Everything Dusty May said after Michigan's exhibition loss to Cincinnati

On his thoughts on the game
Yeah, anytime you have a chance to play in front of your home fans. And I want to shout out the students, they showed up for an exhibition game on a Friday night. You want to perform better, and you want to lead with a W. But this is why we scheduled the game. We know a lot more about our team than we did two and a half hours ago. And Cincinnati was able to expose some things that we didn’t know if they were going to be weaknesses or not.
And so very happy that they came up here to play, and we were able to learn probably more about our team than we thought we would going into it.
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On his assessment of the game and how much missing players impacted rebounding
Yeah, that’s where the game is different every night. And I was optimistic that we would simply look around and realize we’re playing a big, big, strong team, and we were going to set the tone early. And the opposite happened, where three of the first four baskets, if I remember correctly, were on the offensive glass.
And that sets a different tone than you want. And our vets have to do a better job of establishing that mindset early, that we’re going to get hits, we’re going to find the ball, and then get out in the open floor. We played against a set defense a lot in the first half, and our lineups were a little bit just… We’d never practiced with some of those lineups before. But yeah, we didn’t start the game like we needed to as far as the discipline piece of the game.
On Yaxel Lendeborg’s performance from the first half versus the second half
Yaxel, he was anxious to play in front of our fans in a Michigan uniform. But I think we saw glimpses of what he’s capable of. He’s a unique talent. I think that he left some stuff on the floor that he’s capable of, even with 12 rebounds. I think there’s going to be nights when he gets 18 or 20 if he’s really locked in. So our standards for him are extremely high.
But yeah, I think all of our fans saw what he’s capable of, and we’re going to continue to find different ways for him to be successful.
On Elliot Cadeau’s performance
I think he finds guys. And even in the first half, I thought he created, with his court vision, with his speed, I thought he created some good open looks. We didn’t knock them down. But yeah, I thought he managed the game well. Probably too many fouls slapping down, you know, if we want to be nitpicky. But I was happy with the way Elliot played. I thought he ran our team like a good floor general.
On Will Tschetter and Winters Grady’s three-point shooting and the impact it will have this season
Yeah, hopefully it’s big. Will’s proven time and time again that if we can find a way to get him some clean looks, he’s going to make a good percentage of them. You know, we’ve got to add some stuff.
We don’t really have much in as far as special situations and nuanced plays. But he’s proven time and time again that if you can get him looks, he’s going to knock it down. I thought Elliot created some of those against their ball string coverage.
And, you know, we were able to punish their big lineup for a couple of minutes with that shooting lineup that we had. So we’ve got some good data on some of these groups as, you know, especially as Adai and Morez work their way back in. You know, we’re going to need some of these different lineups to hold it in the road or, you know, bring something to the table in a positive manner later on in the season.
So I think we accomplished that.
On the injury status of Adai Mara and Morez Johnson Jr.
I don’t want to speak for those guys, but Adai’s been working out, doing court workouts and practicing a little bit. So he’s not far off. Morez seems like he’s working in the right direction as well. So we’re optimistic we’ll have both of those guys in the near future.
On the turnover issue and whether it was an issue in practice
I think I’ve been, I don’t like trick questions. I think I’ve been very clear. We haven’t turned it over in practice. And I, like you, are very disappointed in our turnovers tonight as well. So, have I not been very clear that we haven’t done that in practice? All right, thanks, guys. I’ll be very transparent.
On what he’s saw from Trey McKenney in the lead up to the exhibition
He’s played great in practice. He’s been extremely consistent. His care factor is extremely high. He wants to do well. He puts in the work. This is his first college game, and someone that puts as much into it as he does, sometimes you might try too hard.
I don’t want to speak for Trey, but this definitely doesn’t dampen how we feel about Trey McKenney. He’s gonna have a really good season, and we believe in him. But I do think, once again, this is why he played this game, so he can line up against a extremely athletic, tough, older player like their guards are. And so this is a good learning experience for him like it is for all of our freshmen.
On his feelings of having the game start and stop frequently in an exhibition game with fouls
Well, it was choppy, obviously. I was actually pleased that we made as many free throws as we did. I thought we shot it well from the line and it’s another thing in practice you never can tell. We’ve shot it well at the line in five-on-five live play. A lot of times we don’t always shoot them because we’re trying to get to our conditioning and whatnot and play more in the flow. But yeah, it was a choppy game.
I think both teams were fouling a lot. There were very few fouls, and I thought, man, that just wasn’t a foul. I thought both teams were foulin,g and both teams shot pretty well since Eddie gave us a window late. But I’m very, very happy with the way we shot free throws.
On whether he’s looking for Lendeborg to be more of a playmaker
Yeah, no, actually, he’s typically one of our best passers. He sprays it around. But I also thought Cincinnati did a nice job with him. We didn’t run a lot of ball screens for him. We did late and he got a reject and got a layup. And so I give Cincinnati their defense.
They pushed us off our spots. They had us discombobulated. And once we were able to get some stops ourselves, we were able to score and transition and find a little bit of rhythm.
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