Less than 24 hours after cutting down the nets in San Antonio, the University of Connecticut announced a citywide championship parade in Hartford for Saturday, while a stunned Michigan program began its postmortem following a 74-68 loss that turned on a decisive 14-2 UConn run inside the final five minutes.

The parade, scheduled to step off at 11 a.m. Saturday from Bushnell Park and wind through downtown Hartford to the steps of the State Capitol, will feature the Huskies’ players, coaches and the championship trophy aboard a procession of open-top buses and fire engines. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said the city had been preparing contingency plans for weeks and would deploy more than 400 officers and barricade roughly two miles of streets, including segments of Asylum Avenue and Capitol Avenue.

“This is what Hartford does,” Arulampalam said at a Tuesday morning news conference at City Hall. “We celebrate our champions, and we do it bigger than anyone. We’re expecting upwards of 150,000 people, and we are ready.”

UConn head coach Dan Hurley, addressing reporters at a packed gathering on the team’s return to Bradley International Airport early Tuesday, said the celebration would be brief before the program turns to the offseason. “We’ll enjoy this for a few days,” Hurley said, hoarse and still wearing a navy “Six-Time National Champions” cap. “Then it’s back to work. The standard here doesn’t change because we won a banner.”

Connecticut’s sixth men’s basketball title, and its third in five seasons, has solidified the program’s claim to being the defining college basketball dynasty of the 2020s. Senior guard Solomon “Solo” Wright, named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four after scoring 23 points in the title game, said in the locker room afterward that the late-game surge “felt inevitable, honestly. We’ve been in that exact moment so many times. We knew it was ours.”

Governor Ned Lamont declared Saturday a statewide day of celebration and said schools across Connecticut would be encouraged to allow students attending the parade an excused absence the following Monday for any related travel. The governor’s office said state troopers would assist Hartford police with traffic management on Interstates 84 and 91.

In Ann Arbor, the mood was decidedly different. Michigan, which had entered Monday night’s championship as a slight underdog but led for nearly 32 of the game’s 40 minutes, returned to campus Tuesday afternoon to a small but loud gathering of students outside Crisler Center. Head coach Juwan Howard, in his sixth season since returning to the program, struck a defiant tone in a brief address.

“We were one good stretch away,” Howard told the crowd, his voice catching at one point. “This group will be remembered for getting here. The next one will be remembered for finishing it.”

Michigan’s loss was particularly bitter for its senior class, several of whom had returned for an additional year of eligibility specifically to chase a title. Forward Caleb Reinhart, who fouled out with 1:48 to play during UConn’s decisive run, told reporters he did not regret the decision to come back. “I’d do it again tomorrow,” Reinhart said. “We came up short. That doesn’t change what this year meant.”

Athletic director Warde Manuel issued a statement Tuesday afternoon expressing the university’s “tremendous pride” in the team and reaffirming Howard’s status, after a season in which speculation about the coach’s job security had repeatedly surfaced. “Coach Howard has built something special, and we are fully committed to seeing it through,” the statement read.

The championship game drew an estimated 19.4 million television viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen figures released Tuesday by CBS and Turner Sports — the largest audience for a men’s college basketball title game since 2017 and a roughly 18% increase over last year’s final. Network executives credited the matchup of two storied programs and the late-game drama, as well as a strong lead-in from the Saturday semifinals, in which Michigan had upset top-seeded Duke and UConn had outlasted Tennessee.

The transfer portal, which formally opened to additional movement in late March, immediately reshaped attention on both rosters. Three Michigan underclassmen are widely expected to declare for the NBA Draft within the next week, while UConn faces its own attrition: Wright is considered a likely lottery pick, and sophomore center Bohdan Petrenko, the tournament’s leading rebounder, is also weighing a jump.

Brian Halliburton, a college basketball analyst with the Sports Business Group in Indianapolis, said the title would have significant downstream effects on recruiting and brand value for both schools. “UConn is now in a tier of its own in the modern era,” Halliburton said. “And Michigan, despite the loss, restored itself as a real player. That game will sell to recruits on both sides.”

For Hartford, the immediate focus was logistical. The city said Metro Hartford Transit would run extra bus and shuttle service from suburban park-and-ride lots, and that Bradley Airport had added staff to accommodate inbound fans. Local hotels reported near-total occupancy by midday Tuesday.

UConn officials said additional events, including a Sunday recognition ceremony at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, would be announced before the end of the week.