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Dusty May compares Michigan home crowd to Mackey Arena

IMG_6598by:Nick Kosko•01/28/25•

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Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Dusty May had an interesting comparison for Michigan’s home crowd based on the intensity during the 76-72 win over Penn State.

The Monday night win pushed the Wolverines’ record to 15-5 on the season, just on the outskirts of the top 25 rankings in the AP Poll. May might want to thank the Michigan faithful for getting loud like a certain Big Ten arena that’s known to give opposing teams trouble.

If the Crisler Center keeps it up, it might be the new scariest arena in the Big Ten.

“I noticed, and I don’t notice a lot, so only when it gets really, really loud, when I noticed the crowd and it erupted,” May said. “It sounded comparative to Mackey Arena, the way, I mean, you couldn’t hear, and that helped our defense without a doubt.”

In the win over Penn State, Tre Donaldson led the way with 21 points, three rebounds and seven assists. Daniel Wolf added 11 points, nine rebounds and one assist and Nimari Burnett put up 10 points, three rebounds and four assists.

Michigan and May are back in action, but this time on the road, Saturday at Rutgers, looking to continue the winning streak.

Maybe not burning the tape vs. Purdue was a good thing. May didn’t want Michigan to forget the blowout loss to the Boilermakers, which ironically took place at Mackey Arena.

“We’re definitely not going to burn the tape,” May said. “There are going to be learning lessons from this. The pace of our cuts, the pace we run the floor, our lack of communication in a very hostile environment — we just have to be better at all facets.

“I don’t think we played well in any area tonight. We’re a growth program. We’ve got a long way to go. So, I think if we burned the tape, we’d be burning a lot of really important lessons that hopefully we learned tonight as a group.”

May’s comments at the time, following the loss, were pretty telling about their process moving forward.

“Hopefully we look back as this is a fork in the road,” May said. “Where we go in the right direction and learn from this and keep it moving. If we’re going to be a championship-level program, we’ve got to be able to rise to the occasion or at least match the energy and spirit of a championship-caliber program.”