TRANSCRIPT: Dusty May's weekly press conference 1/12

Opening Statement

I’ll begin by expressing excitement to get on the road and regroup and refocus as a unit, and see if we can get back to playing much, much better basketball.

On last year’s West Coast trip can help the program this year

It’s a lot different. This is a different group. As far as experience, it’s just every situation is so different. Obviously, we’re confident that the time spent together will be used wisely. We have to get better this week. Much better prior to playing Washington, and then use that to learn more about ourselves as we prepare for Oregon. Two tough environments to play in. Washington is starting to play their best basketball right about now.

On what makes the team good in multiple games in one location

There’s positives and negatives with everything. When you look at NIL and how guys live now, most of them live in single apartments. Most of them live by themselves. They just don’t spend as much time together. I’m not being critical. They have sons. They have friends. People are different as far as community now than they used to be. We think because we have such good guys and they really like each other and respect each other that simply being forced to spend more time together is healthy.

They develop an even greater bond and trust amongst each other. They spend time with different guys on the team that maybe they don’t because they live in a different apartment complex or whatever the case. I don’t know what it is. We just always felt like because we have good guys who are committed to getting better, simply being together in different environments has helped us grow.

On whether there will be planned activities off the court

Yes, several. There’s a few planned activities. Dinners and whatnot.

On what Washington is doing well right now

They got a big win last night versus Ohio State, who played really well at Oregon. There’s just so much parity in our league. Each game comes down to maybe a hot hand, maybe an important player in foul trouble, or an injury. You never know. They’ve had some injuries. They’ve had some guys go down, and it almost looks like, because their rotation is shorter, they’re playing better.

They know when they’re going to play. Early in the season, they played well and didn’t make shots. Now they’re starting to make shots. They have a good roster. Obviously, if Claude is out, we expect him to play. If Claude or those guys are back, they’re much deeper. They have really good players. They’re well coached. They’ve only lost one home game this year. We know the environment is going to be tough. It looked like they had a great crowd last night.

On whether Yaxel Lendeborg’s injury is something he can play through or would need time off to be 100% healthy

I’m talking about upsides and downsides. This is one of the downsides of this era, where you don’t know these guys. You haven’t coached them and been through a lot of things together. We have been through a minor injury with Yax. It took him a couple games early in the year to get his flow back. I saw him yesterday. He seemed much better. He seems to be healed. Hopefully, just like he did after Wake Forest and those games when he had the hand injury, he gets back to being himself.

On managing timeouts and adjustments on the fly with this team

If we weren’t scoring, I would have managed it different. You’re in a great rhythm offensively. We came out of the timeout, and we felt like we defended at a very poor rate. It was maybe a three or four-point game. We were in a great rhythm offensively. I think that five-minute stretch was probably as efficient as any offensive basketball performance in college basketball this year.

To be honest, I like it when the game gets loosened up, up and down. Usually, for us, that’s because we’re getting stops and getting out and going. I just always felt like we usually have more bodies. We play more guys. We play in the flow. It’s always been advantageous to get a game loosened up. Was it that game or was it not? I don’t know. We changed our coverages and we botched them on the fly.

We’ve got to be more prepared in advance for these contingencies. We spent time on it, but obviously when you’re facing a guy that’s made one three in a month and he makes five, you don’t spend, let’s say there’s 100% of practice time, you don’t spend 90% on contingencies. You try to spend 90% on the stuff that happens 90% of the time.

We didn’t. We spent a few minutes a day on it. It wasn’t enough for us to be able to make those adjustments on the fly. Then when we changed our personnel, the same thing happened. When we changed our coverages in reverse order, the same thing happened. I’m not sure what I would have said in a timeout that we weren’t able to communicate on the court other than maybe just, I don’t know.

We were playing well offensively. We just weren’t able to get stops. Our communication, our physicality. We had some guys where uncharacteristic things were happening to them. You have to give Wisconsin credit, whenever maybe a player’s done this really well all year, and for the first time he’s not doing it well. I don’t think we would have taken those guys out. They were in a good rhythm. They were playing well. In hindsight, I wish I would have done 150. I wish I would have started in a different lineup.

Before the game, after the game, during the game, I wish I would have called all my timeouts early or late. When you lose, was our processes good? We didn’t lose because of our plan, but we lost as a combination of our plan, our execution, our preparation, and so all those things rolled into one, and you lose a one-possession game.

