WATCH: Dusty May, Michigan players preview NCAA Tournament matchup with UC San Diego

DENVER, Colo. — Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May and players spoke with the media Wednesday evening ahead of Thursday night’s game against UC San Diego in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Watch video from the press conference and interviews from the locker room below.

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Head coach Dusty May, junior guard Tre Donaldson, junior forward/center Danny Wolf, graduate center Vladislav Goldin

Junior guard Roddy Gayle Jr.

Graduate guard Nimari Burnett

Freshman guard L.J Cason

Junior guard Tre Donaldson

Graduate guard Rubin Jones

Here’s the full transcript from May’s portion of the press conference on Thursday:

Q. Dusty, you have a lot of prior experience in this tournament and success in this tournament and a lot of the players do, as well. How do you channel that past experience and change your approach, whether it be differ that approach, keep it the same, and kind of collect that together into this team that’s Michigan this year?

DUSTY MAY: Well, every team is different and we’ve been so focused on our preparation and getting our guys prepared for our opponent that we haven’t talked about all the extra stuff yet, and it’s came at us quickly, too. We played and got back late Sunday night.

The one thing we’ve done differently is Danny started it by talking about the perspective of the underdog or the team that has nothing to lose. As a group we talked about how we’re going to still be aggressive, we’re still going to play the way we play, but at no point during that 40 minutes are we going to play with any fear of failure.

If they go on a run, and obviously the crowds typically go for the lower seed, smaller teams, that’s not going to affect the way we play or the way we move forward.

We’re just going to keep plugging away, keep fighting, and there’s going to be absolutely no fear of failure with our group here hopefully the next couple days.

Q. UC San Diego’s defense, they force a lot of turnovers, they get a lot of steals. What stands out about what they do defensively and then also as a team that’s been focused on minimizing live ball turnovers all year. What’s the key to succeeding?

DUSTY MAY: Well, two ways to look at it. Number one, it’s obviously terrifying when you have — every team has flaws, we have a weakness and they have something that could really expose that weakness because it’s their strength.

But the one thing it does also, it heightens the awareness of what they’re doing because we know that we’ve struggled with this and we know how important it is to them.

So I do think there could be a reversal of we’re so cautious and our awareness and senses are so heightened that it could be a good thing.

But going back to the first point, the way they play the ball, it’s impressive. Their hand activity, their physicalities, their anticipation. They’ve got guys that have a really, really good level of what you’re trying to do offensively and then how to counter it.

It’s been impressive. There’s a reason they won 30 games and they’re sitting here in the NCAA Tournament. They have really, really good players and a system and a well-coached team.

Q. Obviously a couple years ago you took an underdog all the way to the Final Four and now you’re with this program. How is it different, the perspective of leading a team like Florida Atlantic and now leading a school like Michigan?

DUSTY MAY: You know, at Florida Atlantic when we made the tournament, it was almost like mission accomplished. Then we realized, you know what, we’ve got a much higher ceiling than just making a tournament.

And so when we got past, I guess, the ecstasy of being the second team to ever make the tournament from FAU and a group had never been together and a first time head coach, then we just thought, you know what, we can actually do some damage.

The one thing that I felt and the staff, we talked about it after the fact, was when we played the Power Five teams and the higher seeds, the lower seeds, whatever way you want to look at it. We felt like when it got late in the game and the game slowed down that they played — I don’t want to say they played tight, but we played looser and we played with more confidence.

So we want to make sure just because we’re that Power Five team or whatever you want to call it, that we don’t fall into that trap. It’s March Madness; everyone is going to love the Cinderella. This is a very, very popular upset pick for a reason: Because they’re really, really good.

Our guys have certainly heard that all week, but that’s not what matters. How we execute for 40 minutes, how connected we stay, and how we respond when they do make runs is going to ultimately going to determine whether we come back here on Saturday or not.

Q. You’ve said this was a team you were going to study anyway before you found out you were going to play them. Their offense is something that they sort of developed in Division II because they didn’t have scholarships, they didn’t have a lot of athleticism. Their defense was a matchup that they took from a Division II team that —

DUSTY MAY: Do you know which D-II team that was?

Q. Pomona.

DUSTY MAY: Pomona, okay.

Q. Yeah. When you look at things that were developed in D-II, can those really work at the highest levels of Division I, and why would you look at something like that where they basically put those things in because they have less athleticism and size?

DUSTY MAY: Well, number one, they have to play differently. Obviously, when you’re going in and you have established programs like Irvine and Santa Barbara and teams like that in your league, you can’t just move up in and do the exact same thing they’re doing.

We had the same game plan when we came to Michigan. It’s one of the reasons we have two seven-footers when everyone thought we were crazy. We were just determined not to just follow — look at whoever is in first or whoever is in second or whoever has the most tradition and try to do that and mimic it, because I’m not a Hall of Fame coach and we don’t have the evidence of doing it that way of it working.

So we simply wanted to be different, do something you’re not going to see every day in practice and your habits don’t naturally align with. That’s what they’ve done.

As far as it working, we have a saying that everything works somewhere and nothing works everywhere. So you don’t have to have the best plan. You just have to have a plan that the players and staff are all committed to and bought into, and they obviously have that.

But the style of play they’re playing with could work anywhere in the world, as long as they have that buy-in and the players, it fits their, I guess, skill sets and qualities.

But we’re definitely going to take some of the way they play defense and implement it into our own way.

