The Louisville Cardinals and the Michigan Wolverines are on a collision course in Atlanta and if early indication is anything to go by, you can expect this national championship game to be quite a doozy.
As the top overall seed heading into the NCAA tournament, it was expected that the Cardinals would be the favorites heading into the national championship game against the Wolverines. Judging from the early lines released by Vegas sports books, the expectations were spot on after Louisville opened as four-point favorites, a typically fair line considering the caliber of both teams, as well as the stakes involved in the game. Some books even opened their lines as low as 3.5 and as high as 5, but the general consensus seems to point to the line staying at 4 leading up to the game.
As far as picking who can cover the spread and who wins the game, it’s still anybody’s guess. In addition to being the top overall seed, the Cardinals are still riding a wave of emotion after the horrific injury sustained by one of its key reserve players, Kevin Ware, during the team’s Elite 8 game against the Duke Blue Devils. It’s also won its last 15 games by an average of 16.5 points, which is a pretty reassuring trend to have in your back pocket if you’re rooting for the Cardinals to take home title.
On the flip side, the Michigan Wolverines are far from pushovers. They have the National Player of the Year in gourd Trey Burke and not to mention, a pretty impressive showing in the tournament that saw them take down the Syracuse Orangemen in one of the best games of the tournament.
Depending on you rooting interest – hard not to pull for Louisville considering what they’ve been through in the past week – you can expect a dandy of a national championship game that will, in all likelihood go down the wire. We won’t even be surprised if the game goes down similar to that Kansas-Memphis or the Duke-Butler title games from a few years back. We all know how that one turned out; who’s to say this one won’t be decided by the final shot, too.