On Justin Joyner’s wife coaching on the West Coast and the sacrifice

It’s a very unique family dynamic where you have two high-level coaches in different sports. A lot of times, one or the other, I’ve worked with a lot of really talented female basketball coaches that their husbands have put their careers on the side. I’ve seen the opposite, where women have retired from being effective coaches or whatever, physicians, because their husbands are in athletics. It’s unique that they’re able to do it. They have a lot of family help, family support. They’re both great parents.

Obviously, the geography makes it tough, but they’re both very, I can’t tell you how many times they’re FaceTiming with Wesley on the phone with them and whatnot. I think it’s kind of cool that they at least get to see each other in that environment once or twice a year. I know Oregon’s women’s soccer played Ohio State last year. It’s tough, but sometimes when you’re chasing greatness or you’re trying to max out your human potential, then you have to make these types of sacrifices, so I applaud both of them.

On Winters Grady’s growth process

Like the rest of our guys, he’s in the gym. He was in the gym this morning. I walked past him, and he was dripping wet, but I didn’t watch to see what he got better at. In practice, we’ve moved him to the scout team some to get up to speed defensively and to continue to learn different nuances. For example, he’s an elite shooter, and Purdue, I think Lawyer’s a great example, someone that has a lot of game off the ball as far as getting open and being deceptive. If he can mimic him for three or four days, that’s just the first example that came to my mind.

I know we have Washington and Oregon first, but then if he can learn a lot by going in part and being that guy for a few days. He’s doing all that. He loves the game. He loves ball. We’re going to need him sooner than later. We needed some shot making last game, but just the situation of it, we felt confident going with the vets.

On whether intensity can be coached up or is it player-led

I feel like we’ve played at a really high level of intensity up until just recently. Every game I watch, there’s usually one team that’s playing with more intensity for whatever reason. Will we ever be satisfied with our intensity? Probably not. Just part of being a championship team is the focus, concentration, intensity that goes into winning at a high level. Until we are 10 out of 10 in those categories, you’re probably going to hear me talk about it.

I feel like this team’s played with more intensity than our team last year and most of the teams we’ve played against this year.

On using the Wisconsin loss as a wake-up call

I’d say check back with me and see how we respond to this. We obviously didn’t respond to playing well like we needed to, as far as getting hungry and whatnot. We seemed a little bit satisfied. I don’t want to put words or thoughts on our guys, but we didn’t play with the same edge. Part of that could be injuries, part of it could be foul trouble. There’s so many things that go on in a game that affect the outcome that probably aren’t noticed by the naked eye.

I mean, Elliot Cadeau picking up two fouls, that hurt us. It hurt us a lot. Especially when you look at the fouls. If those are fouls, then you can’t play them anymore because he’s going to get three or four. If those two are fouls, then we can’t play him anymore after that. We were playing well until he got his second foul. There’s just a lot that goes into it. Obviously, LJ played as well as he could at Penn State and didn’t have his better game against Wisconsin. A lot to learn from that game.

The only thing I’m really disappointed in other than just us not playing to our maximum level of energy is we looked a little bit we lacked poise down the stretch as a group. When I say down the stretch, it’s really the last ten minutes. We didn’t look. That is probably the downside of the margin of victory. We haven’t been in those situations so many times as you saw last year. We were in them a few times early and we learned from them.

It was really great for our growth. Yes, if we respond the way we did last year and the way we have the majority of the time this year, then this will be a good thing. If we don’t, if we lose a little bit of confidence or we don’t have the same edge or we start pointing fingers and the noise gets into our locker room, then it’s a bad thing. Check back with me in a week or two. I’ll let you know.

On the cause of low shooting numbers recently

The ball didn’t go in the hole, versus if it did.

On whether he’s still liking the shots being take

Did you see Nimari’s last three shots? There’s a defender. The ball didn’t go in. They looked good. He said they felt great. There’s a defender 15 feet away. That’s what you do when you lose. You go back to resulting. Okay, freeze this shot. He’s standing here. He’s a very good shooter. He always has been.

You can’t put yourself in a position where that ball, they hit a bird and they pop in. Namari has two great looks that don’t go in. Even on the one where his defender fell down and the big emergency switched.

