madness sandman, who is watching from home this Final Four. “He knows who he is, but he finds out who you are.”

Calhoun won championships in 1999, 2004 and 2011, Kevin Ollie in 2014 and Hurley in 2023 and ’24. Totaled up, Hurley’s Huskies are 17-1 in NCAA Tournament play, including 5-0 at the Final Four. The only loss was by two points to overall No.1 seed and eventual champ Florida in 2025.

Now that he is back in the championship game, the next time lip readers catch Hurley barking to an official, “I’m the best coach in the (bleeping) sport,” it shouldn’t be taken lightly, no matter what happens Monday night. His mastery of the quick-turnaround game plan has become the standard of college basketball. Now the Huskies, underdogs again, face Michigan for the championship Monday night.

“I’d say (Calhoun and Hurley) are very similar,” said UConn GM Tom Moore, who was an assistant for both. “Their styles are very similar. They’re Hall of Fame college basketball coaches, but they’re college basketball junkies, too. When they have a free night, they are watching games all night. They also have a great sense of what’s going on nationally. So I betcha Dan has seen bits and pieces of Michigan’s games probably 15 times this year. No one watches more film than Dan in the 48 hours before the game, for any little thing he can see offensively, personnel-wise, and what can help him. From watching bits and pieces of that game … (Michigan’s win over Arizona) live last night, he already has two or three ideas in his head about what would work best and he’s already imparted those things to the team.”

Hurley has rarely been seen without a tablet in his hand during this NCAA Tournament, a few times “multi-tasking,” watching something on his tablet while fielding questions during the press conferences. On Easter Sunday, he made time to attend Catholic mass, presumably without the tablet. Then went back to game-planning.

“Very detail-oriented, both sides of the ball,” said UConn assistant coach Mike Nardi, who was with Villanova and Jay Wright during championship runs in 2016 and ’18. “You get down to all of our defensive concepts and then trying to figure out how to exploit them on offense. I think the amount of time and the prep that both of them (Wight and Hurley) put into it are so, so similar. (Hurley) picks up things, he processes really quick and makes adjustments during the game. It’s all on feel, too. Having played the game, having coached a long time, you’ve really got to know what your team needs at any given time, also a feel thing, what you see.”

The deeper this 2026 tournament run has gone, the tougher the opponents and the higher stakes of the games, the fewer mistakes UConn has made. On Saturday, the Huskies did not have a turnover until well into the second half, and had only four in the game. Free throws were an issue much of the season, but they were 15 for 17 against Illinois. Shot selection? Use of the clock? Exquisite.

Mistakes like Duke’s ill-fated pass that resulted in a deflection, turnover and Braylon Mullins’ winning shot in the Regional Final, or Illinois several momentum-killing, ill-advised shots late in the semifinal game rarely if ever seem to dog UConn. The preparation was indisputable.

“I think it’s just our decision making,” said point guard Silas Demary Jr., who transferred from Georgia this season. “Being confident in what moves we’re going to do, if we’re going to take a shot, take a shot, not getting caught in between, and I think more so erring on the side if we screen for one another and we set a good — when we screen for one another we know we can get to our spots and hit our shots. And then just being smart with the ball. I think if the pass is not there rather get a shot on the rim and try to offensive rebound rather than just getting a live ball turnover.”

UConn beat Illinois by 13 in a neutral site game on Nov. 30 in New York, yet the Illini were favored Saturday largely because freshman Keaton Wagler had improved so much during the season. Wagler scored 20, but had to work for it. Illinois was averaging 15 assists per game, but had only three against UConn’s defense. Hurley spotted something, obviously, and UConn played at a slower place than normal, in order to take the Illini out of their game. Meanwhile, UConn’s well known sophistication and movement on offense, a bear of a challenge for opposing coaches to dissect with short March turnaround time, may have taken some of the life out of Illinois’ legs.

“Listen, you’ve got to have a plan A, a plan B and a plan C,” Hurley said. “Whether it’s ball-screen coverage or you’re trapping the post or how are you going to treat Cadeau in the ball screen game or what are you going to do when they start posting up those Monstars, like are you playing 1s down there. You’ve got to make those types of decisions. I just think a lot of this tournament does come down to just how teams match up. Are they a good matchup for you? Obviously they’ve got a huge size advantage on us defensively and on the backboard that’s going to be a huge challenge for us.

“Then we’ve got to make them work defensively. Whether they switch screens or don’t switch screens or top block screens or play in the drop or hedge ball screens, no matter what your opponent does, for us, we’re going to do things to make our opponents move defensively maybe more than they are accustomed to, and then hopefully that has a compounding effect for us during the course of the game where it could just wear an opponent down a little bit, just having to run around and chase people and off-ball movement more than they’re accustomed to.”

Michigan (26-3) has been playing with machine line relentlessness throughout this NCAA Tournament, winning all five games by double-digits, scoring at least 90 in each game and will be the toughest matchup yet, as a championship game should be. The game-planning will be in overdrive right up to the 8:50 p.m. tip, and Hurley, like Calhoun, who took down highly regarded Duke teams at Final Fours in 1999 and ’04, will be scheming, motivating, looking for an edge until he runs out of time.

“Both of them struck a great balance between making sure their kids understood the enormity of what they were doing, but not letting that suffocate them,” Moore said. “It’s such a fine art. Both of them almost got more relaxed with their teams the further they got into the Tournament. Dan has done a good job of speaking that into existence, ‘after the first two rounds, watch out.'”

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