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On Monday, Michigan’s men’s basketball team secured its first national championship since 1989 by capping off an impressive NCAA Tournament run with a win over UConn. Fans back in Ann Arbor got an excuse to celebrate, and they managed to keep its firefighters very busy based on the number of calls they responded to in the wake of the victory.
Michigan has historically been a Football School, and while the Wolverines have also managed to put together some pretty talented teams on the men’s basketball front, they only had a single national championship to show for it heading into the most recent season.
Virtually all of the university’s current undergrads weren’t alive when Michigan beat Seton Hall to win a title in 1989, and based on the state of the program just a few years ago, it didn’t seem like another one was in the cards in the near future.
However, Dusty May managed to stage a miraculous turnaround after inheriting a program that had posted an 8-24 record during Juwan Howard’s final season as head coach.
The former FAU skipper led the Wolverines to the Sweet Sixteen during his first season at the helm, and on Monday, they brought a title back to Ann Arbor for the second time with a 69-63 win over UConn before the college town quickly descended into chaos.
Michigan fans lit over 40 fires after the basketball team won a national championship
Prior to the national championship, UConn took down all of the lamp posts on campus as a precautionary measure stemming from the lessons it learned following a title of its own in 2023.
There was little doubt we were going to be treated to some similarly wild scenes in Ann Arbor if Michigan won when you consider some fans started lining up outside bars the night before the game. It does not appear that any light posts were harmed during the celebration, but the same can be said for a number of other inanimate objects that ended up engulfed in flames.
According to MLive, the Ann Arbor Fire Department had its hands full thanks to the couches, hay bales, and other combustible items that students ignited while partying into the wee hours of Tuesday morning; it received its first call 20 minutes after the game, and that number had risen to 40 by the time 1:30 A.M. rolled around.
No serious injuries were reported by the time things started to die down, and only two people were arrested; one was a fire-related offense that led to an arson charge, while another person was hit with disorderly conduct, resisting and obstructing, and assaulting a police officer.
The outlet notes fans really outdid themselves compared to the football team’s national championship in 2021, as there were “only” 17 fires reported after that win.
Well done.