Dusty May was successful in his first season as head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, giving the team a solid run in the NCAA Tournament. However, he believes there is a lot of work for his players and the coaching staff to do going into the 2025-26 college basketball season.
May began his stint with Michigan after moving on from the Florida Atlantic Owls after six seasons. He achieved incredible success at Boca Raton, leading the program to two NCAA Tournament appearances that included a historic run to the Final Four in 2023.
May embraced the next chapter of his head coaching career at Ann Arbor, understanding that the expectations and responsibilities would grow from there on. He helped Michigan reach the Sweet 16 in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, showcasing a lot of promise for what the Wolverines' fanbase can expect moving forward.
Going into the upcoming season, May was proud to have that first year under his belt. He noted that he and the coaching staff have plenty of confidence as they look to build on the foundation they set last season by going for the national championship.
“I do think we're probably a little more confident in year two than we were in year one. I do feel like our staff had plenty of confidence in year one, but just to know that it's no longer just a vision or theory, there's a proof of concept that we're able to play well at this level. And it's grueling night in, night out, the travel, the amount of fans involved in each game is pretty cool, but the atmospheres are amazing. So, yeah, we're excited going into year two based on laying the foundation in year one,” May said in an interview with ClutchPoints.
“The biggest priority is to figure out how to play one weekend longer and figure out a way to cut down the nets and that last Monday. That's the ultimate goal…Championships are won in September, they're won in October, they're won in June, July. They're not won just on that night in Indianapolis next year, just like last year in San Antonio.”
What changed for Dusty May, Michigan this offseason
Michigan impressed in its first season with Dusty May at the helm. The squad finished with a 27-10 record, including a solid 14-6 display in Big Ten play. They performed well in the conference tournament, earning the title after beating Wisconsin in the championship game. In the NCAA Tournament, they got past UC San Diego and Texas A&M in the first two rounds before falling to Auburn in the Sweet 16.
The Wolverines highlighted a star frontcourt with Vladislav Goldin and Danny Wolf leading the way, with the former following May from Florida Atlantic in the 2024 offseason. The duo proved to be a force inside the paint, applying a lot of pressure on opponents to keep track of them while they were on the court together. Michigan ranked 75th in the country in scoring offense with 78 points per game, 159th in scoring defense with 71.5 points allowed per game, 30th in rebounds per game, and 47th in assists per game.
This season won't see the star big men on the court at Michigan. Goldin maximized his eligibility before signing a two-way contract with the Miami Heat, while Wolf earned a first-round selection in the 2025 NBA Draft where he will play for the Brooklyn Nets.
Nine players left the program in the offseason, most notably Tre Donaldson, Rubin Jones, and Sam Walters. Donaldson was a full-time starter as he transferred to the Miami Hurricanes, Jones used up his remaining eligibility, while Walters left for the SMU Mustangs.
May got to work in the summer, replacing all nine with four players from the transfer portal and five high school recruits. The biggest addition was Yaxel Lendeborg, who transferred from UAB after two seasons with the program. He developed into a star there, which May himself got to experience when he coached the FAU Owls.
“For Yaxel [Lendeborg], it was a pretty simple recruiting process because he was familiar with us, and we're so familiar with him. I want to say we had two conversations before he told me that he wanted to come to Michigan, and he was going to come to Michigan,” May said. “I think there were some built-in advantages where we had relationships, but I think what we needed and what he was looking for, those two worlds collided.”
May noted the difficulty of finding the right pieces because of how the personalities have to blend together well, and that everyone has to be on the same page when it comes to goals and ambitions. Despite this, keeping several players from last year's main rotation has made the process easier for him and the coaching staff. He also had notable praise for Elliot Cadeau, who transferred from North Carolina after being their full-time starter last season.
“Our returners, the nucleus and the core of our team, Nimari Burnett, Roddy Gill, Will Cheddar, and LJ Cason. Those guys had amazing offseasons. They've become the stewards of our culture, the protectors of our culture. They're the translators in our locker room. So those guys, because we had that core, we could kind of build it around them and what we needed around them,” May said.
“To have four guys who are essentially in our top seven or eight last year return, it just gave us a nice starting point. And obviously, losing two seven-footers, we had to address the frontcourt issues, and we couldn't be more excited about the frontcourt guys we were able to add. and then Elliot Cadeau joined us from North Carolina, who we think is one of the best point guards in the country, and we felt like his skill set fit what we needed at that time.”
How 2025-26 schedule looks for Dusty May, Michigan
Dusty May's first season with the Wolverines wasn't easy as he looked to bring the program back into national relevance.
The Wolverines had the 10th-strongest schedule in the 2024-25 campaign, per KenPom. It featured 14 matchups against opponents ranked in the AP Top 25, specifically Purdue (three times), Michigan State (twice), Wisconsin (twice), Maryland (twice), Xavier, UCLA, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Auburn.
Michigan's non-conference schedule for this upcoming season will provide similar but still challenging matchups. They will play at TCU, host a game against Villanova, and have neutral-site contests against Wake Forest in Detroit on Nov. 11 and Duke in Washington D.C. on Feb. 21. Also, they will take part in the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas, facing San Diego State on Nov. 24 and Auburn on Nov. 25.
“Outside of Duke and the five Power Five games, our schedule night in, night out is one of the best in the country, and we did it for a number of reasons. First and foremost, our fans deserve it. They want to see Michigan play against the best and compete against the best,” May said.
“Also, when you play this schedule, the tournament committee has proven that if you play a competitive schedule, they're going to reward the effort. If a team is going one direction or the other team that tries to challenge themselves and do what's best for the game or the enterprise, typically it's rewarded, but also it's how you improve and you learn a lot about yourself.”
May believes in the overall talent he has on the Michigan roster. He understands that he and the coaching staff will need to figure out ways to keep the team healthy while getting wins against some of the best squads in the country. Doing that will allow them to have a favorable position in the postseason, an objective that the Wolverines won't back down from.
“We didn't shy away from any challenges. We're going to learn a lot about ourselves. There's going to be some bumps in the road, there's going to be some ups and downs, but we're excited about what this team could be, and the schedule was a big part of that, because we know it's going to be a challenge,” he said.
“We have extremely high expectations, but we're not sitting here daily thinking about those outcomes. We're simply trying to be the best we can be today and figure out a great plan for tomorrow and so on.”
Michigan, who earned seventh spot on the preseason AP Top 25 poll, will begin their season at home. They host two matchups, with the first being against Oakland on Nov. 3 at 8:30 p.m. ET and the second against Wake Forest on Nov. 11 at 6:30 p.m. ET.
