What impressed FAU football coach Tom Herman most about basketball counterpart Dusty May

BOCA RATON — The one moment of Florida Atlantic's Final Four run that has been etched into Tom Herman's mind had nothing to do with a game-winning shot or on-court celebration.

Instead, it was during a timeout late in the Elite Eight game at Madison Square Garden when Herman, who arrived in New York that day, was sitting behind the Owls bench.

FAU was in a tight game with Kansas State when the team came to the sideline. Herman, sitting behind the bench, locked in on coach Dusty May. He noticed May drawing up a play when something he did perfectly illustrated the trust and confidence that team was gaining.

"It was crunch time and he was drawing up an out-of-bounds play and I saw him look up, and he erases it," Herman said. "He said, 'Nah, you know what? I'm gonna save that one for next week.' And then draws up another play.

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"That wasn't lost on them the fact that in that moment, he had supreme confidence that there was going to be another week. And 'I'm gonna save that one for next week.'

Following the Owls' 79-76 victory, there was a "next week." At the Final Four. And Herman was as excited as anyone, caught on video playing an air guitar as the FAU band celebrated.

Herman, in his first year as FAU's football coach, has never told May this story. But he has talked to his team, if not about that moment exactly, about what their classmates accomplished by advancing to the Final Four and coming within a buzzer beater by San Diego State of playing in the championship game.

That is a lesson as valuable as any while Herman gets to know his new team.

This is what stood out to Herman during the Final Four run:

"They beat a lot of teams that the other head coach wouldn't trade rosters with them. But they played with heart, they played with grit, they played great defense, they played for each other. I walked into that locker room after that Elite Eight game in New York, you want to talk about a bonded together locker room. It was indescribable."

"They proved anything can be done. It takes no talent to love each other. It takes no talent to play hard. It takes no talent to be physical. It takes no talent to be unselfish. All of the things that they did that took no talent to do got them to where they got. And to be able to see that and see them beat these other teams that on paper probably have better rosters and wipe them up on the court, proved a lot of our messaging as well."

Herman joined his family in Houston for the Final Four and, like every Owls fan, was crushed when Lamont Butler's buzzer beater ended FAU's run. Herman likened it to a "Hail Mary," watching the ball float through the air with no time on the clock and not knowing the outcome.

"I kind of looked at the guy sitting next to me (and said) 'What the hell just happened?' " Herman said. "We were in control of the game until about four minutes to go, and I don't know crap about basketball so I don't pretend to know what happened. But it was, 'Hey, we got this.'

"And then it's like the ball in the air on a Hail Mary and their guy catching it. Like, that just happened? What?"

Football program can benefit from basketball success

Herman knows how much that run can benefit not only his program, but the entire university.

"I'm prone to hyperbole, so forgive me, but, we're a young university and even younger athletic department," he said. "And in my opinion, that Final Four run may have been the most impactful thing to happen to our university since its inception.

"I think it opened a lot of administrators and supporters of the program, opened their eyes. Like, 'Oh, crap, having an elite nationally contending athletic team is really freakin' cool.' Admissions skyrockets. On campus living skyrockets. Every metric you can think of skyrockets for the university.

"And now you bring it more microscopic, to the athletic department. It wasn't just the run to the Final Four, it was how they did it. We were so proud to watch some of our brothers go through that."

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: What FAU football coach Tom Herman learned from Owls' Final Four run