Sixty-four games later, the 2026 men's NCAA tournament is down to the Final Four.
No. 2 UConn and No. 3 Illinois tip off the national semifinals Saturday (6:09 p.m. ET), followed by a battle of No. 1 seeds Arizona and Michigan (8:49 p.m. ET). We asked 44 of ESPN's college basketball talent -- reporters, analysts and former coaches and players who have been covering these teams, analyzing the film and crunching the numbers this season -- to make their picks in both games and their champion.
Let's quickly run through which teams they have advancing to Monday's championship game -- and which they're picking to cut down the nets.
The results were close to a coin 50/50 in one game but closer to 70/30 in the other.
Twenty-four voters picked UConn to beat Illinois, with 20 taking the other side. And 29 voters took Arizona compared with only 15 picking Michigan. The winner of the Arizona-Michigan game was selected to cut down the nets in the title game more often than not.
Before we get into that, though, let's take a quick look at the pre-tournament tape: Of the 60 voters initially surveyed after the field of 68 was set, none predicted every Final Four team -- but six correctly predicted at least three of the four. The most popular combination was Arizona, Michigan and Illinois, with Duke (twice) or Michigan (once) picked over UConn to win the East. The second-most popular pick was Arizona, Michigan and UConn; the two voters with those selections had Florida instead of Illinois coming out of the South. And finally, one voter had Arizona, Illinois and UConn, but with Iowa State winning the Midwest region rather than Michigan.
National champion predictions
As we teased above, almost every talent surveyed took the winner of Arizona-Michigan to win it all. Twenty-eight, or about 64%, of the voters are riding with the Wildcats; 14 have placed their trust in the Wolverines.
Just two picked the winner of UConn-Illinois, and both settled on the Huskies, who are chasing their third national title in four seasons.
DW Russian 
