Donte DiVincenzo absolutely lit up Michigan in the national title game to the tune of 31 points on 10-of-15 shooting and a Most Outstanding Player award.
Donte DiVincenzo joins Luke Hancock as sixth men who have torched Michigan in title games
Sometimes the points come from an unlikely place.
DiVincenzo is integral to what the Wildcats do, but he doesn’t do it from a starting five position. He comes off the bench, and set a record for title game bench scoring against the Wolverines.
While the NCAA’s official record book would tell you different, Louisville’s Luke Hancock should also be on that list. His 22 points in the 2013 title game powered the Cardinals to a title that we all saw whether the banner came down or not. Hancock’s MOP run came out of nowhere that night.
And guys without a lot of NBA prospects don’t often win the Most Outstanding Player. Every player to win the award since Jeff Sheppard in 1998 has made the NBA, and all but two of those have been first-round draft picks. Only two of the players in that stretch haven’t been first-round picks. You have to really delve deep — Anderson Hunt in 1990, for example — to find guys who never made the NBA that beat out NBA-bound teammates for the MOP. And as fun a story as Hancock is, he’s definitely not an NBA player — just a 6’6 guy who sometimes picks up the hot hand.
But Michigan is unfortunately on the business end of both of these outpouring of points as the Wolverines lost in both title games where sixth men stood tall.
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