Michigan basketball and Dusty May clearly (and rapidly) moving in the right direction
It’s hard to predict how Michigan basketball will fare by the end of this upcoming season. The long-term outlook, coming off a school-record loss total, still is a bit fuzzy, after all. But bit by bit, things are starting to come into focus for Dusty May, and he likes what he sees.
“We expect to win,” the new Wolverines’ coach said with noticeable conviction.
In his first six weeks on the job, May orchestrated a rapid reboot, initiating a teardown of Juwan Howard’s ruined program and then cobbling together a reconstructed roster with six incoming transfers and a pair of recent high school commitments.
To execute his plan, May drafted off the winds of change in college athletics, where player movement has become the norm and teams are recreated from one year to the next. This new landscape offered May the opportunity to virtually build Michigan from scratch. The natural attrition created by a coaching change in this age of the portal led to the departures of five Wolverines with remaining eligibility, including guard Dug McDaniel, big Tarris Reed Jr. and forward Terrance Williams II. That gave May the greenlight to acquire replacements who fit his free-flowing system that emphasizes motion, tempo, ball-screening, volume perimeter shooting, high-percentage shots near the basket and spacing.
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“We love the roster we have now,” said assistant coach and general manager Kyle Church. “We feel like it’s very, very good.”
As May said, “It’s very conducive to how we want to play, and that’s to shoot a lot of 3s and that’s to get to the rim and get fouled.”
At his previous stop, Florida Atlantic, May was able to carry out that vision with impressive results. During his last two seasons in Boca Raton, May went 60-13 and led the Owls to the 2023 Final Four.
To take a mid-major program to that advanced stage of the NCAA tournament, Michigan assistant Justin Joyner said, “means you’re maximizing your talent.”
May did so by embracing the trends in a sport that is increasingly incorporating analytics into strategy and adopting the concept of positionless basketball that calls for anyone on the floor at any time to fill any spot. There is a reason why FAU ranked among the top 30 in adjusted offensive efficiency and effective field goal percentage each of the past two seasons.
May will try to concoct the same successful formula more than 1,300 miles away in Ann Arbor after curating a roster with that goal in mind.
“I think we will be able to play very similar,” May said. “Obviously it’s going to look a little bit different. We’re going to be bigger. We probably won’t be quite as fast. But we recruited to do the things that we think produce the highest value shots.”
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So, May convinced towering FAU center Vlad Goldin to follow him to Michigan and paired him with another 7-footer, Danny Wolf of Yale. They will help anchor the frontcourt while a cast of imports, from programs big and small, provide the outside scoring punch May is seeking. They include former North Texas guard Rubin Jones and 6-foot-10 forward Sam Walters of Alabama, who each shot around 40% from behind the arc. Then there is Roddy Gayle Jr., a transfer guard from Ohio State who has shown a knack for getting to the foul line that May finds particularly attractive. With pass-first Tre Donaldson, an acquisition from Auburn, manning the point, the Wolverines have enough pieces in place to “give a bunch of different looks,” according to Church.
“Any of the guys who play on the perimeter can shoot the 3. They can handle the ball, they can pass, they’re versatile,” he added.
That was a requirement as May began a recruitment process he equated to "speed dating." Finding the right candidates to implement his plan was part of his grand scheme, which was put in motion quicker than outsiders imagined.
Asked if he was surprised that it materialized this fast, May politely demurred.
“We’re a very confident group,” May said. “We believe in our work. We believe in our principles, our way of doing things.”
The Wolverines, under May’s leadership, have a sense of direction and purpose. Towards the end of Howard’s tenure, that was not the case. Michigan was rudderless, and the program didn’t have an identity. The roster was poorly managed, with a surplus of players at some positions and shallow depth at other spots. It’s how Michigan fell into disrepair, with an 8-24 record this past season and its first last-place finish in the Big Ten since 1967. Following Howard’s dismissal, May had to step in and conduct a full renovation. So far, he has tackled that project by carefully assembling a team according to his defined blueprint.
As assistant Akeem Miskdeen said, “Everything that coach wants to do, I think we have on our roster.”
Now, the next step is to make it all work and produce the basketball symphony May desires.
He won’t rest until that goal is achieved.
“We expect to put a team on the court that is going to compete at a high level every single night,” May said.
Those were bold words. But based on what May has already accomplished in his short time with the Wolverines, they seem entirely believable. That much is now clear.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Dusty May built Michigan basketball to carry out his vision
