Michigan Basketball Assistant Blasts 'Nonsense' Tampering Claims

The Michigan Wolverines claimed its second national title in men's basketball program history after defeating the UConn Huskies on Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Despite head coach Dusty May's ability to construct a roster that gelled to near perfection, with a mix of both returning players and four major impact transfers, some unfounded narratives have formed, mainly from rival fanbases, in attempt to discredit the Wolverines' accomplishments this season.

One of the claims that many floated around on social media is that the Wolverines simply "bought" their way to a national title with NIL.

While it's very much true Michigan has some of the best resources in the nation, the Wolverines spent in the same ballpark as several other programs that either didn't advance past the Sweet 16 or didn't even make it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Michigan, like many other schools, used the resources it had at its disposal to invest in its basketball program, but clearly used them the most productively considering the final result.

The narrative that Michigan flat out outspent every other program in college basketball to invest in its roster was completely false.

Another narrative that has been sparked through social media once opposing fans started to realize how good the Wolverines could be, were allegations that May and the staff tampered to this past offseason to recruit players to their roster.

Michigan assistant coach Mike Boynton spoke to CBS Sports' Matt Norlander about the tampering allegations and fired back at those trying to bring down coach May.

Boynton shoots down tampering allegations and defends coach May

In the interview with Norlander, Boynton didn't hold back when addressing unfounded tampering allegations that have been thrown around on social media.

"It's nonsense. I wish people would just write the truth. People are fairly envious of Dusty, and it's because we're doing this (winning)," Boynton said.

After Michigan won the national title, Boynton stood firm about defending May during the celebration.

"People just finding a reason to bring down what's a pretty remarkable dude, because there's really nothing else to get him on," Boynton said. "He's pretty open, he talks to everybody, he works his ass off. He's been successful. And so the only thing is this, when the hate don't work, they start telling lies."

One of the popular, but again, unfounded claims going around social media was an allegation of tampering with one of the most prominent players in the Big Ten and college basketball.

"People making up just complete bull***t lies about the guys we were trying to supposedly tamper with, like (Purdue guard) Braden Smith," said Boynton. "The narrative was we were trying to recruit Braden Smith at the Big Ten Tournament last year. I'll say this: If we could recruit Braden Smith and he went into the portal, we would, but we couldn't recruit Braden Smith because you cannot get juniors into school at Michigan. And people just ran with it. They still run with it. It's irresponsible. It's sad, but because it's a high enough profile name that it would draw attention, people are just lazy and go with it."

Michigan asst Mike Boynton didn't hold back talking to @CBSSports about allegations of player tampering in the past year.

"It's nonsense. I wish people would just write the truth. People are fairly envious of Dusty, and it's because we're doing this."

Then he went even harder⤵️ pic.twitter.com/0ZYdCKAVJe
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) April 7, 2026