Dusty May shares his message to players during shooting struggles at Nebraska

The offenses were a no-show when the Michigan Wolverines played a road game at the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Still, Wolverines head coach Dusty May was able to find a way to get his team to overcome a poor shooting performance and find a way to win.

After the game, which Michigan won by a score of just 49-46, May shared that his message to the Wolverines was to keep taking good shots. Eventually, they were going to fall.

“Keep generating great shots,” Dusty May said. “The shots that we tried to anticipate that we would get from day one, we’re going to keep shooting them.”

Michigan finished the game shooting 29.5 percent from the field and 18.5 percent from three-point range. The Wolverines were even shooting just 61.5 percent from the free-throw line in the win. Three Wolverines, Roddy Gayle, Tre Donaldson, and Daniel Wolf would finish the game scoring in double-digits. On the other end, Nebraska also struggled to score, finishing the game shooting just 25.8 percent from the field.

“Obviously, Tre Donaldson tonight goes one for four, he’s a 40 percent three-point shooter. Same thing with Nimari Burnett,” May said. “And, guys, trust me, Roddy Gayle, he’s making them in practice. It’s going to happen sooner than later. LJ Cason is the same deal. He made a big one when it counted. Will Tschetter had a couple of great looks that just didn’t drop. He’s got to take those — he can see the rim, he’s got to take those shots.”

This season, shooting has been a strength for Michigan. The Wolverines are 14th nationally in field-goal shooting percentage at 48.94 percent. On top of that, Michigan is 88th in three-point shooting percentage, making 35.63 percent of shots from beyond the arc. It was, for Dusty May, a credit to how Nebraska defended that the Wolverines shot as poorly as they did.

“So, we believe in our guys, especially when they’re packing the paint and they’re putting basically a safety underneath the rim in the charge circle. Vlad [Goldin] tried to shoot a couple on two or three guys and he made a couple, missed a couple,” May said. “But for the most part, we weren’t able to get much going at the rim and you’ve got to be able to loosen the defense up a little bit in today’s climate. These guys are big.”

Michigan’s own defensive effort helped overcome their poor offensive performance against Nebraska. However, Dusty May will still be looking for a better performance next time out when the Wolverines host the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Thursday.