SAN ANTONIO — Connecticut closed the NCAA men’s basketball championship game on a 14-2 run over the final five minutes Monday night to defeat Michigan 74-68 at the Alamodome, capping a tournament run that had been billed as a defensive test and ended with the Huskies once again cutting down the nets.

The decisive stretch began with the score tied at 60 and the Wolverines pressing for what would have been their first title since 1989. A blocked shot by UConn forward Tyrese Calloway, a transition layup by point guard Aiden Mwangi, and back-to-back three-pointers by senior wing Jaylen Brooks flipped the game in just over ninety seconds. Michigan, which had shot 49 percent in the first half, missed seven of its final nine attempts.

Brooks, who finished with 24 points on 9-of-15 shooting, was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. The 6-foot-6 senior, who began his college career at a mid-major before transferring two years ago, hit five three-pointers in the championship and added six rebounds and four assists.

“We talked all week about the last four minutes,” Brooks told reporters on the court after the trophy ceremony. “Coach kept telling us, this game’s going to come down to who wants the next stop more than the next bucket. We got the stops.”

Mwangi added 16 points and eight assists, including the layup that broke the late tie. Calloway, a sophomore center whose draft stock has climbed throughout March, posted 12 points, 11 rebounds and four blocked shots.

For Michigan, junior guard Dre Patterson led all scorers with 26 points but was held to just three points in the final ten minutes as the Huskies shifted to a switching defense that sent fresh defenders at him on every possession. Forward Cole Reinhardt added 14 points and 10 rebounds in defeat.

Wolverines coach Martin Hollis, in his fourth season in Ann Arbor, said his team had run out of answers down the stretch. “Credit to UConn — they made the plays you have to make to win a national championship,” Hollis said. “We had our looks. We didn’t convert them. They did. That’s the margin in a game like this.”

The championship is UConn’s latest banner under coach Marcus Reilly, who took over the program three years ago after a long tenure as an NBA assistant. Reilly, visibly emotional during the postgame net-cutting, credited his staff and the upperclassmen who returned to school rather than entering the NBA draft.

“This group decided in August they wanted to be remembered,” Reilly said. “They put the work in. The shots we hit in the last four minutes weren’t lucky. They were earned in October.”

The path to Monday night was not straightforward. UConn trailed by nine at the half against Tennessee in Saturday’s national semifinal before rallying to win by six. Michigan, meanwhile, had pulled off the tournament’s biggest upset, knocking off top-overall seed Duke in the other semifinal behind 31 points from Patterson.

Monday’s game itself was tight throughout. Neither team led by more than seven, and there were 14 lead changes. Michigan controlled the first half tempo, pushing the Huskies into long defensive possessions and converting three offensive rebounds into second-chance points. UConn responded after halftime by trapping Patterson off ball screens, forcing the Wolverines into late-clock looks.

The Alamodome crowd of 67,432 — the largest at a Final Four since 2017 — was split, with a noticeable contingent of Michigan blue but a louder Connecticut presence in the lower bowl. The game was the first national championship played in San Antonio since 2018.

Across the country, the broadcast drew strong early ratings despite competing for attention with continuing coverage of the Iran conflict and weekend casualty announcements from the Pentagon. CBS, which carried the game, said preliminary numbers showed a peak audience of more than 18 million viewers during the final media timeout, a slight increase over last year’s title game.

For the Big East, the title represents a third championship in eight years and a continued resurgence for a conference that had been written off a decade ago. Commissioner Patricia Yates, attending the game in San Antonio, said the result reinforced what she called “the basketball-first identity” of the league.

For Michigan, the loss closes what had still been a remarkable season — a Big Ten regular-season title, a conference tournament championship, and a run to the program’s first national title game in more than a decade. Hollis said he expected most of his core to return, though Patterson is widely projected as a lottery selection in this summer’s NBA draft and is expected to declare within days.

Reilly, asked whether he had begun to think about a repeat, smiled and shook his head. “I’m thinking about getting on the bus,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll think about tomorrow.”

Connecticut is scheduled to return to Storrs on Tuesday afternoon, with a campus celebration planned for Wednesday evening. The team is expected to be honored at the state capitol in Hartford later in the week, officials in Governor’s office said.