Basketball

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Michigan has a new men's basketball head coach. Dusty May has been hired as the new sheriff in town and was formally introduced in Ann Arbor earlier this week. Big changes will be coming to Michigan's roster and coaching staff in the coming days and to be prepared for some of those changes, I thought it would be a good idea to comb back through his six seasons at Florida Atlantic. Today we'll be looking at how the roster construction and coaching staff changed year by year, how their results evolved, and see what lessons can be learned for Michigan's sake: 

 

Dusty May's Arrival at Florida Atlantic

As has been repeatedly mentioned in the days since May's hiring by Michigan, the FAU program that he inherited was really bad. They had struggled for over two decades with next to no success, drifting from the Atlantic Sun to the Sun Belt to the C-USA by the time May arrived. The Owls had one NCAA Tournament bid in program history pre-May, a 2001-02 season that saw them go 19-12 (13-7 in ASUN play), finishing 3rd in the conference before winning the conference tourney to gain the autobid. They lost to Alabama as a 15 seed in the opening round, finishing 191st in KenPom. 

That was more or less the program's high watermark before Dusty arrived. Mike Jarvis led the program into Conference USA, but most of their time in that league before May was under May's predecessor, one-time Detroit Piston player and coach Michael Curry. The Curry era was pretty terrible, as FAU went 39-84 overall and a woeful 19-53 in conference play. Dusty May remembered years later about arriving at FAU: "I walk in the room and I started crying and said, 'I just committed career suicide,'" in reference to the dire state of affairs in Boca Raton. May would be building a program from scratch, one that was lacking in facilities comparable to even peer schools. As stated in the article linked a couple sentences earlier: 

The locker room had these old, ugly wooden lockers. It was exceptionally tiny. There was more square footage for the six showers than the actual space for people in the locker room. The arena sat 2,500, had an outdated scoreboard and looked superannuated. High school teams in the area were playing in better facilities. 

May was handed a team that was disastrous. They were 12-19 the last season under Michael Curry, 6-12 in C-USA play. The team was 321st in KenPom offensive efficiency, compared with a 112th-ranked defensive rating. May got straight to work, hiring three assistants in Kyle Church, Akeem Miskdeen, and Erik Pastrana, and then re-assembled the roster. Curry's last team was on the older side and that contributed to May's first team having only three returners of consequence from Curry's final team. Those were Jaylin Ingram, a 6'7" wing who played just eight games, plus 6-1 guard Anthony Adger and 6-9 power forward Simeon Lepichev. The rest of the team was entirely new, which meant that FAU had only 15.3% of returning minutes from the year before, which ranked 345th in KenPom's continuity metric. It was starting fresh. 

[FAU Athletics]

That first Dusty May team (2018-19) added players from a variety of sources. 6-7 wing Xavian Stapleton was a down-transfer from Mississippi State and 6-11 big Karlis Silins was a down-transfer from Ole Miss. He added three players from the JUCO route and then brought four recruits on board, two of which became starters in Kevaughn Ellis and Michael Forrest. This team had a remarkably international complexion, featuring a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Senegalese, two Canadians, and a Latvian. Players were acquired from all different means and the team was stitched together by the coaching staff.

Interestingly, they were a much bigger group than what May would have in his later years, starting the 6-9 Lepichev at the four and the 6-11 Silins at center, which allowed them to be a decent rebounding team. The team improved some over Curry's last team offensively but were still very rough (263rd in efficiency). They took a lot of threes, establishing what would be a hallmark of May's program, but shot them extremely poorly. They shot poorly from 2 as well, with an eFG% that ranked 298th as a team, just narrowly better than the 303rd they finished in TO rate. Defensively they were much better, 91st in efficiency, and that was able to carry the Owls to a 17-16 record in spite of the woeful offense. They were 8-10 in C-USA play, 9th in the league, which was a marked improvement on Curry's entire tenure. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't easy, but the May era started out on okay footing in Boca. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the rest of the tenure and some lessons]

RETVRN? [Bryan Fuller]

I don't think this is a real thing. Jeff Goodman asserted that May had received assurances that admissions wasn't going to be as much of a problem for him as it was for Juwan Howard, something that Sam Webb said he had not heard. My assumption is that this is a game of telephone several persons downwind of this conversation:

Sources say Beilein sat in on the first hour or so of the meeting between Manuel and May, answering a number of basketball specific questions about how he built his program, how he recruited, and how he dealt with admissions. It was a meaningful assist.

I doubt there has been a conversation between Santa Ono and the dean of LS&A about letting guys into school, unfortunately.

Staffers. Potential names from 24/7's Davis Moseley:

Two of those names will be familiar. Adam Howard is a grad assistant at Indiana currently who knows May well; Indiana fans are bizarrely upset at the prospect of losing him because they credit him with a lot of the recruiting grunt work. Bill Armstrong is a wild name: he was the associate head coach at LSU until Will Wade got sent to Bolivia by the NCAA. He's cooling his heels at Link Academy—the school Tarris Reed was at—this year. If that came to fruition that would be your recruiting guy, I'd imagine. I'm skeptical it does.

[After THE JUMP: portal time]

1 hour and 58 minutes

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com.

Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human ElementSharon's Heating & Air ConditioningVenue by 4M where we recorded this, The Nose Bleeds, which is the Sklars Bros’ reboot of Cheap Seats on UFC Fight PassAutograph: Fandom Rewarded, who just launched an app where you earn rewards for things like reading MGoBlog and listening to this podcast, and introducing Champions Circle, the NIL fund keeping our team together.

1. The Hiring of Dusty May

Starts at 1:00

Brian let Seth out of his basement where he works on the UFRs so he’s off exploring the world somewhere (France). Michigan hired Dusty May as the 18th head men’s basketball coach, and the news was dropped in the middle of a hockey championship game. The rumor was that John Beilein played a big part in getting May. Good job, Warde Manuel! This hire was sniped from Louisville, who thought they could hire him this weekend. Whatever happened to Louisville? Dusty May really turned around Florida Atlantic basketball, which was basically a non-existent program before Dusty. He’s had a great track record everywhere he’s been. Dusty May is able to keep his players, even after a Final Four run. 

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]

SNIPE

a new coach arrives

you could watch some basketball today 

The Devil said he's not taking any more Michigan basketball for football championship trades. It's like when he stopped letting Ohio State fans sell their souls for wins against Michigan; the value's not the same for you people.

quiet so far

Nerd!

"Just because you have low sperm count doesn't mean you don't love your wife."

and off we go

that's all, folks

is the culture of the #129 team in Kenpom bad