Michigan HC Dusty May reviews 101-53 win over Cleveland State: 'Good, solid performance'
ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines head men’s basketball coach Dusty May promised an exciting play style when he took the job in Ann Arbor. After a 101-53 win over Cleveland State in his regular season debut, it’s safe to say his program is on the right track.
“Overall, very pleased with the team effort,” he said. “I thought we had great competitive spirit. Our fans were great. Overall, just a good, solid performance starting the year.”
Good and solid don’t even begin to describe it.
The game was a historic offensive barrage for the Wolverines, who shot 68.4% from the floor in the contest, good for the second-best shooting percentage in a single contest in program history. You have to go back to 1986 to find a game that topped it. The cherry on top was holding Cleveland State to a 30% mark from the floor.
May quipped after the game he would love to sustain that.
“Yeah, we’d like to do this every night,” the Michigan head coach said with a smile. “I don’t think we’re going to, but, yeah, this would be ideal. We’d like to get the highest [mark]. I think this is the second-highest field goal percentage in the history of the program. We’d like to get the highest, but we’re not going to be able to count on that. We have to be able to find different ways to win each night when the ball’s not going in.”
An 8 p.m. tip against a Horizon League opponent did not lend itself to Crisler Center being packed to the rafters, but there was plenty to cheer about, even when Michigan cooled down and only shot 65.5% from the floor in the second half.
May’s promise to deliver an exciting brand of basketball to the Michigan faithful came true, and a guy who is normally as locked in as anyone in the building could feel the energy.
“Usually I don’t hear anything,” May said. “Sometimes if it’s deafening, your ears start buzzing, and your head starts buzzing because it’s so loud. I do think that our fans appreciated the way our guys played the game tonight, and that’s something that we talk about even late in the game, that unselfishness and spirit and passion that you play with, you don’t ever turn that off. And that’s why we told them before the game today, this place probably will be half full tonight.
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“By the next month, because of the way we play and the way we interact with each other and the way we represent Michigan, we want it to be full. We’ll give them a month.”
May says he was not nervous for his regular-season home debut, but admitted it was a bit of a sleepless night prior to the game. The cerebral and unflappable head coach is human, after all.
“Once a game is tipped or even before the game, it’s the same,” May said. “It’s routine, focus, trying to run through your mental checklist, trying to be mentally prepared for what’s next. So I don’t notice a lot. Like I said, late in the game, I heard the fans really erupt a couple times on hustle plays, which is awesome for our fans to be knowledgeable and recognize the right things, the selfishness, the passion, the toughness plays that our guys made.
“I guess probably the butterflies happen more at 3 or 4 a.m. more than they do on game day for me. So, yeah, I woke up more frequently last night than usual, thinking about the game. So that’s probably my way of having butterflies.”
Now he gets to take this show on the road for the first time. Next up for Michigan is a trip to Greensboro, North Carolina for a showdown with Wake Forest on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.
