Michigan-UConn NCAA title game rematch coming in November, as Dusty May and Dan Hurley build monster schedules

With tournament expansion making it easier than ever to make the Big Dance, two of the sport's top coaches are scheduling more aggressively

Matt Norlander

May 12, 2026

10:34 am ET

•

5 min read

The relevancy of college basketball's nonconference slate every November and December depends largely on the ambitions of about 20 of its most accomplished and/or prominent coaches.

We are coming off a 2025-26 season that saw quite possibly the best conglomeration of non-con hoops ever, with 45 ranked-on-ranked matchups outside of conference and postseason play. That's believed to be a single-season record.

Can next season top it? It's still too early to tell, but at the very least, fans can find optimism in the intentions of the two coaches who just squared off in the national title game. Dusty May and Dan Hurley have no desire to slow down when it comes to scheduling up before their respective league slates take over.

It's all too fitting, then, that their teams will run it back in the first week of the 2026-27 season.

May's Wolverines and Hurley's Huskies will meet on Nov. 6 at Boston's TD Arena for a title game rematch, the coaches told CBS Sports. The tilt will be put on by the Naismith Hall of Fame, whose group arranges a handful of high-profile one-off neutral-site games every season, such as the UConn-BYU special in Boston last year.

In the past 30 years, men's college basketball has been able to devise title-game rematches between nonconference opponents more often than one might think. But getting the two teams that played for the natty to run it back so quickly the ensuing season -- and effectively carrying over momentum from one year to the next -- is a rarity. When Michigan and Connecticut square off in Beantown it will mark only the third time since at least the 1990s that men's D-I gets a championship game replay in the first week of the season.

Here are the 10 run-backs since 1996. Teams with an asterisk won both the national title and the ensuing rematch.

Title game rematch and locationResultDateKentucky-Syracuse (Sullivan Arena, Anchorage, Alaska)*Kentucky 87, Syracuse 5311.28.96Arizona-Kentucky (Lahaina Civic Center, Maui, Hawaii)Arizona 89, Kentucky 7411.25.97Connecticut-Duke (Madison Square Garden, NYC)*UConn 71, Duke 6611.12.99Michigan State-Florida (Breslin Center, MSU)*MSU 99, Florida 9312.6.00Maryland-Indiana (Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis)Indiana 80, Maryland 74 (OT)12.03.02North Carolina-Illinois (Dean Dome, UNC)*UNC 68, Illinois 6411.29.05Florida-Ohio State (Value City Arena, OSU)Ohio State 62, Florida 4912.22.07North Carolina-Michigan State (Dean Dome, UNC)*UNC 89, MSU 8212.01.09Duke-Butler (IZOD Center, East Rutherford, N.J.)*Duke 82, Butler 7012.04.10Villanova-Michigan (Finneran Pavilion, Villanova)Michigan 73, Villanova 4611.14.18The Huskies and Wolverines will set the tone for a pair of nonconference schedules that should rank near the top of college basketball's most difficult gamuts. This is especially important for next season, which will be the first to have a 76-team NCAA Tournament. It will never be easier to qualify for March Madness than in 2027, meaning the regular season's substance and sense of urgency will be diminished.

The only way to push back against that is to have coaches eagerly schedule fellow Top 25 foes. Hurley and May understand the assignment.

Remember, in November 2024 two-time champion UConn flew to Maui and infamously left winless, providing a plot twist that helped define that season. Not long after, Hurley publicly swore off multi-game events moving forward. Last season he delivered on that promise by scheduling six notable nonconference games against high-major opponents, including reigning champion Florida, Kansas and Arizona. That schedule set the tone to allow Connecticut to earn a No. 2 seed and play its way to a third title game in a four-year span.

Hurley will be one-upping last season's non-con offering by going to seven high-major opponents. (The college basketball schedule is also increasing by a game, from 31 to 32.)

Here's UConn's most notable non-league games for 2026-27:

- vs. Michigan on Nov. 6 (in Boston)

- vs. Ohio State on Nov. 13 (in Storrs, start of a home-and-home)

- @ Arizona on Nov. 18 (return of a home-and-home)

- vs. Duke on Nov. 25 (in Las Vegas)

- vs. Illinois on Dec. 4 (in Chicago)

- vs. Kansas on Dec. 12 (in Storrs; return of a home-and-home)

- vs. Virginia on Dec. 20 (in New York City)

That septet could well prove to be the most difficult non-con slate in the sport: It's conceivable every one of those games will involve two ranked teams when they're played. The seven high-major non-con games are one shy of the eight Hurley told me he might schedule when we discussed the matter last season.

"I would've gone to eight if I thought this would've been like last year's Big East,