TRANSCRIPT: Michigan HC Dusty May's weekly press conference 12/8

Opening Statement

Well, we’re excited for the quick turn to get an opportunity to play against a storied program like Villanova. They’re playing really good basketball. They’ve won all their games since their opener out west against BYU, and they have a unique group, so it’s going to be a fun battle.

We just shortened practice. Yesterday we had film, we had yoga, and we had a short practice, mostly mental. We worked on a couple of special situations that we haven’t executed well, and we worked on some things, just adding, continuing to add more to what we’re trying to do, and started planning for what we’re going to see from Villanova. So it was short but overall good day. Today we’ll just go a shorter practice than usual.

On whether there’s a downside to playing good basketball in November in fear of peaking too soon

You know, it’s ebbs and flows of the season. Three weeks ago, we were terrible, and now we’re peaked, so I don’t know. I mean, we got to get better. We’ve still got to continue to anticipate what our problems are going to be, of how we’ll be defended, different things we’re going to face, and prepare contingency plans and be ready for anything. But no, I would always err on playing good basketball over crappy basketball, whatever time of year.

On Oscar Goodman’s development

Oscar’s a good basketball player. When we saw him playing for his national team, we thought he was, I keep using the word unique, but he was a good driver, and he had great pop and force off two feet. He could stop quick and elevate, and we thought that’s a weapon, and he’s added a really consistent three-point jump shot. He spent a lot of time with Will, and our staff’s invested a lot of time with him on the court, but his jump shooting’s gotten a lot better.

His ability to move laterally has improved greatly. Like I said, when you see these guys every day, you don’t remember unless you just go back to your long-term memory about where they were when they got here, and he didn’t move his feet well, and he couldn’t guard the ball very well. Now he can. I think the next step for him is to really, I guess, embrace Morez’s physicality and tenaciousness. If he can add that at a consistent level, then he’s going to be a real weapon for us. He’s ready. Obviously, we can’t have too big of a rotation right now, but if someone went down, there would be no issues with plugging Oscar in a number of different roles and being confident he could help us win.

On whether the gameplan for Gonzaga can translate to Villanova

First and foremost, Brennan goes with force, and he does a really good job of tracking the ball with his eyes while he’s going after it and shedding defenders. He loves contact, and he’s going to throw his body around, and they have great role definition as well. So I think he’s able to anticipate what’s going to happen next. I think anytime we emphasize something with this group, I’ve said repeatedly, I think we have a really high basketball IQ and an awareness of who we are as individuals and who we are as a team, and so typically, when we emphasize something, the guys do their best to neutralize it and get better in that area.

As we improve in certain facets, we just can’t neglect the other parts of the game, so there’s always that happy medium of continuing to review what you’re doing well and the improvements you’ve made, while also trying to plug some new holes. Because each team presents something completely different and new, and challenging. That’s what Villanova does. They have great shooting, and with that shooting, it comes long rebounds, comes a lot of things that are tough for us. If we’re going to win this game, we have to rebound the ball, and so our guys are aware of that.

On noticing any staples of a Kevin Willard-coached team

Well, obviously, in year one, you don’t have the continuity and the nuances down yet, but they’re getting closer. He brought some guys with him, but I think Kevin’s been doing this a while, so I think he’s pretty firm and secure with how he thinks the game should be played and what they do. So, yeah, there’s tells of — we’ve played his teams at Seton Hall. There’s tells going all the way back to that of how they do things, and they keep you off balance.

We’re going to see matchup zone. We’re going to see switching one through three. We’ll probably see some switching one through five. We’ll see some press and so if you’re not able to play conceptually and you get bogged down by those things, then you could have a bad night offensively against them.

Last year, they did the same thing where they had some real quirks that presented challenges to score, and I think the more times you see it, the more comfortable you get. Obviously, this is a one-game situation, but they’re a little bit like us in that regard, where if you watch just defensively, you probably have trouble figuring out what we do all the time, because we do change some things based on personnel, but yeah, they’re good at what they do. I mean, he’s had an instant impact. They have a good team. They’re going to win a lot of games. I think they’re an NCAA tournament team that could advance, and so that’s who you want to be playing this time of year.

On what has changed to have the three-big lineup work

I think the reps and the time together has been the biggest thing. Even yesterday, I remember complimenting Morez multiple times about how he figured out a way to stay out of the action and complement the action. The same thing with Adai where it’s seeing what’s going on in front of you. It’s reacting to the game, and those guys are doing a good job of that.

