The sports world is abuzz across southeastern Michigan.
To start the week, the Detroit Lions topped the Seattle Seahawks, 42-29, on Monday Night Football. Then, the Detroit Tigers took the baton, went into Houston and swept the Astros to win their American League wild-card series and advance to the ALDS for the first time since 2014.
Oh, and Michigan football is about 48 hours away from a national championship rematch with Washington.
With so much going on elsewhere, it would be hard to blame anybody for not knowing the college basketball season (as it often does) has snuck up on us. Wednesday and Thursday marked the unofficial kickoff of the season with Big Ten media days held in Rosemont, Ill. near Big Ten headquarters just outside of Chicago.
It’s the first for new U-M head coach Dusty May (who threw out the first pitch at the final Tigers game of the regular season on Sunday), who sat down on Big Ten Network on Thursday morning and detailed some of his thoughts and expectations ahead of his first season leading the Maize and Blue.
“When you look at our roster, we got guys out of the portal that came from winning programs that were well-coached,” May said. “Freshmen have impressed, too. A little bit different than what we had at FAU.
“Everybody we brought in from the portal came from a winning program.”
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May is no stranger to success or program building: He led the Owls to a Final Four in 2023 and back to the NCAA tournament last season, where they fell to Northwestern in overtime in an 8 vs. 9 game.
May sat with Illini coach Brad Underwood on Thursday for a roundtable, when the man who poached U-M’s former strength coach praised May’s most recent team.
“Dusty’s FAU team was as tough as anybody could get,” Underwood said. “Played fast, extremely skilled offensively. Vlad (Goldin) will be one of the better bigs in the country. Well-coached, you don’t get to a Final Four without that. Very talented offensively. They were a team that scored the ball in so many ways. We were so challenged by how tough they were.”
It’s the same blueprint in place for May who wants to run a motion offense. He has just three players returning from last year’s roster under former coach Juwan Howard: forward Will Tschetter, wing Nimari Burnett and forward Jace Howard.
Beyond the returning trio, the Wolverines were as active as perhaps any team in the nation in the transfer portal. May and company searched high and low for players from the SEC to the Ivy League, the Big Ten to the American Athletic Conference. In the end, May added six proven pieces from various teams, all whom he said “came from winning programs.”
Starting with the power conference players, U-M added point guard Tre Donaldson (Auburn) and though his starts were limited for Bruce Pearl, he averaged 6.7 points and 3.2 assists in just more than 19 minutes per game; with nearly a 2.5 to 1 assist to turnover ratio while he shot 47.1% from the floor and 41.2% from long range as a sophomore.
There’s also shooting guard Roddy Gayle Jr. (Ohio State), a 6-foot-4 and 210-pound slasher who averaged more than 13 points and nearly five rebounds a night and final power conference addition is sophomore Sam Walters (Alabama). A 6-foot-10 and 200-pound lanky lefty with a nice stroke and a quick release, Walters shot 39.4% from long range as a true freshman for the Tide.
Of course, there’s more where that came from. May also brought 7-foot center Vlad Goldin with him from Boca Raton which immediately gives U-M an inside presence. The 7-foot-1, 240-pound behemoth from Nalchick, Russia averaged 15.7 points on better than 67% shooting from the floor last year to go with nearly seven rebounds per game.
Perhaps what’s most dangerous about his addition, is he’s only one of two 7-footers May recruited to Ann Arbor. The other, Danny Wolf, who was an All-Ivy player for Yale last season as he nearly averaged a double-double at 14.1 points and 9.7 rebounds per contest.
Wolf detailed earlier in the offseason how his primary hesitation to join was figuring out how he and Goldin could co-exist, but then he said after he spoke with May and his staff, he fully bought into the idea.
“The first question I asked (May) was, ‘Is Vlad Goldin gonna come with you?’ And (May) was pretty certain he was,” Wolf said this offseason. “That raised question marks, but also raised a higher level of interest for Michigan because with my skillset and how it translates to the next level, playing the 4 is something that I need to do and I think once that became clear and I got all my questions out of the way… it seemed pretty seamless.”
Last but not least, U-M added wing Rubin Jones from North Texas. He’s the winningest player in program history for the Mean Green and is not only a savvy veteran with 110 games played to his name, but he can fill it up at 12.1 points per game last year while shooting 41.6% from long range.
“He’s been a pleasant surprise for us,” May said on the early returns on Jones.
May also discussed the trio of freshman he’s excited about, Thursday, all of whom are 6-foot-1 guards. There’s Durral ‘Phat Phat’ Brooks, who won Mr. Basketball in the state of Michigan this past year; Justin Pippen, a standout at Sierra Canyon who was former teammates with Bronny James and more notably the son of NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen; and LJ Cason, a three-star previously committed to FAU who May was able to convince to come north instead.
“We were looking for positional size,” May said of his portal and high school priorities. “We brought in great skill and a lot of size. We’re going to play Danny Wolf at the 4, who is 7-foot; we’ll have Sam Walters playing on the perimeter who is a 6-10 shooter, and our guards are all big.
“Like I said, everyone we brought in from the portal came from a winning program, so it’s on us to put them together and utilize them.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball coach Dusty May: ‘We’re big. We’re skilled’
