003 - Dusty May previews the Sweet 16 032726

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1:06It's not our compete against a program like Alabama and with the other two teams here. I'd open up for questions. All right, we'll start here in the middle. Hey, Dusty Dan Wolken, Yahoo Sports. We don't have a lot of transparency into how much it really costs to put a team like the one you have together. At a school like Michigan and Alabama faces the same thing where football has to eat as well. How do you do it year after year and is it sustainable at the rate it's going? It's a great question. I mean, you hear a year and you're out that this isn't sustainable and then all reports point towards the numbers going up. And I think when you see the ratings and when you see all that's happening around our sport, I can always speak from ins basketball. It seems as though there's an influx of everything, of money, of attention, of new avenues to generate revenue. I can't see the cat going back in the bag, personally. Fortunately, we're at a brand where, you know, each school is in a different situation based on their alumni based based on how marketable their athletes are and the tension and spotlight on their program.

2:14And so, fortunately, we have a lot of those things working in our advantage. They didn't just happen. It's almost like I say at FAU, when these businesses or donors believe in a CEO and a vision and a leadership team, then they'll invest until it doesn't go well. And then it's time for a new CEO and a new staff to come in. So we're not naive to that. We have been very diligent from day one to make sure that anything we spent, we thought would be spent wisely. And anyone we brought in would be very useful. Okay, question. Front left. Dusty Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press. I just want to ask a little bit more about one of those guys who you did bring in that way. A dimara. Earlier this week, Mitt Kronin said that you have to detach yourself from college basketball. What it used to be. I spent two years developing and now you're going to leave. That's going to happen to you. It happened with a dimara. It's a business. Do you see, your thoughts on his development, him seeing you as a developmental programmer, how that played out?

3:19Yeah, I want to credit every past coach for everyone on a roster, every teacher. They all have a hand in these guys development. I will say that success has many fathers and failures in orphan. So we're very proud of the progress that Dai continues to make. And like I said, I'd like to thank all of their past coaches for the work they've done up to this point. It takes a village and a team effort to help these guys be their best. But we choose to give our players majority the credit for their development. We think we do a really good job of helping them guiding and assisting them. But usually if a guy gets better, man, we usually try to give him 90 to 95% of it. And then we'll take a little bit of that percentage just because that's what we get paid to do. Second round left. Chris Palace with the Wolverine Dusty. You chose Michigan over some blue blood, so-called blue blood programs. What is it about Michigan that's on par or in your opinion higher than even then some of these other programs? I'll say from day one, well, first and foremost, my wife.

4:22She's always a big fan of Ann Arbor, the quality of life, the everything that goes with the University of Michigan. And my family's always been very important part of any decision that I've made, especially when you dragged them around like I did chasing this dream. That's another reason why I don't get them at these low major guys trying to move up to the mid major, because I was trying to do the same thing and pride myself on not being hypocritical. But the opportunity to attract the best, high achieving people that have a desire to be around the brightest students, the best professors, the alumni base who's connected. And I think Michigan's really unique. And I'll tell you what we say in recruiting that we have what we feel is the academic profile of Stanford with the passion of SEC football for our athletic department as a whole. And usually those two things aren't merged. And so we're very proud that those two things are in great alignment at Michigan.

5:25Second round. Tom Crawford, press pass, FOX 7, Lansing, Dusty. I remember vividly after when you came back from Vegas, you were with the big three wins in the tournament. And I asked you, despite your team playing really well, what keeps you awake at night? And you said outside noise, what keep me awake at night? How is the outside noise, maintenance going right now on the brink of those sweet 16, potentially elite eight? And our players involved in long reading that outside noise as well. I think our guys do a very good job of deciphering what's important and what's not. These guys, I would say 99% of them are on social media. They hear things. A couple of them asked me about a kid who was allegedly committed to us on Twitter from a fake account. And that just goes with it. And we don't, if the kid was committed, we would tell them if he's not. We just, we try to be brutally honest with our guys and never violate their trust and give them our vision. But it's, it's never easy, but we're all, we're all battling the same thing.