When the spacing’s not pretty, figure out a way to re-space, but a big part of that, too, is Yaxel being such a willing three-point shooter. I think he’s tripled his volume of threes from last season. His percentage has gone up maybe four or five percentage points from last season, so that’s a big part of it and that wasn’t an easy transition for Yax where you’re playing like this when you’re with this group and you’re playing like this when you’re with this group. It’s a testament to his intelligence that he’s able to shift, and also because of his work in getting in the gym, making shots, and practicing every day. He spends a lot of extra time working on it, and he continues to add to his game, so I think he still has another jump to make.

On whether the iPad views are different than the officials use for reviews

I don’t know, really, what they have on the monitor. The last game we weren’t as confident, we just thought we have a sizable lead, let’s practice, and let’s see if Will Tschetter can earn the trust of the staff when it comes time to challenging calls. We’re keeping a running tally of who’s reliable and who’s probably a little too impulsive to go off their word right now.

Will errs towards probably a little too impulsive, but those are tough plays as you’re in real time. Yaxel told us to challenge the one in Vegas that we got wrong, but he wasn’t wrong. We’re still working it out. Each situation is going to be different. We don’t like taking them home with us, especially with the first one basically being free if you’re going to get it right. On the first one, if we think we’re going to get it right, we’re going to go for it.

On characteristics he looks for in an unselfish player

I think guys that enjoy passing the basketball. Passing is — you know a guy probably overpasses. Yaxel’s a really good passer. He was probably too unselfish at UAB in the American Conference, Conference USA. Elliot Cadeau, obviously, is known as one of the best passers in all of college basketball. Roddy Gayle is incredibly unselfish, and Nimari Burnett, for a guy that shoots it as well as he does, rarely takes a bad shot. Will Tschetter just wants to win. I’m sure I’m leaving — Morez Johnson has never been a volume scorer. He’s just done whatever the game required to win, so I don’t think we have anyone that we brought in.

Trey McKinney is a very efficient player that won at a high level in high school. I don’t think we brought in guys who their identity is shooting and scoring the ball. You want guys we’ve talked about a lot, especially your middle-aged guys. You want guys who are capable of shooting really well but don’t care if they shoot. If you have that, then the game finds a good rhythm and flow to it, and then you’re making the right plays.

We’re probably as balanced, and I’d have to look at the numbers with our usage rate, as anyone. Especially anyone that’s really good across the country. We don’t rely on one or two guys to carry us, we take what the game gives us, and we trust and believe in whoever’s on the court can make the right plays. You saw Merez knock down a couple open step-in threes, that gives us more gravity. It allows those bigs to play better together

We’re going to continue to evolve as a group because, as you’ve seen with the coaches, we’re going to see that the players are going to find solutions for what we currently do. So we got to continue to try to stay ahead of the curve.

On Mike Boynton’s impact on the program

I mean, a number of reasons why I wanted to add Coach Boynton. First and foremost, because I really liked him. Like everyone on our staff, they have an extremely high level of likability, of self-awareness, of the team-first mindset. I respected his struggle. He probably deserved the Stephen F. Austin job when Brad Underwood left and went to Oklahoma State, and he was never bitter or angry about that experience. That’s always something that I value.

You go through something difficult, and you stay positive, you stay professional. Coach Boynton did that, and obviously, I’d watched his teams play. He had hired a guy off of my staff, Eric Pastrana, who’s now in Miami, and so anytime you’re watching, I mean anytime games are on, you’re going to watch your former assistants, you’re going to watch your former players you’ve coached. I typically watch games where there’s a personal connection, so I watched him play a lot.

Thought he’s a really good basketball coach. I thought he had a really unique ability to seem like an old guy but be really young and vibrant and energetic and flexible. That’s one thing about this profession, sometimes when we start to get older, you’re either stuck in your ways in the old days or you’re wise and you’re adaptable. I feel like he’s wise and adaptable as he ages in our profession, and so that’s what we try to be as a staff, extremely flexible. We try to problem-solve. We don’t spend a lot of time complaining, our complaints are usually laughing over it with humor because it’s something we can’t control anyway.

I think, overall, he’s a good fit for me. He checks a lot of boxes that I’m not good at. There’s a number of reasons, but he, like the rest of the staff, man, they work really, really well together and they’re not out here searching for a spotlight and patting themselves on the back. We all know, me, the staff, our players, all know our success is because of all of us. We work in collaboration. Obviously, I have to make the final decision on most of these things, but I don’t think there’s ever a decision that we don’t discuss as a group and we’re usually pretty aligned because we think alike, but we also have some real healthy debates and and that’s where it’s fun. When you have guys who are bright but also flexible, that they’re not set that this is the way it’s going to be done, we’re all trying to find the best way for our guys to do it.