Q. Wondering what the pros are and the cons if there are any cons of having your son Charlie on the team.

DUSTY MAY: Well, the pro is obviously you get to see your son every day. In this business we travel a lot. We’re on the road recruiting. We spend a lot more time with other people’s kids than we do our own typically, and it’s a labor of love.

But just to be able to share this experience and to see him grow — and also it’s another level of accountability where you — I think all of us parents know our kids become — they change based on who they’re around every day.

So just putting him in our locker room with our guys and my youngest son Eli is a manager, and him being around our managers as a freshman in college is something that I look at and I feel very, very fortunate that I’m at a place like Michigan where they’re around high-achieving, ambitious, driven young men.

And so that’s ultimately what you want your kids to be around every single day. There’s a lot of layers to it, but when we’re at the facility, he’s not Charlie May, he’s No. 12 and he’s got a job to do. That’s to serve his teammates as a walk-on.

Q. It looked like Roddy got banged up a little bit last game. Can you talk about his health? You guys come into this tournament not as deep as probably what you thought you were going to be. With the altitude do you have to shorten shifts or adjust substitutions or anything like that?

DUSTY MAY: Yeah, a little bit. I think early in the game we’ll probably have to sub a little bit. Vlad normally three and a half minutes in he’s rim running, he’s banging. We’ll probably go a little bit earlier.

But also there will be times when I’ll probably have to manage the game a little bit more than just trying to squeeze out more and more possessions.

We were in a pickle against Wisconsin. Neither team was shooting it well. The game was getting up-and-down and it was a little bit ragged. But we’re sitting there on the sidelines and I’m thinking, man, they’ve played four in four days and we’ve played three in three. Let’s see if we can keep things going up and down and see if it’ll pay dividends later.

As far as this game, they don’t play fast tempo so I don’t think we are going to have to substitute that much. Defensively because they’re so good teams don’t shoot it very fast because they can’t. They can’t generate a quality shot quick enough.

So we’re going to play our game. We probably will have to sub a little bit more frequently.

Fortunately thought our bench has played well. The emergence of LJ; obviously Will Tschetter and Roddy coming off the bench. Roddy practiced today. He looked good. And then Phat Phat Brooks. We have a lot of confidence in Phat Phat, so that gives us nine guys that are all versatile, can play multiple positions.

Fortunately we’re not playing a team that’s out here acclimated to the altitude, so they’re at the same disadvantage that we are.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about Mike Boynton, Jr., and how he’s led the defense pretty much all season and had a lot of success with that.

DUSTY MAY: Well, he’s helped us on so many levels. He was a head coach at this level for a number of years, so he’s been an unbelievable resource and sounding board for me.

Tactically, the extra stuff that comes with the job, the recruitment at this level is different. The circles around the players are different.

We still had a very, very Ma and Pa operation at FAU where we had guys that didn’t have anyone around them. We were their circles.

Just getting aligned with the people that want the same thing for the players that you do, there’s just a lot more time spent on other things, and obviously he’s done a great job coaching basketball.

Our players respect, trust and are bought into all that he’s done and the rest of the staff has done.

That’s been a big part of our success, finding a former head coach that’s done it at a level, and he’s also not set in his ways. He’s like the rest of the staff; he’s trying to learn, grow, get better every single day, and that’s the beautiful thing about our group, that we’re all just trying to help and serve our players and improve along the way.

Q. The numbers would say you won three games in three different ways in Indianapolis. I’m curious what common threads you saw from your team leading to that breakthrough that maybe you can bottle or try to replicate this week.

DUSTY MAY: Well, the first game against Purdue, we took care of the basketball, and usually every media time-out I’m weighing our turnovers and I think, gosh, these games all run together.

We managed the turnovers really, really well in Game 1, and we put probably 75 percent of our practice time the last five or ten practices on certain things that we thought would help with that issue.

So we thought, man, did we fix it, is this problem solved. Then obviously the next night we came and I think we had probably five in the first four minutes and it was obvious that the problem wasn’t solved.

But we’re dominant on the glass that game against Maryland. We out-rebounded them 47-18. I just think this team — like I said, every team has its flaws. Some teams have great play making, some have great shooting, some have great size.

The turnovers are a product of, number one, maybe we don’t have enough play making, individual play making where we don’t have to generate something that just one guy can create an advantage and we play off that advantage.

But then the third game we went back and really took care of the basketball well. Again, we didn’t make shots, and our defense I thought was the best it’s been all season.

We’ve just taken a lot of pride, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like tomorrow. We have no idea how we’re going to win this game but we believe that we’re going to, and we’re going to figure it out during the game, whatever the game is going to — the game is going to tell us something and we’re equipped because of our league, because of our pre-conference schedule to figure out a way to win that game.

Q. With the way they play defense, forcing teams baseline and high turnover numbers and things like that, how much can you with your offense draw from the principles you’ve instilled all season, and how much will you add some new stuff just for this game?

DUSTY MAY: Well, we’ve faced teams like this before, and we’ve done well at times and not so well at times. But basketball is a game of opposites. What did you say they want us to do, go baseline? So we’re going to try not to go baseline. What else did you say? Yeah, they’re going to try to speed us up so we’re going to try not to get sped up.

Our guys have seen it before. I don’t think they’ve seen it at this level. These guys are really, really good at what they do and they have an older group.

We’re going to show up. I think we’re going to have a good plan. I think our guys are bought into the plan, and it’s going to come down to who executes, who makes the plays in extremely tense, intense and stressful situations.