God, that was fun.

I have so many stories about growing up in Ann Arbor as a basketball fanatic while Michigan men’s basketball flailed in the wake of the Ed Martin scandal. For most of my childhood, the NCAA Tournament itself felt a long way off, let alone a national championship.

I played on the court at pre-renovation, pre-rename Crisler Arena every summer for the Superball 3-on-3 tournament. While most of the tourney was held in the parking lot, every team was guaranteed one game in the actual arena. Instead of feeling like we were walking in the footsteps of our idols, though, we mostly looked forward to those games because they got us out of the sun — but not the heat, since Crisler didn’t have air conditioning. The place was dingy.

When I started attending summer basketball camps, my mom and I chose to drive the extra 15 minutes out to Eastern Michigan and their slick new Convocation Center. That’s also where my high school graduation ceremony took place in 2006 because the previous year students were passing out from the heat at Crisler. The facilities at EMU were newer and better (and air-conditioned).

Then Michigan got serious about men’s basketball. They fired Tommy Amaker, whose ceiling at the program had topped out at NIT Champions, and hired John Beilein, who had a much longer track record of success at every level of college ball. They poured $23 million into renovating Crisler to make it a modern, high-level facility.

The size of the support staff increased, along with the budget for paying them. When Beilein’s assistant coaches took other jobs, he was able to bring in new assistants from wherever he needed, even if they didn’t have previous ties to him or the school. After Beilein left for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the school took a big swing on Juwan Howard — and paid up for Phil Martelli, a St. Joseph’s coaching legend, to be at his side.

When Howard didn’t work out, U-M didn’t settle, they brought in Dusty May, the coach who’d just taken Florida Atlantic to a got-dang Final Four. They invested in NIL so May could put together a transfer superteam headed by Yaxel Lendeborg, the most coveted player available.

Michigan is a huge school with a massive athletic department. They gave the men’s basketball program a budget to match. Now they’re national champions. The investment paid off.

After making the second Elite Eight in program history, can the women’s program make a similar run? I keep coming back to this chart, which shows this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament field by seed and their 2023-24 program expenses:

I did my best to put together more recent data just for the coaching staffs to compare Michigan against this year’s Final Four teams — all one-seeds — and Iowa, which has outspent every other Big Ten program and reaped the rewards with a Caitlin Clark-fueled run to the national title game a couple years ago.

While U-M isn’t miles behind the Big Ten competition, there’s a significant gap in both head coach and assistant pay that widens when you look at the two recent Final Four mainstays of UConn and South Carolina.

Michigan (2026)
Head coach Kim Barnes Arico: $608,050

Assistant coaches (5): $85,000 - $223,700 (avg. $147,820)

UConn (2025)
Head coach Geno Auriemma: $4,179,930

Assistant coaches (4): $239,308 - $562,832 (avg. $382,415)

South Carolina (2026)
Head coach Dawn Staley: $1,950,000

Assistant coaches (5): $86,827 - $512,600 (avg. $317,098)

Texas (2025)
Head coach Vic Schaefer: $1,800,000

Assistant coaches (4): $115,000 - $309,000 (avg. $215,188)

UCLA (2025)
Head coach Cori Close: $883,482

Assistant coaches (5): $81,950 - $251,827 (avg. $163,835)

Iowa (2026)
Head coach Jan Jensen: $916,000

Assistant coaches (5): $105,000 - $200,000 (avg. $162,010)

That doesn’t factor in the difference in staff sizes. Texas, the team that blew U-M out in the Elite Eight, lists eight people under this year’s coaching staff and six more (plus the communications assistant, who I’m not counting) on the support staff. U-M’s coaching page contains six coaches and three support staff members.

There are also the pay gaps within Michigan’s athletic department. The lowest-paid men’s basketball assistant makes more than the highest-paid women’s basketball assistant.* The MBB director of analytics made more than twice as much as the person in the equivalent role — plus video responsibilities — for WBB.

Despite the recent on-court success, U-M doesn’t appear to be competitive enough in NIL on the women’s side to consistently compete for the highest level of recruit, even as Dusty May just reeled in his first five-star. USC (1, 11), Iowa (6), Maryland (13, 53), Nebraska (20), Michigan State (21), Oregon (24, 34), Minnesota (32, 50), Indiana (39, 45), Washington (46), and Wisconsin (51) all have higher-ranked commits in the composite 2026 recruiting rankings than Michigan (Fope Ayo, 54).

National champion UCLA, which isn’t on that list, brought in the #3 overall recruit in 2025. Michigan’s top 2025 pledge, 35th-ranked McKenzie Mathurin, just entered the transfer portal. You’d think top-level prospects would be knocking down the door to play with Olivia Olson, Syla Swords, and Mila Holloway, and yet.

*Don’t get me started on the nomenclature, in which men’s assistants are “assistant basketball coaches” and women’s assistants are “women’s assistant basketball coaches.”

This can all change in a hurry, of course. With Mathurin’s departure, Macy Brown’s ACL tear, and the graduation of Brooke Quarles Daniels, Michigan should be active in the transfer portal for guard help. I’d also like to see Kim Barnes Arico target a true center after trying to get by with players who’d be power forwards on the elite national teams.

Getting Kendall Dudley — a top-20 recruit who played her freshman year at UCLA — in the portal last year was a good sign. At this point, Michigan should be able to get similarly touted players with even more on-court experience. They play a fun style of basketball and have a couple positions of need.

Right now, though, it’s hard not to sense that the athletic department simply isn’t putting forward the effort — and money — to break through to the next level. If that support doesn’t arrive before this rising junior class departs, Michigan may have already hit their ceiling.

UConn and South Carolina aren’t going anywhere, Texas gets Madison Booker back, UCLA should clean up in the transfer portal after their title, USC has the #1 recruit joining a healthy JuJu Watkins, LSU remains tremendously talented — there’s just no guarantee that simply bringing back this year’s pieces with some offseason progression will be enough to break into the Final Four next year or the year after.

This core group of players deserves that chance. It’s a matter of whether the athletic department is willing to do what it takes. We can only wait and see.

Photo credit: Marc-Grégor Campredon/MGoBlog