Skip to main content
Join Now
Team Avatar
Michigan

Dusty May on Michigan heading into 2025-26 season: 'We have a chance to cut down the nets'

IMG_0985by: Griffin McVeigh09/30/25griffin_mcveigh
Dusty May, Michigan
Dusty May, Michigan - © Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

Just over a month from the 2025-26 season, expectations are going to be high for the Michigan Wolverines. Not just externally but inside the building too. Michigan head coach Dusty May believes they have an opportunity to win the national championship, something he has never said about one of his teams.

“I like our team so much that I feel like we have a chance to cut down the nets on the last Monday,” May said via Inside College Basketball Now. “I don’t know how many teams in the country have a real opportunity to do that. A lot has to go right, we have a lot of work to do. We have to improve tremendously to get to that point. But I do feel like, for the first time in my coaching career, I think we have a realistic chance to play until the end of the season.”

May does possess experience of going deep in the NCAA Tournament, famously making the Final Four at FAU in 2023. It’s not something he thinks about a whole lot, placing most of his focus on Michigan. Last year was a nice start to his tenure after making the Sweet Sixteen as a five-seed.

The Wolverines put in a good shift this offseason in the NCAA transfer portal. Multiple big names landed in Ann Arbor, none more important than UAB‘s Yaxel Lendeborg. He had a decision to make between Michigan and the 2025 NBA Draft, choosing to play under May.

Michigan has a blueprint for how Lendeborg might wind up being used. Just last year, Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin put together incredible campaigns. May later confirmed Lendeborg will be used similarly to those two, specifically when it comes to the screen game.

“We’ll have to nuance it a little bit,” May said of the differences. “But yes, Yaxel Lendeborg will both set ball screens and receive ball screens.”

Monday, Nov. 3, is the official start to Michigan’s season. In-state Oakland, a program that recently went on their own NCAA Tournament run, comes to the Creisler Center. A few other key nonconference games include a home tilt against Villanova and the Players Era Championship in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving. And then, as usual, a brutal Big Ten slate.

If everything can come together, May thinks his team can be in Indianapolis the first weekend of April. Two more wins would be required to step on a ladder and cut down the nets.