6:26But I think overall we're in a very good spot mentally. I think our guys are focused on this game and the preparation that we need to have to be in position to win. Okay, far left. Sean Woods or Detroit Fugrest, Dusty Axel said that would. Your team realized that when the same locker again, they wanted to change lockers mixed up and even sort of act differently. Just to change the lock from a couple of weeks ago, I'm curious. Did you know about this and what kind of stock do you put in that part of these moments, just the psychology of that? I don't put as much stock into this physical location as I do our mindset. I will say our trainer, Chris Williams, after one of the games in the Big Ten tournament. I don't remember if the game we got beat or the game to go into the championship. We were talking about the story of, I think it was Doc Rivers before their NBA Championship with the Celtics. They were in the, wherever the arena, the year before and they put it, everyone put $100 or $20 in a stack and put it in the ceiling tile.

7:35And said, we'll be back for this in June or whatever the month was. So Chris had contemplating, I think he actually put something up there in the tiles if I remember correctly. But I'm not a very superstitious guy. Actually, one of the pair of, and I'm not a very good dresser either is all of you know the covers. I had a really nice pair, my favorite pair of Jordans that I'd rarely wear because I don't want to get scuffed and I like them and I'll wear them with suits. But I wore them for the Wisconsin game at home and we lost. And I broke them out for one of our recent games. I thought, you know what, I'm going to prove once again that all this stuff is nonsense. And so I broke them out and obviously we won with them. So I don't personally, I don't, I don't look at any of that stuff. I don't have any superstitions. I mean, literally zero superstitions. It's, it's get up and do the best you can that day. Question far left. Carlos from Arizona, Detroit, Frupress. He actually just told us that, you know, he's just disappointed that Alabama didn't recruit him out of UAB. He said he might have some extra juice in this game.

8:37Is that a good thing or is it, can players get a little bit too high, too motivated? How do you channel that if he's going to have some extra juice? I think we've had several subplots this year and he seems to be performing well up to this point. So whatever he's, whatever irritates him, I'm going to, I'm going to ride with that and support him. Nate and I being friends, we talked through that process and don't tell yaks, but they did try to recruit him. All right, we've got middle back. Lane Higgins from the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your philosophy of starting three very, very tall players. Now, you kind of pushed it in a different direction last year with your twin towers, I guess. But what made you, when you were building this team, want to run that kind of offense? And, you know, why do you think it's been able to be so successful? Well, this wasn't part of the original plan. The plan was to get two bigs to replace Danny and Vlad and then Will Cheddar, Oscar Goodman, Malik Cordell. And then we were able to get a die and Perez incredibly right off the bat.

9:39And I was perfectly content going into this year. I felt like we could compete to be at the level we're on with that group without yaks. And maybe we could, maybe we couldn't. I mean, we'll never know. And then yaks was going through that process. And we were open and honest with a die and Perez both that, hey, this is, this could happen. We don't know he's going to go, the yaks is going to go through the process. But we're very confident that we can make it work. And here's our plan and what it could look like. So no, we thought this would be very, very difficult. And when they were all on campus this summer, there were several days when I thought to myself, there's a high probability this isn't going to work. And then if you watch us play the first couple games of the regular season, I think you would probably agree that it wasn't working. And it wasn't going the way we, it wasn't going the way it went in Vegas or the way it's went lately. So I'll give our guys a lot of credit. They've done a nice job of solving problems and putting the puzzle pieces together the right way. And really respecting each other, appreciating each other's talents

10:41and figuring out how they could be their best while also playing next to a guy that's really big and talented. And you know, because typically that's a recipe for disaster from a spacing standpoint. So I'm very proud of our guys for finding these solutions. Third row left. Coach Anowasimadil reports. Coach Os told us earlier that he called you early on in Yaxl's transfer portal situation. What did you both talk about that sort of made him put them off from really going after him? Well, what's the last part of the question? What did I tell him to put them off? Well, he said that he felt that he was late to the game. And that's why he didn't pursue as much as other schools had. Yeah, I'm just curious what you both talked about. Yes, we were extremely late to the game as well. When we actually made contact with Yaxl's mentor after this. Their season ended. He said, Yaxl's actually, he's upset with you because you haven't called. After they, I think it was an IT, maybe the second or third round.

