TRANSCRIPT: Michigan Basketball HC Dusty May's weekly press conference 10/27

Opening Statement

We’ve certainly accomplished what we wanted to accomplish at the exhibition games, and so now all attention points towards a good week of practice and being a better basketball team for our home fans against Oakland next week.

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On what he learned about his team in the exhibition against St. John’s

Well, when you’re playing against a team that old, that physical, they change their defenses based on who’s in the game and based on our personnel, so we saw some real looks. But overall, they’re ultra talented, they’re well coached, it was on the road in a tough environment where you’re throwing shots, they’re throwing shots, and so you just stay with it and find a way to win at the end, but we have a lot to clean up.

On what he liked most about what his team did

What did I like most about what our team was able to do? I thought a few guys, I thought their care factor for doing the right thing was extremely high. Across the board, we need guys to be much more accountable to each other and to play in the game the right way.

We made a lot of errors, and like I said, St. John’s, they’re in early-season form, they’re not in March form, this isn’t a finished product by any means, but we have to get better in a lot of areas, but the thing I like most is we were much more competitive than we were against Cincinnati. Our energy level, our physicality, our aggression was much improved from a week prior.

On Elliot Cadeau’s run of the offense

I’m overall happy with Cadeau, same thing, he has some things he has to clean up as well, but I thought he set the table for a lot of really good looks. The thing with him is he’s trying to serve his teammates, he’s setting them up, he’s looking for them. I think out of his nine assists, five turnovers, I think five of those turnovers, probably two of them were poor decisions, I thought three of them were just not being on the same page with the bigs or whatever the case, and hopefully that comes with experience and time, and practice reps together.

On the goals defensively for the team

Personally, as a staff, we expected to play much better than we did defensively, much more sound. Our communication wasn’t great, our anticipation wasn’t great. We have a lot to work on on that side of the ball, but we’re certainly capable of being a leader in that area.

On how good having two close exhibition games will be for the program

Yeah, just two really good teams in general. I think the thing defensively, when the game was on the line, I think there were two possessions, we looked like we knew what to do and how to act and how to perform in those moments. And so now we have to do that at a much higher quality for the other 83 possessions or 82 possessions.

And then offensively, we’re still trying to figure out what’s going to be our bread and butter, and then what can we counter off of that. So I’m not sure that we — even after these two close games, we know exactly where we are in that regard, but we’re certainly closer than we were two weeks ago.

On the value of having Adai Mora and Morez Johnson back in the lineup

I mean, I think they’re two of our most valuable guys for different reasons. Adai’s a pressure release and a rim protector. He didn’t play anywhere near his capability in the first half. I thought the second half, he played a good, solid game. And then Morez, just because he brings so many intangibles and invisible plays to our team. I think if you took two of the best players off any team, they’d look a little bit different.

But it’s more of just what they bring to the table, as far as size, physicality, athleticism, length. But also certainly the intangibles helped as well.

On Adai Mara adjusting to physicality

Well, I think physicality, anytime that you’re taller and you’re longer and you’re not as physically stout, as a 7’3 guy, you’re going to worry about smaller, stronger athletes getting underneath you. So he just has to figure out a way to use his gifts to create an advantage with them by using their physicality. Because sometimes, if you can just neutralize a guy that’s shorter than you, then you can use your size and length. But we’re pleased with Adai’s progress. He’s getting better every week. He’s getting better every day.

And obviously, the health piece is very important for him. But I think if there’s one thing that he could make a big jump on, it would simply be changing ends. I think he’s leaving a lot of points on the floor by not finding that desire to go get some easy baskets in transition. Because he’s capable of it. He can move. He can run. He’s much more agile than I think he gives himself credit for. But he certainly had an impact on that game, especially at the rim. And those guys putting their shoulder down trying to attack him, and he had a couple blocks. Those things are invaluable because they cause the drivers to be a little less aggressive after they’ve had a few blocked.

On his read of how the team can handle expectations

I don’t know. Who knows? I think that’s so far down the list of what we need to be concerned with right now. We need to have a good film session and good practice today. We need to be very honest with ourselves on what we’re doing well and what we’re doing poorly, and fix those things. And then if you get lost in the fight, then the external expectations hopefully don’t poison the group. But that’s on us to be aware, honest, and accountable every single day, and hopefully that’s enough.

On facing Oakland’s zone and how it helps facing it

Yeah, obviously, you schedule this game so you have your zone package in early because you’re going to see it. You don’t know when. I anticipate because the NBA played more zone than ever last year that it will trickle down even more so into college. It just keeps you off balance. And so we have a week to prepare against it as far as the rhythm and the timing and the unorthodox nature of their zone. But we had reps last year, so we have some film to refer to.

