Michigan couldn’t keep up.
Texas swiftly crushed U-M’s hopes of a program-first Final Four, making their first 11 shots from the field on their way to a 77-41 win that felt like it could’ve been worse. The Longhorns were too big, strong, fast, and skilled.
If you watched this game, you probably don’t want to read about it. If you didn’t, well, you probably don’t read this newsletter. I’ll say a little more about why the game went this way another time. Today, I want to focus on something Kim Barnes Arico said in the postgame press conference:
I think these guys don't realize it, but I had a number of people stop me even from my walk from the locker room here and they told me that this team gave them the ride of a lifetime. I think in our Ann Arbor community, around the world, like, this team gave people a ride of a lifetime.
They've just been pouring into each other and leaning into each other and had an incredible, incredible run. It sucks. Unless we won a national championship, it was going to suck. Did we want it to happen this way? No. But they have given the University of Michigan, the women's basketball community in the state of Michigan, our friends, our family, people that have watched a ride of a lifetime. They're just a joy to be around. They're fun to watch, and they love and care for each other.
So it's been an amazing group
This has been an extremely difficult few years for me. I reached a point where I was too sick and burned out to keep working even part-time at the end of 2022. By the end of 2023, I’d broken up with my live-in girlfriend, said goodbye to the dogs, and moved back in with my parents. I was denied disability benefits not long thereafter.
I gave up. I told myself I was taking care of my health with my new limitations but I’d stopped trying to find what those limitations were. I wasted away the days smoking weed, playing video games, and half-listening to audiobooks, increasingly isolating myself with screens and headphones.
The one step forward I took was getting off some of my medications last year after getting worried about the many potential interactions and side effects. Tapering off Tramadol gave me enough of a brain to start writing again. I chose to write about Michigan women’s basketball because the team gave me joy and I was frustrated at the lack of coverage they received.
The final taper of the year was Lexapro, an anti-depressant. I let it get the better of me. One morning in January, I lost my temper with my Dad, and a couple days later my parents told me to move out. I spent a few days in an extended stay hotel before checking into a place advertised as a transitional sober living house, the only one in the area I could find on such short notice.
A low point.
The house was decrepit. I slept in a frigid, dingy room upstairs because the open room in the otherwise cleaner basement had roaches. The bathroom and stairs were covered in mold and stains. The windows were insulated with plastic, holding in the ever-present smell of cigarettes.
Eight days into my stay, we were notified by the absent landlord that we had 30 days to move out before we’d be served eviction notices. He hadn’t even picked up my intake paperwork.
There were no meetings, no program, nothing but time and dread. While my housemates relapsed, one choosing to bake out the basement every night and fill the house with the smell of weed, I held firm to sobriety and finishing my taper, withdrawal and weird dreams be damned. I was the youngest person in the house by a solid decade and I saw what I didn’t want to become.
As I desperately searched for affordable housing and normalcy, one thing provided the escape I needed: listening to Matt Park call Michigan women’s basketball on the radio. I’d shut myself in my room, lay on the four-inch mattress atop a boxspring on the floor, and get lost in one of the very few things that could bring me joy in that moment.
Hey, I was right about something.
Listening to the games and posting about them on Bluesky kept me engaged with the outside world. Staying engaged with the outside world eventually got me out. A friend on Bluesky who I’ve yet to meet in real life — someone I know through the UMich community, naturally — connected me to a couple in Ypsilanti renting a room.
One night after I slept with a kitchen knife next to my bed because I feared one housemate on a bender would attack me after he’d gone on an antisemitic rant, I had a home — a lovely one with even lovelier people. Within a week, I was sending out a newsletter again.
I’ve been sober for 83 days and counting. I’m on a slimmed-down, manageable regimen of medications. I emptied out the storage unit that’d been sitting untouched since I moved out of my ex-girlfriend’s house. A couple weeks ago, I saw a psychiatrist to get some official diagnoses in preparation for applying for disability again. I feel a clarity of mind and sense of purpose that I haven’t had in a long time.
I’m sure I would’ve found a way without Michigan women’s basketball. I’m a determined, stubborn, relentless person. I can say with certainty, however, that it would’ve been more difficult to tap into that part of myself. This team provided something to hold onto in a moment when my life was upended.
I want to say you’ve never seen anybody as tough as me. But you’ve seen Brooke Quarles Daniels. I’ll happily accept second place.
Once more, here’s Kim Barnes Arico:
So these guys right now aren't feeling really great, and they probably can't see what they accomplished in this moment right now, but what they've been able to do this season and their development and their commitment and their chemistry, all of it, is really, really special.
I heard [Texas coach] Vic [Schaefer] say he lost in the Sweet 16 by 60 and then the following year he came back and was able to get to a Final Four. So we talked in the locker room a little bit about, you know, we're a 2 seed. The difference between the 2s and 1s right now. Last year we made our jump. Next year, you know, we're going to look forward to making another jump.
Here’s to another jump.