Dusty May on Michigan’s Big Ten title chase: 'In the fight,' reveals key to winning it

ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines head coach Dusty May is navigating his first year in the Big Ten about as well as anyone could have hoped, sitting at 16-5 on the year with an 8-2 mark in conference play.

That has put the team in a position to compete for a regular season championship, which has spawned into a three-team race between Michigan State, Purdue and the Wolverines. U-M has dropped a pair of conference games, one of them a stunning overtime upset at Minnesota.

But it went 2-0 last week during a turbulent time across the league and managed to pick up a game in the standings on MSU, who lost Saturday at USC.

WATCH: Dusty May talks Michigan basketball halfway through Big Ten season, previews ‘big week’ for program

“As a lot of teams in our league are finding out, it’s very difficult to play high-level basketball for five consecutive months,” May said during his Monday press conference. “So there are peaks and valleys, and some of it is as simple as making shots, missing shots. Some of it is matchups, some of it is, ‘this team does this really well,’ and that’s your weakness.

“I like where we are as far as if you would have said we are 8-2 with 6 games on the road, I probably would have been a little bit surprised, even though I don’t look that far, and I don’t project wins and losses for a season or anything like that. But for us to be able to not play anywhere near our best and find ways to win usually bodes well, because you stay hungry. You realize it’s easier to get the guys to pay attention to the details versus maybe if you won by 15-16, and so on.

“Do we love where we are? No. We’re not playing nearly as well as we’re capable of. So until we do that, we’re never going to be satisfied. But we’re in the fight. We’re in the mix. That’s where you want to be.”

It is one thing to be “in the fight,” how can Michigan win the fight? May says it comes down to a familiar gripe: turnovers. The Wolverines are tops in the league in turnover percentage, giving the ball away on 19.9% of its possessions.

“Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers,” May said of the key to staying in and winning the race for a Big Ten title. “We’re gonna watch them today. We’re gonna replicate those situations. And I’m gonna continue to try to figure out what we run better to eliminate some of these things. It’s a partnership among us all.

“But once again, I think we have a really good shooting team. I think we’re top five (in eFG%). We’re one of the best two-point teams, and we’re really good at threes. We’re dropping from an offensive rebounding standpoint. We’re on the decline a little bit, we need to get back up. But a lot of it is just the flow of you eliminating half of those 17-18 possessions and you turn it over, now your defense is significantly better. Guys have more touches, there’s more flow in all parts of the game.

“We’ll function better if we just eliminate that one thing. We’re fighting it tooth and nail every single day.”

May admitted the adjustment to a Big Ten grind was a bit different than he thought it would be, but that he feels he has the data points and knows what to emphasize moving forward in league play.

“We’re starting to really establish an identity of a hierarchy of what we need to be looking for. I know ‘m much more clear in my expectations now than I was two months ago when I was still trying to observe and watch our guys and whatnot.

“I think we’re learning the league better, too. It’s different than I thought. Significantly different than I thought. And I’ve done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people. Practical, real world experience is much better than reading a textbook or sitting in a lab or whatever the case.

“We have a group that wants to learn, they want to grow, they want to get better. When things don’t go well, we go back to the drawing board and figure it out.”

May and his Michigan team are back in action Wednesday with a home game against Oregon. Tipoff is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network.