11:42He said, Yaxl's actually, and I had spoken with Andy Kennedy prior to that and their staff. But he said that Yaxl's actually disappointed in you that you haven't made contact and no one with Michigan has made contact. And I said, well, you know, I've talked to AK. We're not disrupting anyone's season no matter what rumors are out there. Usually we just call the head coach. But then he asked me why we were in so deep. And I told him that the person that Yaxl trusts the most is a guy that I coached coincidentally 20 some years ago. And he felt like this would be a great environment. And we could help Yaxl with what he needed to improve on. Yaxl went through the process and tried diligently to get a first round guarantee and couldn't get one. And then it made sense for him to come and try to improve and develop and be on this big stage. James Madden's X-Blog coach, you obviously just faced Josh and now you're facing Nate tomorrow. Would you say it's more challenging or easier coaching and going against a coach that you're very familiar with? Both.

12:43It's more challenging because there's such elite ball coaches, but it's more fun because you're familiar. I mean, like I said, I mean, I go to Nate's basketball conference. I've known him for 20 years. I've probably watched his team's play 500 games total. If they're on TV and I'm not doing anything, I watch his team's play. Because I'm going to learn something and we share, we have mutual friends that send out these edits and clips and new ideas. And so I watched something and say, oh, wow, they took that concept from the concept from Barcelona and really made it their own and they're executed better than that team did. So it's a challenge, but I enjoy it because I know we're going to be better coaches because of this. I think he's one of the best coaches on the planet regardless of league level affiliation. And so it's an honor to share the same sideline with a guy that does his job as well as Nate does. All right, question far left. Andy Salicman, AP, along those lines is a bit surreal going up against the guy who you saw all those years ago when he was in high school. And now, you know, you're meeting in the sweet 16.

13:45Yeah, what's, I think probably the thing that now do you say that is just a reminder that surreal was when he was a high school coach and I was assistant at Eastern Michigan. I was in his gym and I told him that I was going to come over to watch the Bulls training camp with Scott Skiles as a coach because I had one of our connection of mine was on the staff and got me access and he said, can I go and I'll drive and whatever. And so we drove over and watched 3, 4, 5 days of the Chicago Bulls training camp talk ball, spent every meal with Nate and Josh Baker who's worked with Nate forever that's now back in Michigan. And so that's probably a surreal moment as a young 26-year-old third assistant in the Mac and a local high school coach who are now back in the same city competing against each other on this stage is pretty surreal. But, you know, that's what makes this all so ironic. I don't know how it happened. All right, 4th row left. Nick Schultz with on 3 Dusty and Curious. When you look at NIL's impact on college basketball,

14:47it's been pretty well documented. But I'm curious, over the last year with Rebshare, how have you kind of seen that impact everything, whether it's from roster building or any other impact it has on the game? I just follow football to be honest. You know, when they announced these numbers, I thought, wow, is everyone going to be under this cap? And then football spins three times. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I have my own opinions on where the game needs to go and why we failed our sport for so long as coaches and administrators to let it get to this point. Because, ultimately, it's our fault. We've been making these decisions on such an obtuse level for so long that now it's blown up in our face. And so now we have a responsibility to fix it and to make sure it's equitable and fair for everyone. So, I don't know. I've heard the numbers, you know, heard from agents and it doesn't seem as though the Rebshare number

15:49is any type of hard cap. Time for one more question. Second row, great. Coach, you mentioned that you guys talked last night. How hard was it? Not to talk about basketball this time of the year, with you two being basketball drunkies you guys are? It's not that difficult. We faced it last week with Coach Scherz. Look, if we lose, then I'm going to be watching and cheering for him because of our friendship. And also the respect I have for what he's done for our game. He is a basketball junkie, a lifelong learner and we'll talk 10 times this summer about ways. We can do a drill better. We can share something that we've learned. And ultimately, that's what it's about. Trying to be the best you can for your players, for the younger coaches, for the growth of our game. But no, when we speak, it's about the other stuff. It's not about basketball. We're not trying to trick and con each other to gain an advantage. And that is Dusty May meeting with the media yesterday.

16:49As the Wolverines get ready for their sweet 16 matchup coming up tonight at 7.35 Eastern time in Chicago. The second game tonight, of course, is Iowa State and Tennessee. The winners will meet on Sunday in the regional final. And then that winner will go to the final four. The Michigan insider continues on the other side of the break here. On the big 1050 WTK online at the big 1050.com.