Michigan HC Dusty May speaks about recruiting philosophy, whether star FAU players will follow him
The Michigan Wolverines are ready to hit the ground running under new men’s basketball head coach Dusty May, who was introduced to the media on Tuesday afternoon in Ann Arbor. A big part of what comes next will be recruiting the current roster, locking in the high school signees and augmenting through the transfer portal.
May knows that all avenues will have to be explored in not only building out for next year, but to keep Michigan competitive well into the future. He dished on his recruiting philosophy and how he prefers to build during his presser.
“By preference, I enjoy the younger players and having continuity, building, growing together, and therefore, the lifelong relationships that I feel like I have with almost every player I’ve ever coached,” May said. “It’s modern athletics, though. The portal will be a valuable asset every year. We’ll use it. Our goal has always been to find the best players we can find and help them be the best they can be. So I don’t have an answer. We’re going to find the best players for Michigan, whether it’s international, whether it’s high school, from school, junior college or portal, we’ll be on the hunt for the best players that fit us and want to be a part of this storied program.”
With so many spots to fill, the transfer portal will almost certainly be heavily utilized this year, where it is recruiting Michigan’s players out of it, or bringing in guys that spent time elsewhere. May is willing to turn over every stone to ensure U-M has its bases covered, and has people helping sell the opportunity to be part of the program.
“Recruiting now in the portal is more like speed dating than traditional recruiting,” May said. “And I think it’s very valuable to have a network of people that you trust and they trust you. And hopefully between former players and former coaches, our program’s gonna have thousands of agents working for us. When I say agents, people that are going to say great things about us and want players to play for us.
“We’re going to cast a big net. We’ll narrow it down, we’ll be very patient because we’re not going to take the wrong guys because we have several spots. We’re going to be very thorough but we need to understand that we need to be right, we need to do our research in advance and make sure we make very calculated decisions because there’s a lot of options, and they’re not all great options.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the nucleus of players from Florida Atlantic’s Final Four run and trip back to the NCAA Tournament this year who still have eligibility remaining. That list is headlined by AAC co-Player of the Year Johnell Davis, who averaged 18.2 points per game this season to go along with 6.3 rebounds and 2.9 assists, shooting 48.3 percent from the field and 41.4 percent from three. Center Vlad Goldin averaged 15.7 points and 6.9 rebounds, while guard Alijah Martin averaged 13.1 points per contest.
May said it would be premature to address whether players from his last stop may make the trip north.
“We met as a group and in several of them individually when I left,” May said. “They had a range of emotions. Right now they’re focused on FAU and I don’t think any of them are in the portal. But right now I don’t know.
“I want that place to continue to sustain success and I’ll do everything I can to help that. Those questions we ask later. I don’t know right now.”
