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WATCH: Dusty May, Michigan players break down loss to Illinois

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•about 19 hours•

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Dusty May
Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May led an incredible turnaround in 2025. (Photo by Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May, graduate center Vladislav Goldin and redshirt junior forward Will Tschetter met with the media following a 93-73 loss to Illinois Sunday afternoon at Crisler Center. Watch video of their press conferences below.

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Head coach Dusty May

Graduate center Vladislav Goldin

Redshirt junior forward Will Tschetter

May opened up his press conference by praising Illinois, discussing what went wrong for Michigan and how the Wolverines will move forward.

“I want to begin by giving Illinois credit,” May said. “I thought they were extremely quick to the basketball, they were aggressive. We knew they were going to send five to the glass; they do it every game. And because of that, they were able to get it and then toss it back out — paint touch threes — and then they got the rhythm and their confidence.

“There’s a chain reaction, where they felt good with their shooting, where they had been struggling shooting the ball lately. They felt great about the shots, in my opinion, because the ball was coming from the paint, and they knew if I miss it again, we’re gonna get it again and get it again.

“We’ve got to bounce back. We’ve got a quick turn[around] with Maryland, an extremely good basketball team, coming in Wednesday. So, we’re gonna have to figure some things out here in the next couple days to keep this from happening again.”

Michigan allowed 19 offensive rebounds for 30 second-chance points. May was asked what specifically the issue was with Michigan not being able to get defensive boards.

“I think it’s a little bit of everything,” May replied. “We were on our heels. Our communication wasn’t great, so we were broken down because we were late on our switches, and they did a nice job of confusing the switches. But because we weren’t able to keep bodies on bodies early, and then we had to go to the zone, so they have a running start, we’re trying to meet them closer to the basket.”

May told his team that Michigan has to “look in the mirror” after this loss, and was asked about the sentiment.

“If you’re asking me if I’m gonna look in the mirror, absolutely,” May noted. “That’s the first thing that I do, we do as a staff, and try to figure out what we could’ve done differently to learn from it and then what can we do immediately to fix it? It’s not as if you’re gonna make roster acquisitions or anything like that this time of year, so this is our team. How do we fix these issues? And sometimes, the matchups, they present some challenges from what their strengths are to what our built-in weaknesses are. You have to be more determined, you have to be more connected, you have to play better offense to still be able to find a way to win, and we didn’t do that tonight.”

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