It wasn't long ago when Dusty May was earning his stripes as one of the youngest head coaches in college basketball. Fast forward to 2025, the Michigan head coach's expectations changed forever following his Final Four run with the Florida Atlantic Owls in 2023.
May's coaching adventure began in the late 1990s when he served as a student manager at Indiana under the late Bob Knight. What he learned from the legendary head coach gave him the pathway to be successful in the coaching world, embracing gigs as an assistant coach at Eastern Michigan, Murray State, UAB, Louisiana Tech, and Florida.
Then the Owls came calling. They hired him in 2018 to help change their direction after seven consecutive losing campaigns while yearning for their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2002. The first years there saw him go through plenty of ups and downs, but it helped him grow into the responsibilities he now had as he and the team didn't have to worry about the high expectations national contenders typically have.
“Fortunately, we were out of the spotlight, so you're able to grow, learn, develop, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, build, assess your processes and your systems, and continue to tweak and grow without having the pressure to simply kind of fall In line or become too risk averse, where you're just following and doing what everybody else is doing, because there could be criticism or there could be failure. We were never afraid of any of that,” May said in an interview with ClutchPoints.
His efforts proved to be working, even as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted college sports nationwide and required adjustments for the next half-decade. FAU finally had its first stretch of consecutive winning campaigns since entering Conference USA in 2013, showing the immense progress May was having to build the program into a national contender.
This was thanks to the core he built since he entered in 2018. It started when he got his first-ever FAU recruit in Michael Forrest as he later landed Alijah Martin, Johnell Davis, Vlad Goldin, Nick Boyd, Bryan Greenlee, Brandon Weatherspoon, and Giancarlo Rosado among several others.
Then the 2022-23 campaign happened. FAU started 1-1 after beating Lynn at home before losing to Ole Miss on the road. However, they ignited an explosion of a program-record 20 straight wins after stunning the Florida Gators on the road. This allowed them to finish with a 28-3 record (18-2 C-USA) in the regular season, winning the regular season title on their home court.
They continued that dominant stretch of success by winning the conference tournament, which turned out to be their last in Conference USA as they moved to the American Conference the following season. The Owls did not stop there, beating Memphis and Fairleigh Dickinson in the first two rounds before stunning SEC powerhouse Tennessee in the Sweet 16 and Big 12 squad Kansas State in the Elite Eight to reach their first-ever Final Four.
May was reminiscent of FAU's success in the NCAA Tournament that season, seeing how the Owls captivated a national audience throughout their historic run. He was also complementary of how it allowed him and the squad to build on that progress the following year, returning to the Big Dance for the second consecutive campaign.
“The fan engagement and then the Final Four, obviously that moment captivated me. Those moments captivated an audience, but we felt like the next year was just as important when building a fan base, because now they're captivated, and can you do it consistently? So that was probably the coolest part, to see how, in the second year after the Final Four, how our players were able to play in front in those environments, in front of those fans. It was a blast,” May said.
How Dusty May handled rise of expectations at FAU, Michigan
All of that success within a short amount of time immediately raised expectations on May. He earned recognition and accolades as one of the best coaches in college basketball while giving FAU their first-ever rankings in the AP Top 25 poll, seeing themselves go as high as No. 7 after stunning No. 4 Arizona in a double-overtime thriller in December 2023.
May didn't allow this to overwhelm him or take the opportunity for granted, pressuring himself to always do right by his players, staff and fans. This stayed the same even after he departed FAU for the Michigan Wolverines in March 2024, embracing the next chapter of his career as a head coach.
“Even early on, before we had any expectations at FAU, my pressure was to do a great job for the people that took a chance and hired me, (then-FAU President) Dr. [John] Kelly and (Athletic Director) Brian [White]. I applied pressure on myself to do a good job for them, and then also pressure myself to be prepared to help your players be the absolute best they could be on the court and off the court,” he said to ClutchPoints.
“I don't ever want to be the reason why we're not winning; I want to do my part in this whole equation and help our team function better. But my pressure is not for any of the outside accolades or because of the expectations of a job; My pressure is to internally do the absolute best job I can for those that I'm responsible for, the staff, the players, and then also for the fan base and all the people that care about the place we're representing, because ultimately, that's what we're doing. We're representing brands and a large group of people, and so we take a lot of pride and responsibility in that.”
If what FAU achieved in two years was a chapter, then what Michigan accomplished throughout its program history can be put together in a huge book. It has one national championship to its name in 1989, constantly reaching the NCAA Tournament as a powerhouse in the Big Ten. This was a challenge May understood to be huge, knowing the expectations will be higher than ever before in his second stop as a head coach.
The differences between Michigan and FAU
May noted key differences between the University of Michigan and FAU, specifically how the former is 20 years older than the state of Michigan and how the latter was a junior college in the 1960s and 1970s. He also pointed out the significant gap in the number of resources and connections that the two respective parties have.
“It's just two completely different worlds when you talk about alumni bases and whatnot, but in today's climate with the built-in advantages for certain schools, obviously, the love and passion that the people have for Michigan within their university is second to none, so we definitely embrace that,” he said.
“The day-to-day job isn't that much different. The responsibilities change; there's still more people that you have to connect with at this level. But as far as the basketball coaching piece and the recruiting side of it, it's not that much different. Obviously, we get to play a lot more home games, which is nice and now this year we'll have a bigger budget. I'm not sure how big our budget was last year, but our budget will be bigger than the mid majors this year, so we have a competitive advantage there.”
May's first season with the Wolverines was a success, leading them to a Big Ten tournament championship while having them reach the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament. However, he affirmed that he and his coaching staff are only getting started with what they want to achieve for the program.
“I still don't feel like we've arrived at all as a staff, like we're working diligently every single day to try to get better,” May said. “And as soon as you think you have any part of this game or job figured out, you get humbled really quickly with the coaches and the players, and the universities and athletic departments we have to compete against.”
