Not only did the Big Ten break a long national championship drought on Monday night, but Michigan’s win over UConn gives the conference bragging rights for the next year.
The Wolverines’ 69-63 win over the Huskies is the first men’s NCAA tournament title for a Big Ten team since Michigan State in 2000. And it also means Big Ten teams are the national champions in football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball in the same school year for the first time ever.
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Indiana continued the Big Ten’s football streak in January when the Hoosiers beat Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship game. The win capped off an undefeated season for the Hoosiers, as they beat Ohio State in the Big Ten title game to get the No. 1 overall seed in the playoff.
The Buckeyes entered the postseason as the defending national champions. Ohio State beat Notre Dame for the national title in January of 2025, a year after Michigan won the final four-team playoff with its national title game victory over Washington — a school that was part of the Pac-12 at the time but is now a member of the Big Ten.
On Sunday, UCLA became the first women’s team from the conference to claim a national title since Purdue in 1999 with its dominant win over South Carolina. While Maryland is now a member of the Big Ten, the Terrapins were part of the ACC in 2006 when they won the national title that season.
Before UCLA’s win, Purdue had been the only Big Ten women’s basketball team to win a title since the tournament began in 1982. Like Washington, the Bruins joined the conference in the summer of 2024 along with USC and Oregon.
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The gap between titles for men’s basketball teams in the conference was just a year shorter than the women’s drought. Between Michigan State’s title in 2000 and Michigan’s on Monday night, UConn won five titles itself and schools from four different conferences — the SEC, Big East, Big 12 and ACC — had won championships. Maryland counts as one of those ACC wins again, too. The Terps won the men’s title in 2002.
On the men’s side, it’s also the first time that a Big Ten team has won the NCAA tournament and a national title in the same school year since 1986-87, when Penn State was voted the No. 1 team in the final AP poll at the end of the 1986 football season and Indiana won the 1987 NCAA tournament.
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With the Big Ten holding all three of the titles in the most prominent college sports, the SEC’s eight-year streak of at least one per season among those three sports is now over. The last time at least one SEC team didn’t win a title in any of the three sports came in 2018-19, when Clemson (ACC) won the College Football Playoff, Virginia (ACC) won the men’s NCAA tournament and Baylor (Big 12) won the women’s NCAA tournament.
