Dusty May, who wants to win right away, dishes on plans for program: 'Watching Michigan basketball will be enjoyable'
ANN ARBOR – Tuesday afternoon officially kicked off the Dusty May era of the Michigan Wolverines men’s basketball program. It gave the U-M faithful and the community at large an opportunity to find out what the core principles of May’s build-back of the program will look like.
May wants to build a winner at Michigan, but he also has a play style in mind that he hopes gets Michigan fans eager to return to Crisler Center and watch games.
“Our goal is to be enjoyable to watch,” May said. “We want to win championships, but we also want to put fans in the seats and be easy on the eyes. When you watch us play, you should see teamwork. You should see efficiency on both sides of the basketball. But our identity will be teamwork, passion and togetherness. The details work themselves out. We’ll figure that out later. But watching Michigan basketball will be enjoyable.”
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So what will that look like exactly? May says it might depend on the roster that Michigan puts on the floor, but the core principles he has will carry over.
“[The offense] needs to be free-flowing,” May said. “We don’t want the defense to ever get set. We shoot probably too many threes. We finish at the rim. We play modern basketball. We do use analytics. We use the metrics, but we try to find the best way for us to play. And it usually is center ground. What do your best players do well? What do the other guys bring us from a skill set? And then you mold. We want fast-paced, energetic, big guys that want to share the ball and play together. All five guys are connected on both sides of the ball. It’s more like jazz where they’re playing off of each other reading each other.
“I can’t say we’re going to shoot a ton of threes this year because I haven’t seen our roster yet, but they are worth more. So we want to shoot a lot of them. And defensively, we try to be a little bit different. We try to be as disruptive as we can with our personnel. We’ve always taken a lot of pride in trying to play a little bit different than everyone else and the groupthink just so you’re not preparing for us every single day in your own gym.
“But what it looks like to the detail, I don’t know yet. But I do know what I want it to look like at the end of the day, and it’s fast. There’s a lot of action and ery few stoppages and hopefully we’re scoring a lot of points.”
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May knows there is a hefty build ahead for Michigan, who has several scholarship spots open ahead of next season. Whatever shape the roster takes, he will not be writing it off as a rebuilding year. May sees his first season on the job incredibly important in setting a foundation for whatever comes next.
“Year one is important for putting a product on the floor that people want to be a part of and that means a lot of things,” May said. “How the players interact with each other, the connection between them, the connection between them and the students in the fan base.
“I do feel that we need to put a good team on the court from day one in year one and then continue to build. Therefore, we’ll find some high school players and will sign some portal players. But also have some continuity it’s not a roster overhaul every year.
“There won’t be a point when we just throw in the towel and say, we’re not going to be competitive this year because it’s year one. We want to win and we want to be able to sell that going forward, what we were able to do in year one.”