He had a lot of space, but the ball was low. At that point, we probably just need to take the two because Merez’s guy rotated to him. To answer your question, if Nimari Burnett has 10 feet of space in a wide open corner three because Roddy Gayle, that’s a thing. We went back yesterday, and we’re looking at the last four minutes. Other than a little bit of missed execution in the last minute, a little bit of panic, man, we played good ball. That thing was popping.

We were turning down good ones for great ones, and it didn’t go in. Do you sit here and say, do you overanalyze that? We don’t because we would love to play 82 possessions like that. The problem is that everyone sees those possessions and we’re more concerned with all the stuff that went on outside of the naked eye, the other 82 possessions. The defensive lapses, the things that we didn’t do well in that in versus Nimari Burnett’s wide open shots that they did. They were playing good ball, man. Roddy Gayle’s back screen, Roddy, lob, kick out corner three. Give me 100 of those on this road trip, and we’ll take all 100 of them and feel good about where we are. I thought it was interference.

I don’t want to talk about officiating at all. I thought it was a goaltend. I thought it was a good call, but it was, as one of the coaches said, it’s close enough we have to try it. We tried it, but no, there was never a moment when I thought that basket counted. I’d say it’s a game of inches. It might be a game of centimeters.

On the importance of honoring the greats in program history like Trey Burke

I’m not directly involved in the decisions other than Warde will say, hey, we want to retire Trey Burke’s number this year and I say, man, that’s awesome. Let me know what I can do to be a part of it and how we can help and contribute. One of the downsides, I keep talking about upside and downside, but there have been several coaches at Michigan since the 70s, and so you don’t have the continuity of someone being here and then passing it down to an assistant, just continuing.

Sometimes players don’t feel as comfortable coming back when it’s not their coach or coaching staff, or they just don’t know people. The more groups we can get back, when I say groups, people that played under different coaches, the more we can get back under the Block M Michigan basketball umbrella, the better off our program will be. We love having those guys around. Our reunion in August was awesome. The golf outing was well received. I think it’s awesome, and especially Trey Burke, the National Player of the Year. There aren’t many of those floating around.

On the Wisconsin scouting report

Scouting, report details, not overreacting to certain things which cause a continuing effect in a negative way. That’s probably the most natural thing to do when you do give up the stretch threes. You overreact in some other areas.

Our principles. We didn’t stay with our principles even when things weren’t going well. Maybe the game got a little bit too loose as the offense started flowing. We learned a lot. Like I said, if you categorize it, the rebounds that we normally get that were in our hands, we just didn’t come up with them. If we just get those, we probably win the game.

If we do a better job on one of these two guys with something scattered we probably win the game. If we do a better job of whatever the case, in any of those categories, we win the game. We didn’t feel like we did any of them well, but that’s not taking it away from Wisconsin.

They made mistakes as well. They played really well. Credit to them. I saw it against UCLA. I told Greg before the game that the UCLA game was the first time they looked like they did last year. Where that ball was popping, it was moving and they were able to put us in a pickle because of their ball movement and playing two stretch fives that made eight combined threes.

Anytime your two centers score 24 points from the three point line, you’re probably going to be in good position to win because now you sprinkle in two elite drivers, one-on-one players with that and it puts you in a pickle.

On the road trip being good for the team to focus

We feel like this is the perfect time for us to regroup and refocus on what makes us us.

On whether he sought at any feedback from the women’s team who recently made the trip

They gave us feedback. I’m not sure they told us because they’re on Christmas break. If it was over break, we would go out a couple days early like they are. We have class today. We’ll leave tonight. We’ve got a split travel party.

There’s really nothing that they can give us other than they told us what was good and what was bad. Other than that, no. We have two basketball games to play. We’ve got a break in between. Everyone in the league has to do it. The Midwest teams have a benefit and advantage that we don’t have to do it as frequently. It’s obviously going to be tough.

On his thoughts on offensive goaltending

I’ve said this before. When I come back and my next life is the czar of basketball, one of the things will be I love the FIBA rule, knocking it off the rim, knocking it in the rim. I just think it’s more action, more aggression to the game. Especially when you have a guy who’s up around. I think he could tip a lot of those in.

Especially in that situation, we’re getting downhill. The layup doesn’t go in, the tip in, the goaltend. A lot goes into winning and a lot goes into losing. I would love for that rule to be like it is in FIBA.