We’ve had guys working on their film from their entire season about where the holes are in their zone and things like that. But it’s still going to come down to passing and catching and running the floor and being completely locked into that position. But it’s going to be a challenge. Anytime you play a team that plays differently, there’s an adjustment period in the game before you usually find your rhythm.

On Cadeau and Mora’s impact on the fastbreak

Yeah, I said it last week. If Elliott can become an elite defensive rebounder, then we’re going to be an elite transition team because he has some real gifts in that area and the ability to make his teammates better. I was very happy with how we were able to convert three-on-two breaks and four-on-three breaks, and we discovered something about ourselves as far as the big wings running against guards and then the fives playing off of them.

So I think in real time, we were able to discover an advantage and go to it three or four times, and I think then we can leverage that for more open threes if we really buy into it. The crazy thing about our turnover is just similar to last year. A lot of our passes lead to dunks or layups, and a lot of our turnovers lead to our set defense, and because of that, for us to turn it over, how many times, Tom? 22? Yeah. 22 times, and we gave up four points in transition.

I don’t know how. We have some real statistical anomalies going on over the last couple years in several areas, and that’s one of the many. So fortunately, when we do drop the ball, it goes out of bounds instead of to the other team and things like that.

On whether he wants Yaxel Lendeborg to be more aggressive or let the game come to him

No, I want him to be more aggressive on the glass. I think the one area he improved more from Cincinnati to this game was simply running the floor with more urgency, getting out into space, and I can’t imagine if he’s in a three-on-three situation or a three-on-two situation that he doesn’t produce a high-quality shot for us. At times, he’s too unselfish as far as kicking it out when he probably has a finish that he can make, but, man, it’s hard to get on a guy for drawing two or three players and not making the right basketball play.

He has a lot to improve on, but his unselfishness in playmaking are two of the things that he’s really, really excelling at right now.

On his concern level with the turnovers after the exhibition game

I’m not confident that it’s just going to get worked out. We’re not having pixie dust to sprinkle on it, so we’ve all got to be much more intentional about passing and catching, about giving the ball space. I thought our spacing was one of our biggest areas that caused the turnovers.

I feel like we were crowding the ball. We weren’t playing with good rhythm, and I felt like almost everyone caught the ball and tried to be the primary playmaker. We just didn’t have, I don’t want to say anyone, we didn’t have a lot of guys trying to connect the offense, and that’s something that I think all of us in the basketball universe are striving for now, to find connectors to make it all work. Usually, the beautiful thing about basketball is those connectors end up scoring more, and they do it at a much higher, efficient rate. So we’re looking for that. I think if we can really find a couple connectors, their minutes will go up. Guys that are just steady and solid and play mistake-free basketball in this team, then they’ll have a chance to carve out an even bigger role.

On whether he believes he has those guys

Yeah, we have really good guys. We have a lot of good players in our locker room. We have a lot of options. Yes, I think so. The turnovers, we’ve got to change some things. It’s year two, so it’s not just two different teams, so it’s not just the players.

It is a small sample size this year, but the urgency is at an all-time high to get it fixed and figure out why it’s happening now out of the blue. We have theories, but now let’s fix these things, and we think that’ll really help. But are we ever going to be a low-eight-turnover, ten turnover game team unless we just lower our tempo?

Because when you’re playing twice the possessions, even if you’re, let’s say, back when I got into coaching, you wanted to turn it over 12 times or less, and you’re playing 50 possessions, and I think we had 85 against the St. John’s, 87. And so now you, you know, I’m not a math major, but now you’re talking about 40% more possessions, so you’d think 40% more free throws would be logical. And so we’re never going to be a team that I think we sit, but I think the last 15 minutes of the game we had two.

And so we’re certainly capable when the game becomes all about winning, like nothing else matters. Like the last five minutes of games last year, when you could see a group that there was nothing that mattered other than finding a way to win that game. Then we’re capable of doing it, but we have to be able to have that, I guess, pride and motivation to take care of the ball as an individual and as a unit.

On Cadeau’s rebounding ability being natural

I listened to Coach Pitino’s interview, and obviously, he might be the greatest living coach on our sideline in college basketball, according to a lot of us, according to some, whatever the case. But the first thing he talked about was his guards aren’t rebounding down. It’s not something that’s ingrained in guards at a young age.

I think when we’re playing in youth basketball, if a guy gets a rebound, you get on your big guys to go rebounding. Over the course of my coaching career as an assistant and head coach, one of the reasons is we’ve had guys that really wanted to find ways to win. But a second reason, we’ve always stressed it at a high, high level.

The downside of it is sometimes your centers aren’t great defensive rebounders. When you look at Vlad and you look at Karlis Silins, guys we’ve had prior, they were elite offensive rebounders, and they were very marginal defensive rebounders. The biggest part of it is we stress those guys keeping the other bigs from getting the ball, so our guards had space and time to go get it, and then that started our transition offense.

