Dusty May: Michigan is 'consumed' with winning, optimistic it'll continue to 'catch fire like a wildfire'

Michigan Wolverines basketball is playing its best basketball at the most important and pressure-packed portion of the season. The Maize and Blue are one of 16 teams left standing in the NCAA Tournament and set to take on No. 1 overall seed Auburn Friday night in Atlanta.

Michigan lost its last three regular-season games but has rebounded by winning its last five, taking home a Big Ten Tournament title and earning a Sweet 16 berth in consecutive weekends.

Head coach Dusty May’s group has done it on the back of its leading scorer, graduate center Vladislav Goldin, who tallied 37 total points in two NCAA Tournament victories over UC San Diego and Texas A&M, but it’s also gotten some outlier performances. Junior guard Roddy Gayle Jr. had a rocky season but dropped 26 points with 4 made threes in the second round versus the Aggies. His teammates mobbed him in celebration after the game, never losing belief in him despite the midseason struggles.

“To be honest, the things that really stand out are the guys that haven’t had the season that they’d hoped for or we expected — to see how much their teammates continued to believe in them, pour into them, encourage them,” May said on the ‘Inside Michigan Basketball’ radio show. “That’s the most rewarding part, because in this climate when you don’t have deep, personal connections and years of equity and 100s of hours of work like teams used to back in the day, it would be easy to almost root for guys to not do well because you could benefit from it, things like that.

“But just to see how close our guys have grown to get to that moment, where they’re playing really, really good basketball and we’re starting to figure out our true, true function within the team now.

“We obviously have a lot of work to do, and we’re far, far from content. But I do think that we’re moving in the right direction. We’re following the beacon.”

The Wolverines won a close one by three points against UC San Diego and then came from behind, down 10 in the second half, to pull away for a 12-point victory over Texas A&M. They’re finding ways to win, and May can feel the team coming together.

“There’s a point in everyone’s season where you look on the court and you see a group of guys that are consumed with one thing: winning only,” May noted.

“And sometimes, that’s early in the season, and then the outside noise, distractions or personal ambition will derail teams that are playing great basketball and it’s going well for everyone. But the outside noise can really impact a team.

“And sometimes, you don’t really have that until the very end, and then you just catch fire and it’s like a wildfire, where then it just keeps growing and growing and growing — because it didn’t happen too early, but it happened at just the right time. 

“So we’re optimistic that our flow is happening at just the right time.”

Case in point: Michigan’s defensive rebounding effort against Texas A&M. The Aggies are the best offensive rebounding team in the nation and entered Saturday grabbing 41.7 percent of their own missed shots. Michigan struggled on the defensive glass all year but won the rebounding margin by 9 and held the Aggies to nearly 10 percentage points off that season average.

“I think we have a group of competitors,” the Michigan coach said. “I heard this years ago — and I don’t know where I heard it from or where I read it — but competitors figure out a way to win because they want to win.

“When you have competitors in the locker room and you simplify the message that all this other stuff is important, but that the game is really going to come down to this one thing, unless we just have an outlier of a game, good or bad — it’s gonna come down to rebounding. So, when we have a singular focus and we’re determined to find a way to win, I think there’s such a heightened awareness for our guys to get that job done.

“And it’s not as if we don’t have physical capabilities, with two seven-footers and guards who are quick to long rebounds. And I do think sometimes the ball bounces your way, but the ball, when it was long, our guards did a nice job of crowding. And obviously when they did get it back, Vlad and [junior forward/center] Danny [Wolf] were able to block some shots in the paint and it went off of them, so we were able to get our offense set.”

L.J. Cason making huge impact

Soon after Michigan guard L.J. Cason checked into the Texas A&M game and while he was bringing the ball up the floor, May yelled to his freshman, “Be aggressive, L.J!”

Cason made a three and had 2 assists in the span of less than three minutes after entering the game. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound Lakeland, Fla., native finished with 11 points, 3 assists and 2 boards in 20 minutes — impressive for a player who was out of the rotation less than two months ago.

“His day-to-day habits have improved drastically from the middle of the season, and for him to bust through that freshman wall when things were gloomy is a testament to his character and how good of a player he wants to be,” May said.

The Texas A&M game was the perfect opportunity for Cason to show off his skill set. The Aggies are great at preventing rim opportunities, but Cason’s quickness and aggressiveness allowed him to score and find teammates.

“It was a minute or two into the game, and I turned back to the assistants and said, ‘I’m ready for some L.J. This just feels like an L.J. game,'” May revealed. “Obviously, you don’t want to pull someone else that early and have them out of their rhythm and out of their rotation, but it just seemed like we were gonna need him to break down their defense, make some plays — and he did. I thought he got us some dunks, layups when things weren’t going well.

“But most importantly, just the way he’s continued to improve and get better, and I know this with 100-percent certainty, his teammates believe in him.”

The Wolverines will rely on that belief this weekend in Atlanta, with Cason being set to be a fixture again.