Michigan HC Dusty May speaks on final tweaks before season, his vision for program

ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines head coach Dusty May met with the media on Monday morning to kick off the final week of practice before the start of the regular season, putting the final touches on the group’s plan of attack in place.

May and the Wolverines are coming off a pair of exhibition wins over Oakland and Toledo, respectively, and now have a week to prepare for the Nov. 4 opener at home against Cleveland State.

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“We’re excited to get back to practice,” May told the assembled media. “We’ve learned a lot about our team the last couple exhibition games, and so we’re excited if we can make some changes and get going as it’s going to come at us fast as we get into the season.”

One of the things that May has signed out as a coaching emphasis is getting Michigan to play more physically as it approaches the battle rhythm of the regular season. That work is currently underway in Ann Arbor.

“We put a major emphasis yesterday on finishing through contact, having more determination and explosion around the basket,” May said. “I feel like after a good solid practice yesterday we made significant improvements. A lot of times it’s what we emphasize as coaches that we improve at the most, and as a staff we haven’t emphasized that nearly enough. But once again, thank goodness we played a team that could expose that area, so it pointed us in the right direction.”

Michigan showed in its two wins, where it combined for a combined 188 points, that it can shoot the basketball and execute at a high level offensively. It also showed that it has a solid 9-man rotation that it can throw out there each night. May has already said the start to the year has mostly affirmed what he thought he had, and that he feels they can win right away with it, and does not expect to make many tweaks in the next seven days.

“Not wholesale changes,” May said. “We’ve spent a lot of time to develop the habits and routines that we have. There have been some things that come up. Toledo had a tempo press that we’d worked on different ways to attack that particular type of press when they’re trying to slow us down. I thought maybe four possessions, I thought were extremely effective in three of the four. We didn’t have the personnel in the right places in the other one, but the way we play, that’s going to happen as well.

“So a couple guys needed to learn different spots or learn different roles in that, but for the most part, not really. I mean, what we thought came to fruition. We spent a lot of time watching our own team and studying our own team and following trends in basketball. So yes, we have flaws. We have a lot of time to fix those if we’re intentional.”

May has never been about projecting what Michigan can be in year one, or the type of team it can be when March comes around, but he did find what some would think is surprising inspiration by attending Saturday night’s game between the Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics, a 124-118 win for the defending NBA Champions.

“[March] is a long way away,” May said. “We’re going to evolve a lot, but the same characteristics we said from day one, extremely intense, passionate, sharing the basketball, playing at great pace, enjoyable to watch. It’s not as much stylistically as it is behaviors. I know when I watch sports and I see a team that’s extremely spirited.

“For example, I went to the Pistons-Celtics game. It was a heart-wrenching loss for the Pistons the other night. But when you look at it, man, they played, I walk out of there thinking, man, they’re going in the right direction. This team plays hard. The young guys are improving. They’ve gotten better. And the Celtics had a look in their eye, and the Pistons just aren’t there yet.

“But because of the way they played, because of the spirit, the togetherness of the team, that’s how we want to look. Every single night people walk out of Crisler saying, man, that is a connected group that plays hard and they’re competitive and they represent Michigan the right way.”

Monday night’s game between Michigan and Cleveland State tips off at 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast via Big Ten Network.