On his appreciation for storied college basketball programs

It seems like even more so than that, especially in today’s climate, to sustain success year in year out is impressive in our eyes. So these programs that are able to do it without having any any dips are incredibly impressive. Villanova, obviously, hasn’t been what they’ve been the last couple years versus the previous six or eight or whatever the case, but they have really good players. They expect to win. We recruited Acaden Lewis. We know how well their wings shoot the ball. We respect their bigs and how hard they play, so they’ve done a nice job of putting together a well-rounded roster

On giving players like Morez Johnson and Adai Mara the green light to shoot threes

We don’t have conversations with them about that, it’s more of an eyeball thing. We track all the data and we’re monitoring it, but when we feel like they look really comfortable in the situations that they’re going to be in, because even the best shooters miss six out of ten shots, right? It’s not as if you’re just looking at the percentage and saying he’s ready now, we have asked them to, hey, let us kind of give you the time when we think it’s right. If there’s a big margin or something like that, obviously, the situation’s different.

Adai shot one in Vegas that I thought was a really good look, we had a nice lead. It wasn’t as if, and he turned one down the other day, that I thought was still at a moment in the game where it could have gone either way, and I thought he showed great judgment. He’s just got to continue to work on it, continue to get more comfortable in certain games, though we don’t really want him getting as many catches outside the three, we’d love it for him to get his catches on the elbow. He’s such a weapon there.

That will be something, though, on certain nights, I know Northwestern last year, for example, if we don’t get Vlad’s threes to go down in that game and hang around when they were really bogging us down, then we don’t win that one. That’s a home game in the Big 10 and a very pivotal moment, so there’s going to be different nights when you don’t know what the game’s going to call for, and hopefully we’ll have that in our arsenal where we can loosen up the defense a little bit or force the defense to guard our bigs on the perimeter, which helps open up the rim.

On playing against teams who might try to exploit deficincies

As we’re watching games at night as a group this week, credit college basketball coaches, man. Credit NIL, whatever’s caused all of us to schedule these big-time games, it’s been awesome. So we were all kind of watching different games, and we’ll send something in a group chat. We need to have this ready, we need to have this ready, this is coming soon, this is down the road, but we got to start practicing this.

We added two wrinkles yesterday that we’re not going to see for at least a couple weeks, but it’s going to be used against us. Our system, there hasn’t been much deviation in our defensive system in the last several years, so we know the holes and what problems other teams can give us. So if you just try to game plan it for that two-day prep or whatever the case, it’s a lot more difficult than introducing it repping it here, repping it here, and then it’s more just a refresher. So in our group chat at night, we talk about, okay, we need to have these two things ready by January or whatever the case, and so when we have extra practice time, or like yesterda,y when we went ligh,t and we have a little bit of time after, okay, let’s talk about these two or three things that we’re going to need to refer back to later.

On whether he’s seen coaches call out those who better their teams through the portal

Once again, we try to be wise and adaptable. We took four portal guys last year and we love coaching all four of them. We feel like we’re pouring into them, we feel like they’re making us better as coaches. They fit our culture. The Thunder won the NBA championship last year. I don’t look down at Mark Daigneault or Sam Presti because he didn’t draft all those guys, because Shai Alexander was drafted by the Clippers, and they traded Paul George for him, or they signed Hartenstein through free agency.

I just look at, man, they play great ball. That is a team that all of these young players should emulate as far as how much they care about each other, how they’re able to bring it every single night, no matter who’s playing. I would choose to look at it like that versus always trying to cut down the way everyone else is doing it because I look across our league, there’s some really good teams. I watched Nebraska last night, and i’m like, man, that’s the guy that was injured from Bradley. Man, he’s good. The kid from Iowa transferred there, and then Hoiberg’s son, I think, probably, he’s been there with him the entire time, who is fun to watch and a complete winner. I think they’re a great example of they just have guys, a little from everywhere, that have come together and they’re playing the game the right way. They’re fun to watch, they’re going to compete for a championship. I respect every way that each guy does it because it’s difficult now, and everyone’s situations differ.

Some guys aren’t at a place like Michigan, where people want to stay outside of basketball; that’s very tough to leave. So every situation is different. We choose to do it our way. Do I look down on a guy because he took a — I don’t know, the coach of Santa Clara, but I look down on him because he took a G League guy versus a yearly guy? No, not at all. We’re trying to bring in great dudes who love to compete, who value what we bring, and want to be a part of growing all this together.

