Arkansas, a team in need of an elite big man next season, will watch two high-quality bigs battle for the national championship.
The message for Arkansas basketball could not be clearer. Michigan will play UConn for the national championship in a battle of elite big men. Michigan's Aday Mara will face UConn's Tarris Reed in a tussle of trees on Monday, April 6.
Tarris Reed took a flawed and limited UConn group to the national championship game with his scoring, rebounding and defense. Reed gave UConn a reliable low-post option on nights when the Huskies' backcourt struggled to score and did not shoot 3-pointers at a high percentage. Reed masked a number of UConn's deficiencies. A top-tier big man can do that. In a sport where missing shots can mean death, a go-get-it rebounder who creates second-chance points and can clean up the mess on the glass can overcome a lot of problems.
UConn defeated Duke -- a plainly superior team -- and handled Illinois as a slight underdog to make its way through five rounds in the NCAA Tournament. UConn is one win from a third national championship in four seasons. When UConn won it all in 2024, Donovan Clingan was the low-post force the Huskies had. Opponents could not match up with him, and it's similar with Tarris Reed this season.
Aday Mara's value to Michigan was made plain on Saturday in the Wolverines' blowout of Arizona. Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg got into early foul trouble and then suffered an injury. He was unavailable for large portions of the game. It didn't matter at all. Michigan roared because Mara was able to dive to the basket on cuts and throw down dunks off lob catches. Mara's interior defense was disruptive against Arizona. Everything the Wildcats did was hard; everything Michigan did looked comparatively easier by a large margin. Aday Mara had a large part in making that reality come alive in Indianapolis. Yaxel Lendeborg might be Michigan's best player, but Aday Mara could be Michigan's most important player.
We say all this for one obvious reason: Arkansas -- which lacked a top big man this past season and got bullied by the Arizona team Michigan blew out -- dearly needs its own top big man in the transfer portal. If there was any doubt about the need for John Calipari to find a premium frontcourt stud, that doubt has been blasted out of the water. There cannot be any doubt left. Arkansas has to get its own Aday Mara or Tarris Reed -- not necessarily an equivalent, but a player who can do some of the basic things those two stars did on Saturday at the Final Four.