Michigan basketball to hire Dusty May as new head coach, agreeing to 5-year deal

Michigan basketball has a new head coach.

Michigan is hiring Florida Atlantic's Dusty May as the program's next head coach, the Free Press confirmed Saturday night. May and Michigan have agreed to a five-year deal.

May, 47, has served as the head coach of Florida Atlantic since 2018, helping rebuild the Owls program into a consistent NCAA tournament team. Florida Atlantic made the 2023 Final Four under May and reached the NCAA tournament field as an 8-seed in 2024 before losing to Northwestern.

May filled a vacancy that lasted a little over a week after Michigan fired Juwan Howard at the end of the 2023-24 season. The Wolverines missed the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year under Howard and finished with the program's most losses in a single season in school history with an 8-24 record and 3-17 mark in Big Ten play.

Howard realized success early in his five-year tenure in Ann Arbor, reaching an Elite 8 in 2021 and a Sweet 16 in 2022, but a combined 26-40 record and no postseason play ended his time coaching his alma mater.

Now, May is tasked with stepping in to help restore Michigan back to an annual tournament team like most of recent history. May helped transform FAU from a team consistently toward the bottom of Conference USA into one of the best mid-majors the last two seasons, reaching the 2023 Final Four and taking Northwestern to overtime in the first round of the 2023 tournament. In six seasons as the head coach of FAU, May had a 126-68 record overall with two Conference USA titles. His best season came in 2022-23, leading the Owls to a 35-4 record overall and went 25-9 this season.

Under May, Florida Atlantic has six straight winning seasons, something that hadn't happened at the school since they went 21-11 in 2010-11, seven years before his arrival. He repeated winning seasons for the first time in school history since 1996-97 and became the first coach in school history with three straight winning seasons. After establishing the groundwork for success, FAU turned into a tournament team by 2022-23, dominating Conference USA with 18 conference wins and 35 overall, three short of the NCAA record.

Michigan will be May's second coaching job of his career after starting out at Florida Atlantic. May was a longtime assistant all over the country, including most recently at Florida from 2015 until he took the FAU job in 2018. His previous stops include Lousiana Tech, UAB, Murray State, and Eastern Michigan. He started his coaching career in Ypsilanti as an assistant in 2005-06. He also served as a student manager while he was enrolled at Indiana, then served in administrative roles for USC and Indiana before starting his coaching career.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball hires Dusty May as next head coach