DETROIT — Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May, junior guard Tre Donaldson and junior guard Roddy Gayle Jr. met with the media following their team’s 92-48 win over Oakland in a charity exhibition at Little Caesars Arena. Watch video of the press conference below.
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Head coach Dusty May
Roddy Gayle Jr., Tre Donaldson
The Michigan head coach discussed his overall thoughts on the exhibition.
“It was a lot of fun to get out here and compete with these guys, and see some carryover from practice and for a great cause like Forgotten Harvest,” May said in his opening statement.
“And it’s a big deal to play an exhibition game in Little Caesars Arena and have the people that were here watching, and we heard the Michigan fans supporting our guys.
“Overall, it’s a great starting point. You never know as you get into the season where you are, because you’re playing against yourself every day. So encouraged by our performance and what we can be.”
May also discussed areas that he was impressed with.
“Personally as a coach, I’m obsessed with guards rebounding down, and for Tre Donaldson to get 8 and [freshman] LJ Cason to get 5 … typically, they’re the ones that don’t have to block out as much, the bigs [do], so they have an advantage, so it’s a matter of helping your teammates and going and getting them. And also it just gives us such a head start on our transition offense.
“But to hold Oakland to 2-for-30 from three. Switching is new to almost our entire roster. I don’t know if anyone on our team switched one through four last season, or one through five at times, like we did at night. And we won’t at times, so we had some lapses, but for us to hold them to 2-for-30 is a testament to our communication, our activity and just our overall awareness.”
May said Michigan is still figuring out the right rotation and lineup combinations.
“We’re still experimenting,” May said. “And we’ll take this game. Our analytic company … we haven’t had a chance to really play 5 on 5 in practice without non-scholarship players, without having two or three guys out, so we don’t really have a lot of data on our lineup combinations yet.
“In probably two or three weeks, we’ll have a better indication of, these two guys really seem to play well together, or this small lineup has been really efficient and maybe we go to that in spurts if we’re struggling offensively.
“We don’t have that information yet. We have just what meets the eye. With foul trouble and fatigue, with our pace, it’s not as easy as it is for some other teams.”