On Acaden Lewis and Villanova’s guards

He’s got to be one of the best freshman guards in the country. His ability to manipulate the defense, his finishing package, is all the things we knew when we recruited him. He visited officially in the fall last year and ended up signing with Kentucky. All the things we knew back then, he’s an elite finisher with either hand. He does a nice job of getting the shooter shots and feeding the roll man. He’s capable of shooting from deep and really getting in a rhythm, but just his game, if nothing else, he has a lot of game, especially for a freshman playing on this stage.

They shoot the ball, they’re strong. They really, really shoot it. Anytime you have shooting on the wing, you have a dynamic guard like Acaden, and you have the bigs. Hodge can make threes, Brennan is a junkyard dog. I just think they did a really nice job of putting the right pieces together.

Their bench, they come in, and they have some junkyard dogs coming off the bench. Jeffries is a pit bull on the ball. Number seven, I forget, they brought him from Maryland, he’s an elite defender. They’ve got a unique blend where you have offense, and you have defense and you have a combination of both, so we have a lot of respect for what their staff was able to do in a short period of time because it’s not always easy when you know you’re coming together, and at least they had an identity to sell. Obviously, Coach Willard’s been doing this for a long time, so people know what he values.

On the comfort having someone like Roddy Gayle who can give him double-digit points on any night

Roddy Gayle, man. I think that the three guys I think are kind of — I don’t want to say the three guys, I don’t want to say anybody. Roddy Gayle is an unsung superstar for us. He does so much across the board and doesn’t care about anything other than winning and being a part of something special together. He’s incredibly unselfish, and, with that, you have the expectation that your teammates have to be unselfish too, or you kind of lose that trust. So, Roddy, I think, has really, really bought into being a little bit of everything for this team.

He’s getting to the rim, he’s playmaking, he’s defending at a high level. I think there was one game this year when he was one for six at half, and we as a staff, rallied at halftime and said that might be the most impactful one for six of any half of basketball that we’d ever seen. He just made so many plays. Whether it was cuts screens, loose balls deflections, whatever the case, he’s making so many plays that impact winning. It’s been fun to see his growth because he’s improved in so many areas, but maturity-wise, when he speaks in our locker room, everyone has their ears open because they know what’s coming out is valuable, and he’s been a real resource for us as a staff to kind of echo our message. We’re really, really happy with where Roddy is now.

On whether it took much convincing for Roddy Gayle to accept a sixth-man role

We did it last year, whenever it was. It was a strange deal where we just thought Roddy needs the ball in his hands a little bit more, and when he’s playing with Danny, and Vlad, and Trey, he just didn’t have the usage that we thought he would, that would be more beneficial to have.

This year, we’ve went with the policy that if you miss a couple practices with a minor injury, then we play the group that’s been working with cohesion of practice. That happened with Roddy, happened with Adai. When Roddy had the minor injury, I can’t remember the timetable now. He played really, really well with that next unit, and there wasn’t any drop off with the second unit. We just thought, man, this makes a lot of sense for him to be whatever we need him to be in the second group, but also, it helps him because his usage is probably doubled with that group versus if he was playing with Yaxel and Elliot and Adai and these guys that are also high usage guys. They’re not high-volume scorers, but they’re high usage guys.

On whether there’s a different mindset knowing teams will be huntng them

I think we talked about that earlier in the year. This was new for us as a group. I think it does one of two things, and they both can change. It makes you complacent, and you start patting yourself on the back, or it pours fuel on your fire. You want more like that, man. This is fun to be in meaningful games and to be in sold-out arenas and have this energy and intensity around every game. That’s what it seems like today, in early December, where our guys are like this is a lot of fun, and their work capacity continues to prove it.

Elliot Cadeau, in our opinion, has become one of the best defensive guards in America over the last two or three weeks. I can’t turn on a game and see a guard that’s impacting that side of the ball more than him now, so that’s got to be our response to this success. To play harder and know that we’ve got to give more and we’ve got to continue to learn and grow and stay locked in and focused on the day-to-day, because that’s ultimately what we’ve noticed.

The difference in our group is their attention to detail and them searching out every advantage in film and practice, that’s been the most encouraging part, that they haven’t felt like, oh, why are we doing all this? Why do we keep having to prepare this way? They wanted more, and it’s always fun to know that we’re going to do everything we can to find a way to play our best, and that’s where we are right now.