We’re stressing it every day. We’re not doing a lot of breakdown drills to work on it, but we are pointing it out on every single rep and giving them constant reminders, just trying to change the habit and raise the awareness of our guards that if they go get the ball, we’ve skipped a step, which is the outlet, and there’s incentive to run. There’s a lot of incentive to run because our guards want to pitch the ball ahead.

On the confidence the team got by playing in the exhibition against St. John’s

I think any time you can go win in that environment, when you’re playing in tough Big Ten games, then you can refer back to it, that even if things aren’t going well, you get down six or seven, eight points, whatever, just keep pounding, just keep working, keep going, and there’s usually one play that can ignite a team, and so you never know what that play might be, whether it’s a loose ball, whether it’s a deflection or an offensive rebound. Those are the lessons we’ll refer back to.

As far as everything else, we evaluate our processes. The things we stressed after Cincinnati, did we improve on those things? And I think for the most part we did, which gives us hope that this team can fix some things, not only on the fly but from week to week, because it’s like the old Vegas vacation when Chevy Chase, there’s a hole in the dam and he plugs it with his piece of gum and then another one sprouts up and then another one sprouts up.

That’s kind of how coaching basketball is at times, where you fix something and you feel pretty good about it, and then typically, because your opponent’s pretty damn good, they expose you to another weakness, and then you better have a lot of gum and a lot of putty to plug those holes.

On the one play he liked the most on Saturday

One play in the game that I liked the most. Man, I loved how quickly Morez Johnson was getting to the ball. His intensity level, I just think the moment he got back into practice, and he’s been out a while. We were very cautious with his injury. The moment he set foot on practice, the intensity in our gym was elevated exponentially, and that’s his secret sauce, and he did a lot of other good things. He put pressure on the rim.

I thought just him being on the floor gave everyone a lot of confidence, probably too much confidence. I think sometimes he’s out there and they believe he’s going to go make the plays behind him, but we can be a little bit loose and overaggressive. But, man, he brings a lot of things that we needed to this team. That we need. Not needed. We still need.

On the turnover issues being in the first half and whether it’s a problem of players needing to settle in

Let’s talk about the very first one. We ran a slip play. We knew St. John’s would be aggressive with their coverage. Adai starts to slip out of it. We teach, and he grabs them by the waist. It’s just a grab. It’s not a hold. And so Adai’s got to have enough power and strength to get off of that, enough urgency to get off of it. We probably need to take a little bit of touch off of that pass.

But when you look at the decision that was made, that’s one that we can live with. So out of whatever it was in the first half, there were a few that we thought were good decisions, and they’re just part of the game and learning and growing. And then there’s some others where we’re just trying to, if I put my head down and drive into you guys all sitting here now, I’m probably not going to get to the other side with the ball. So I think that part of the decision-making. And then put on our brakes. When we see trouble, we’ve just got to put on our brakes and avoid it because we’re so talented in some other areas.

I mean, you look at the shots we’re generating, the offensive rebounds. I think we got 44% of our misses. We shot at a good clip. And so you’re negating two things you do pretty well. Three things, really, because we score at the rim well, we make catch-and-shoot threes pretty well, and then we offensive rebound it when we do miss. So it’s another reason why the turnovers are paramount.

On whether he feels the turnovers aren’t correctable and something that gets fixed over time with more chemistry

It’s one of those things. We’re going to try a lot of different stuff. We’re going to tighten up our drills. We’re going to tighten up our reward system in practice, and we’re doing this and that. And so we’re going to do probably five to ten different things, and we’re going to show them on film, and we’re going to teach them stress different things, and then hopefully it works. And then you take a step back and you say, I wonder which one of those ten things worked.

And so that’s kind of how it is as well with us. We’re going to throw everything we have at fixing that issue and one or two other issues, and then hopefully we look back in a week or two and we don’t know what it was that fixed it, but it got fixed.

On Nimari Burnett and Will Tschetter being glue guys

Well, Nimari’s all about the right stuff, and he’s a professional, and he was a little bit banged up. And so, yeah, he’s going to be that for us, and he can be a lead at it. And Will Tschetter, to be honest, down the stretch, we looked like a different team when he was out there and when he wasn’t, and it was, I think, just because he wanted to be the floor spacer.

He wanted to connect our defense with his communication and effort. I thought he made a couple really practical defensive plays that saved disadvantaged matchups just by him being alert and being active. So I think if we find a couple more guys that have that mindset, that they simply want to space the floor, find a way for it to look better together with more functionality, then those guys will play because we have some unique pieces.

And when you have unique pieces, then you’ve got to find a way to connect it and make it all work together. So, yeah, those two guys certainly have to be two players that make it work.