CHICAGO (AP) — Ja’Kobi Gillespie threw down a thunderous right-handed dunk over Yaxel Lendeborg on a fast break and stared at the All-American.
It was the sort of play that might have energized Tennessee, except Michigan had the game in hand. The Volunteers were well on their way to yet another Elite Eight exit.
Sixth-seeded Tennessee will have to wait at least another season for its first trip to the Final Four after getting pounded by Lendeborg and
top-seeded Michigan 95-62 in the Midwest Region final on Sunday. It was the third straight year that coach Rick Barnes' Volunteers lost in the Elite Eight.
“There’s a lot of different ways to get there,” said Barnes, who plans to return for a 12th season at Tennessee. “But if you want to break through, you’ve got to get here first. You’ve got to put yourself in position to do that. We’ve been able to get here three years in a row, and it’ll be hard to get back to winning games just in the tournament. That first game of the tournament in the hardest one. But our goal would be to keep getting back and kicking and hopefully we can knock the door down.”
Tennessee got knocked down in the first half, with Michigan reeling off 21 consecutive points and turning the game into a romp. The Vols missed 10 straight shots and went more than six minutes without scoring.
The Wolverines displayed too much size and athleticism, and won by 30 or more for the 11th time this season while handing Tennessee its most lopsided loss of the season.
Lendeborg scored 27 points as Michigan advanced to its first Final Four since 2018 and ninth in all. The Wolverines will face Arizona in the national semifinals.
As for Tennessee?
Gillespie, a senior who transferred from Maryland, led Tennessee with 21 points. The first-team All-Southeastern Conference guard shot 8 of 22. The only other Vols player to score in double figures was Felix Okpara with 10 points.
“I’m blessed to have the career I did,” said Gillespie, playing for his third school in four seasons. “I enjoyed every year. I’m forever grateful for coach Barnes for just bringing me back home and allowing me to be the point guard of a great team. Yeah, just giving me this opportunity, I’m forever grateful for that.”
Guard Ethan Burg, who played professionally in Israel for two years before joining the Vols last summer, credited the coaches for pushing him in ways he hadn't been pushed. He choked up at times and wiped his eyes with a March Madness towel.
“I'm just grateful that we got to this point,” he said. “No one really gave us a chance. Not social media. Not anyone. Nobody really gave us a chance, but we believed. We believed in each other. We know how hard we worked. I wish this game could have ended differently.”
Instead, the season ended on a familiar note for Tennessee, with the Vols losing to a No. 1 seed in a regional final for the third year in a row.
Last season, they got suffocated by Houston in the first half, scoring just 15 points on the way to a 69-50 knockout. In 2024, Purdue’s Zach Edey went off for 40 points as the Boilermakers won 72-66. The Vols' only other Elite Eight appearance was in 2010 under Bruce Pearl, when they lost to Michigan State.
Tennessee regrouped from a loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament by knocking off Miami (Ohio) in the NCAA, ending a terrific season for the RedHawks. The Vols beat Virginia to reach the Sweet 16 for the fourth year in a row, and took out Iowa State in Chicago on Friday to advance to the regional finals again.
Barnes got to the Final Four with Texas in 2003, when the Longhorns lost to Syracuse in the national semifinals. But that's the closest the 71-year-old coach has come to a national championship in 39 seasons.
“We’ve got to shoot the ball better,” Barnes said. “We’re so inconsistent doing that. We still have to be better finishing around the rim. You’ve watched us all year and we missed too many of those shots. Obviously our defense got us here. It really did. It’s no question. We’ve had games where we’ve struggled to score, but you’re playing against an outstanding team today that was scoring. But just simply, we all have to get better. We all have to keep working at it.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
