Roddy Gayle and Trey McKenney are the biggest reasons Michigan is favored over Duke

Duke is the No. 1 team in the country heading into conference tournament week, and in February, the Blue Devils took down Michigan 68-63 in Washington DC. Yet, over the final weekend of the regular season, with both contenders downing their archrivals, Dusty May’s Wolverines surpassed Jon Scheyer’s Blue Devils as the favorites to win the national championship. 

The odds movement occurred after Duke’s starting point guard, Caleb Foster, suffered a foot injury against North Carolina on Saturday. The injury will keep him out for the ACC Tournament and has his status for the NCAA Tournament in serious jeopardy. 

Michigan has its own injury issues with backup point guard LJ Cason out for the year with a torn ACL, but unlike Scheyer, May has the depth to withstand the injury, and his team proved it in Sunday’s 90-80 win over Michigan State. 

Gayle and McKenney were huge off the bench vs. Michigan State

With Cason out, senior Roddy Gayle Jr. and true freshman Trey McKenney are next up on the depth chart for Michigan. Starting point guard Elliot Cadeau may also be asked to log an increased workload in the postseason, but if Gayle and McKenney continue to play as well as they did on Saturday, that won’t be necessary. 

He’s been overlooked in a loaded freshman class, but McKenney was a five-star along with the likes of Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer, and AJ Dybantsa. As the No. 18 overall player, he wasn’t quite at their level, but he was still a true blue-chip recruit. 

Though he began his college career with 21 points in the season-opener, it took the 6-foot-4 guard some time to adjust to the college level and integrate himself into May’s rotation, but he’s become as trustworthy as any player on the roster. 

McKenney is averaging 9.6 points on 45/90/38 shooting splits and averaging less than a turnover a game. Against Michigan State, though he played just 19 minutes, his fewest since January, McKenney finished with 12 points on 4-8 shooting and was a perfect 2-2 from the free throw line. 

While McKenney’s minutes have stayed relatively consistent in the two games since Cason went down, Gayle has seen a major uptick. His 28 minutes against Michigan State were his most in Big Ten play this season, and he was brilliant, scoring 15 points on 4-5 shooting with four rebounds and three assists. 

Against Iowa on Thursday night, Gayle had one of the biggest defensive plays of the game and was a major factor in crunch time. Cason is a great player with a bright future, but with Gayle stepping up and McKenney chugging along, his absence has hardly been felt. 

Michigan’s depth is its biggest advantage over Duke in the national title race

The loss of Cason is not identical to Duke’s loss of Foster. Cadeau would be the better one-to-one comparison, but even if it were Cadeau who was out, Michigan would still be better equipped to handle it. 

When healthy, Scheyer plays a tight eight-man rotation with Darren Harris, his ninth man, hardly a factor. With Foster and starting center Patrick Ngongba both out for the ACC Tournament, he’s down to seven, including Harris, and forced to rely on true freshman Cayden Boozer as his starting point guard. 

Duke has the better high-end talent with presumptive national player of the year, Cameron Boozer, but Michigan has much greater depth. With the movement in the odds, sportsbooks are betting that depth will carry the Wolverines farther in March Madness and over the Blue Devils in a potential rematch.