Michigan To Hire Florida Atlantics Dusty May As Head Basketball Coach

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Michigan reportedly hiring Dusty May. I know nothing about the guy.

[MWmetalhead]

His team reached the Final Four against very long odds a year ago (one of the bigger Cinderella stories in recent memory) and shit the bed at the end of regulation against Northwestern yesterday, blowing what should've been a win. Bill Raftery was flabbergasted on the telecast.

Decent hire but not a great one. He began his coaching career as an assistant at EMU in 2005-2006 of all places! (Not counting his time as a student assistant at Indiana.)

Before arriving at FAU, he was an assistant coach at Florida from the 2015 through 2017 seasons.

More info:
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/coll ... 082813007/

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/co ... may-1.html

[Matt]

Honestly, I have no complaints. We beat out Louisville for him. The last time we went head to head with Louisville, they ended up with Pitino.

[Bull Shannon]

As an MSU fan, I genuinely hope he does well for UofM. Our rivalry is at its best and most enjoyable when both teams are equally competitive (in all sports).

[craig11152]

Dusty May sounds like a country singer or a pole dancer.

[MWmetalhead]

I've never met a woman named Dusty, and I hope I never do! LOL

[Honeyman]

I'm not sure on the hire. This has an Andy Enfield to USC feel to it. I like the guy, but seems like he really underachievied this year with the same team that got to the FF last year.

BTW MW, Dusty Street was a great female DJ who recently passed away. Dusty Springfield?

[Matt]

May took over for former Piston Michael Curry, who had back-to-back 6-12 conference records, and immediately posted the best Florida Atlantic team ever, per Kenpom. After idling around .500 the next two years he posted a 19-15, 11-7 CUSA season that was #129 to Kenpom. May explained this lull on a Rich Eisen Show appearance embedded below: he inherited three players and imported a bunch of grad transfers in year one, so he had to kind of start over in year two.

Then, the blowup. FAU posted a 35-4 season, beating Florida in the nonconference and easily winning a very good edition of CUSA with two other top-50 teams (UAB and North Texas). They won the CUSA tournament with three straight blowouts, edged by Kenpom #20 Memphis in the first round of the tournament, got lucky to draw Fairleigh Dickinson after the second 16-vs-1 upset ever, and then beat #6 Tennessee and #21 Kansas State to reach the Final Four, where they lost to #14 San Diego State by one point.

[MWmetalhead]

Oh gawd - Michael Curry. That's a name I wasn't expecting to see!

Sounds like he was every bit as terrible of a coach at the collegiate level as the NBA.

[MWmetalhead]

Nearly identical columns from Wojo at the News and Rainer at the Freep published hours apart trying to prop up Warde.

The Mel Pearson fiasco receives only a couple sentences in each column.

Both provide almost identical detail of John Beilein's involvement in recruiting Dusty.

Both columns completely fail to mention Warde's ridiculous 3-game suspension of Harbaugh at the start of the 2023 football season and completely absolve Warde of any responsibility as to Harbaugh's decision to bolt to the NFL.

Both columns also conveniently overlook the fact Beilein left U-M under Warde's watch.

Are they both regurgitating talking points spoon fed to them by the U-M athletic department PR machine? Or did Rainer Sabin "borrow" (*ahem*) a lot of content from Wojo's piece?

The timeliness of the hire of Dusty was very good and the fact U-M beat out Louisville for his services is good, but let's not pretend this erases all of Warde's sins or shortcomings of the past.

[Honeyman]

Both columns also fail to mention:

1) He hired Juwan

2) He let basketball players drunk drive his cars

3) He kept a gun-toting felon on the team with no punishment

4) He looked the other way while his football team cheated their asses off.

5) He tried to hide the fact his team physician abused players for decades

6) He kept the hockey coach on while he ducked games, lied about covid, and had his players lie.