Michigan Basketball: Dusty May talks Auburn, Tre Donaldson revenge game, and much more ahead of Sweet 16

Ahead of the Sweet 16 game against Auburn, Michigan men's head coach Dusty May spoke with the media. He was asked about the Tigers, NIL and the transfer portal, Tre Donaldson against his former team -- and much more. Here's everything May said during his Thursday press conference.

Question: Three guys that were on your Florida Atlantic team are playing in the Sweet 16 on various teams. First of all, I'm curious, sort of what that says about sort of the enduring nature of that run for you and also with the talk that, hey, Cinderella dead, you being only a couple years removed from that. Are you buying into the NIL, the portal has killed the Cinderella run?

Answer: I really enjoyed watching our entire team separated, when you see the number of guys, we knew it in practice our backups were really, really good. Obviously Alijah and Nelly and Vlad they're such competitors that impact winning and make those around them better. Just them being in new situations it's been fun to watch. We stay in close contact and we're in group chats and follow each other closely. So it's been a lot of fun.

The second part, I don't think Cinderella is dead. I don't think she's going to be making visits as frequently as she did before. I look at it like this, we lost a few players at FAU early on. One left before we thought he was an All-League player. We're obviously disappointed everyone was always upset. My response is, hey, we get paid to coach basketball, to do the best we can. If they decide to leave, we have to support them.

Now, what we have to do a better job of is making sure we keep these guys long enough to be All-Conference. If they decide to leave, then that's part of it. But we can't leave before they become All-Conference players.

I think it's just a group that emerges out of nowhere. Even in our case, we had the year before we were really good. We had injuries. We lost games we shouldn't have lost. So that kept our guys probably from being recruited as aggressively because we just weren't on the same stage. So a lot went into that, a lot of layers to it.

I don't think Cinderella is dead, especially when we see how good of basketball is being played at the Division II level. Josh Schertz is a close friend. Ben McCollum is a good friend. Jim Crutchfield down at Nova. Those guys move up, and they're good basketball players. So I think it's just going to look different.

Q. The way they use Broome offensively, Auburn, can you talk about how unique it is and how you have to be prepared defensively without giving away state secrets?

I think we're all aware at how lethal he is on the block and getting to where he wants to get to and drawing fouls. He's added a 3-point shot, and then he's a very good passer, and he kind of quarterbacks their offense. So he's a challenge on a number of levels.

We actually recruited Johni aggressively at FAU, and there were four big guys the same year at South Florida, and at that time we couldn't oversign. Giancarlo Rosado committed before Broome. We begged him to wait until the spring, but he wanted to go and get it over with so he committed to Morehead State. I can't imagine if he was on our FAU team as well.

He's a good basketball player. He's always been a guy that's just produced. He's been effective. Even before everyone knew who he was, he was getting double-doubles every night against high level players.

We've just got to make everything tough. We've got to challenge his catches, we've got to push him off a step or two, just make life difficult for him.

Q. Dusty, last time you lost a game, obviously an infamous game or famous game, whatever, against Michigan State. You said after there that you have to get to that level of toughness and culture and everything else. You haven't lost since then. What changed so quickly after that?

Renewed commitment by our players to look ourselves in the mirror and realize we have to do this, this, and this to be better. Credit the staff, they challenged our guys in practice, and our players responded. We changed our -- and granted, we had five games in 14 days, so we really weren't practicing. We were getting a little bit loose. We were getting away from what made us us, but we felt like we've kind of just got to get through this stretch.

We felt like once that happened, we had a week to practice, we had a week to regroup, refocus. When you have good players that care about each other, they want to do better, usually if you just point them in the right direction, they go with it. And they embraced the physical toughness -- the things we worked on in practice, they embraced it, and therefore they made a jump.

I think just the rest also helped, just not having so many games.

Q. Coach, you talked about maybe you guys focused a little bit too much on the regular season title back then. But now under seeded, the edge that you talked about coming into last week, do you feel like this team plays a little bit better with that chip on its shoulder as an underdog?

Probably. When you look at where we all came from, none of us were in the McDonald's game, none of us were in the up-and-coming coaches list. Yeah, probably, it's probably just who we are. We have a chip on our shoulder.

Maybe because of our positioning, where we were, maybe we lost that chip, I don't know. It's obviously resulting, but any time we don't win a championship, I'm going to look back and think I should have done this different, different, different. Maybe made those same decisions along the way.

Nonetheless, I think we have a group that embraces that chip on their shoulder and that underdog role.

Q. You have two guys that know how to beat Auburn maybe a little bit more than most people. Obviously you recruited Tre from there after two years at Auburn, and Danny just beat them in the NCAA Tournament last year with Yale. What is insight from both sides of the aisle from a guy that played there and a guy that beat them in a tournament setting kind of give you when you're preparing for such an elite opponent like Auburn?

Obviously Tre has a lot of insight with his teammates, with the system and all that. Coach Pearl is going to change his calls. They're going to have different names. It's going to be similar to every other scout.

As far as Danny knowing how to beat Auburn, if you play a team, if we could beat the Hawks 1 out of 100 times, it doesn't mean I know how to beat Quin Snyder and the Hawks.

Obviously Danny did say, hey, a couple times against the press, we tried to do. A couple times against this switch, we tried to do this. Really, really good insight.

At the end of the day, it still comes down to execution. I'm not sure any of us know how to beat Auburn other than play really, really good, sound, poised basketball for about 80 possessions hopefully.

Q. Tre's been a little touchy talking about his experience at Auburn with us at least. How has he been with you talking about his experience? Could there be a little bit more of that insight, this guy likes to go to his left in this situation, like that really inside intel that you can't get from a scouting report?

Yeah, but even the player that Tre shared minutes with last year is playing for Alabama right now. The personnel is different. Obviously we all know Johni Broome. He's got a little bit of insight on Baker and those guys, Mazara.

From my understanding, he's very appreciative of his Auburn experience. They won. It's got him to where he is now as a person. So, no, he's never been negative at all about BP or his teammates or anyone. I think it's just he needed a change, and that's not always unhealthy.

I said that the other day that I was in the transfer portal last year, a lot of these players in the transfer portal, sometimes change is healthy at different stages of your life. He just needed a fresh start, and he's found a place where he's been embraced, and he's had a bigger role.

He's certainly produced for us and made big shots and continued to grow. He's getting better day by day, week by week.

Interested in what else has changed during this hot streak for you guys. Turnovers, L.J. Cason has had a little more of a role. If you had to pinpoint a few things that sparked your guys late in the year, what would it be?

Obviously the turnovers. We've been much more consistent not turning the ball over. Our guards have done a better job -- I don't know the numbers in data, but my eyes tell me our guards have done a better job of defensive rebounding, which has helped our transition offense. We just look like a much more connected group.

I know really since the Michigan State game that you're referring to, since then, when I just sit down and look on the court, I feel like it's a group that just came together and they're trying to win. There's no -- there's no situations where he's trying to get this shot or he's trying to score, or he's trying to do this, or he's trying to do things he's not very good at.

When I watch us, it's five guys out doing whatever they can and their function to help the team win. That's it. I think every team has a stretch like that where everyone's consumed with one thing winning. Sometimes it's early. Sometimes it's late. Sometimes it's fleeting. But it's really nothing more than that right now.

I look at that and see our guys doing what they do really, really well organically and just trying to make it work.

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