Dusty May has a 'regret' on how he handled Michigan freshman L.J. Cason's usage

Michigan Wolverines basketball freshman guard L.J. Cason totaled 49 minutes in the first 15 Big Ten games but averaged 17 minutes per contest in the last five, with his role increasing significantly.

Cason has had lapses on defense and rebounding, and he turned the ball over quite a bit early in the season. But he burst through his “freshman wall” back in February and has been much better. In a 79-62 loss to Michigan State Sunday, junior point guard Tre Donaldson, the team’s starter, didn’t play in the 12:48, with the Wolverines rolling with Cason, who posted 2 points and an assist.

Michigan has been seeking better guard play, and Donaldson’s production has slipped recently. The Wolverines’ big men — graduate center Vladislav Goldin and junior forward/center Danny Wolf — have carried the offense.

“We went with a lineup, and that lineup went on a 14-0 run and showed a spark,” May said of sticking with Cason late in the game. “Look, each team has flaws, and when you’re constructing a team, you don’t know what your flaws are going to be, and sometimes you’re well aware and you think you can overcome those flaws.

“We don’t have a great ability to get into the paint individually — get a piece of the paint, create offense. You saw the dump down to Vlad. And this makes it even more impressive, what Vlad’s been able to do, that he doesn’t receive very many of those dump downs or lob passes where he just has to catch it and finish it.

“And L.J. was able to get in the paint. As I’m watching the film last night, I’m thinking, ‘Man, I wish we could’ve gotten him more minutes earlier in the year. But then you think about it and you’re like, ‘OK, you’re 6-0 or you’re 12-2 and you’re in a one-possession game and the conference championship’s on the line and you’re in a position you probably didn’t think you’d be in. Do we really try to win this game or do we think, hey, maybe in March we’ll be playing better if we give these two or three guys more minutes?’ So, we chose to try to win that game on that night, to stay in the fight, stay in the hunt.

“I liked his ability to create in the paint, and my regret is that we just didn’t play him earlier on in the Big Ten season, when he would be much more comfortable getting in the paint and finding his shooters and getting in the paint and finding and the dump offs.

“He hasn’t played the heightened minutes that he’s getting now, and this will help him. Every decision we make is a gamble, is a risk, and we chose to ride the veterans when we were in those situations. Looking back, I wish we would’ve had a bigger margin and we could’ve played more guys and got them more experience in Big Ten games. But we weren’t able to do that.”

May isn’t giving up on Donaldson, or close to it. He understands how important the Auburn transfer can be for Michigan on each end of the floor, especially with his shooting and shot creation.

“We need Tre to play like Tre if we’re gonna be at our best. When you look at our most productive games — UCLA, the first half at Indiana — it’s when Tre was running our team at a high level, and the shots are gonna fall,” May noted.

Cason has made some plays defensively. He’s Michigan’s quickest player to the floor to secure loose balls, and he has active hands and good instincts, especially at the top of the zone. He’s had his failures on that end of the floor and missed some box outs, but he’s improved in the areas that could help keep him on the floor.

“He’s made progress,” May said. “He’s gotten better. Is it at a championship level? No. He made a couple errors. He made a couple freshman mistakes, but he acknowledged them right away. They registered as soon as they happened, which is a good thing. Sometimes, freshmen make a mistake, and you correct them and they have no idea what you’re talking about. He acknowledged the mistake in real time, immediately after they happed, and that’s where the experience comes in, where he’s really, really close to eliminating a lot of those mistakes.

“I think that’s just when you check in a game of that magnitude — and you guys saw the environment, things are happening at a little faster than practice or faster than they were in pre-conference. He’s really, really close to eliminating a lot of those. But he brings some really unique things to our team that I think only he’s provided a times.”

Dusty May gives Michigan staff B+ on roster construction

Cason’s ability to get into the lane, collapse the defense and make plays for the Michigan offense addresses some deficiencies. The Wolverines brought in nine new players last offseason following May’s hiring, and it’s impressive they turned around an 8-24 team to one that competed for the Big Ten regular season title.

“The roster construction of this team, we don’t have great playmaking,” May said on the ‘Inside Michigan Basketball’ radio show. “You’re going into the portal with a lot of constraints, and so you have to do the best you can in a short period to put together a competitive roster.

“And I’ll give our staff a B+. We’re in contention, and we didn’t have the infrastructure and the foundation laid to go do everything we needed to do. But man, I’m happy with our roster. 

“But every roster has flaws. Michigan State, they’re not a great shooting team. They have a flawed roster; they’ve been able to overcome it with other things.”

Michigan missing three-point shots, shooting well under 30 percent over the last two months, has only heightened the need for better playmaking.

“We haven’t been able to overcome our lack of playmaking late, because we haven’t made shots,” May noted. “And if you make shots, then guys are closing out full closeouts, they’re running at you. There are a lot of layers to this, but it’s not as if we’re not aware of what our flaws are. It’s just a matter of, can we mask them and camouflage them? And hopefully, L.J. playing in these last games [gives him] the experience so we can rely on him in Indianapolis a little bit more.”

Michigan plays its first Big Ten Tournament game Friday night in Indianapolis, against one of Purdue, Rutgers or USC.