LAS VEGAS — Dusty May breaks from watching film on Sunday afternoon when a visitor stops by Michigan’s temporary headquarters inside a ballroom at the Park MGM Hotel. May has been awake since about 3:30 a.m., when he whispered to ask his wife if it was OK if he opened his laptop and started watching film of San Diego State, Michigan’s first opponent in the Players Era Festival.
“We’re on the verge of being good,” the Michigan coach tells his visitor. “Three days, see where we are.”
The seventh-ranked Wolverines had an uneven start to the season. They scored a school-record 69 points in the first half of a season-opening 121-78 win over Oakland. But the good vibes faded a week later, after grinding out a 1-point overtime win over Wake Forest and a 4-point road win over TCU — neither of whom were projected NCAA Tournament teams entering the season — in the span of four days. As other top-10 teams like Purdue, Duke and Arizona scored early-season wins over other heavyweights, Michigan was a little under the radar, slow to find its form.
“Even when we were winning, it felt like we were losing,” fifth-year guard Nimari Burnett said, “because we weren’t playing to our capabilities.”
But May is never one to panic, and he saw progress. He emphasized winning the catch on every pass. The team’s turnover problem — 39 combined against Wake Forest and TCU — began to disappear in practice. May had made a calculated gamble in the preseason to start a jumbo lineup of power forward Yaxel Lendeborg (6-foot-9), center Morez Johnson Jr. (6-foot-9) and center Aday Mara (7-foot-3), and the tri-towers had barely practiced together because of preseason injuries to Johnson and Mara. They needed reps together and May had to figure out ways to create space.
“If we just have space,” he said, “we’re not going to turn it over.”
With one game in 10 days between TCU and the Players Era, the Wolverines had time to get comfortable. Now they just needed confidence. So on Monday night, as his team warmed up for San Diego State, May went through his pregame ritual alone in the locker room, diagramming the opening offensive set and first out-of-bounds play on the whiteboard, along with three offensive and defensive keys. May finished his pregame prep, as he often does, by writing a message in the bottom right corner of the whiteboard.
ON THE VERGE OF A BREAKTHROUGH.
In the week that followed, it came. A 94-54 win over San Diego State, one of the best defensive programs in the country. Somehow, Michigan one-upped that performance a night later against No. 21 Auburn, burying 14 3-pointers and turning it over only nine times in a 102-72 win that guaranteed it a spot in Wednesday night’s Players Era championship.
Then came Wednesday, a magnum opus. Michigan’s 101-61 win over No. 12 Gonzaga was a statement to the rest of the sport: The Wolverines should be on your short list of national championship contenders. Michigan came to Las Vegas for Feast Week, demolished the competition, pocketed an additional $1 million as Players Era champion and left as the new betting favorite to win it all.
At 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, about 25 hours before tipoff against Gonzaga, May exited Michelob Ultra Arena and made the 1.1-mile walk back to the team hotel with assistant coach Mike Boynton, a police escort from back home in Ann Arbor … and me, granted all-access for a behind-the-scenes look at Michigan’s program.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside of a breakthrough.
Choosing the bus over the walk back to the hotel, assistant coach Justin Joyner rushed to start watching tape of Gonzaga.
Joyner spent seven seasons at Saint Mary’s, the Zags’ WCC rival, before joining Michigan last spring to help run the defense. Joyner had learned under Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett, one of the best defensive coaches in the country, and had faced Gonzaga 20 times.
“Being at St. Mary’s, all you think about is beating Gonzaga,” Joyner said. “That’s the bar for us. And so naturally, when I think about our defense and how we guard the best teams, my mind goes to Gonzaga.”
Joyner had to adjust how he thought about defense when he got to Michigan because May runs a switch-heavy scheme — meaning defenders trade off who they’re guarding to combat screens — while the Gaels do not switch anything.
Gonzaga is one of the best post-up teams in the country every season. Like Michigan, the Zags start two centers — Graham Ike and Braden Huff — and everything is built around feeding them in the post. That’s why Joyner is kicking around the idea of not switching Johnson when he’s in the game with Mara, so Michigan’s fives are always matched up against Huff and Ike. The problem with that idea? Michigan only practiced it a handful of times this summer and struggled in the three instances it tried it last season.
Joyner, though, is convinced that’s the solution — strategically, but also because it could catch Gonzaga off guard. Plus, it’ll mean Michigan doesn’t need to send a double team in the post, which is often how Gonzaga gets its best 3-point looks.
Forty-five minutes after leaving Michelob Ultra Arena, May re-enters Michigan’s designated ballroom and Joyner presents his idea.
“If you’re Mark Few,” May asks, referring to the Gonzaga coach, “what do you want us to do?”
“He wants us to switch,” Joyner says.
May sits to eat chicken wings, with queso as his dipping sauce, before plugging in his laptop and sitting on the floor to start his film study.
Michigan head coach Dusty May (right) and his staff worked long, late hours from their ballroom HQ in Las Vegas all week. (C.J. Moore / The Athletic)
“Is Few’s press conference up?” he asks. When May got his first assistant job at Eastern Michigan in 2005, he listened to opposing coaches’ radio shows to scout their teams. The habit never died; he also listens to news conferences these days in case he can learn something he didn’t know.
As players start to trickle in for film at 10:30 p.m., May stands at a round table and discusses Gonzaga with his assistants, while San Diego State versus Oregon plays in the background. The Aztecs are ahead by double digits, and assistant Brandon Gilbert says Michigan might get a “little bump” in its ranking at KenPom.com, the computer model famous in analytic circles. “You guys seen the Shane Gillis skit on SNL?” May jokes. “CouplaBeers and a lil bump.”
Sitting one table over, Michigan’s graduate assistants and managers tell May that Oscar Goodman, Michigan’s redshirt freshman from New Zealand, made “SportsCenter’s” Top 10 plays for a late-game dunk against Auburn that had the starters going wild on the bench.
“C’mon!” May says.
Later, he watches the replay on repeat because he loves the bench’s reaction. Goodman, it turns out, didn’t even know what “SportsCenter’s” Top 10 was.
After Joyner leads a 20-minute film session, he starts watching the 2023 WCC final where Saint Mary’s beat Gonzaga, 69-60. May asks Joyner to come sit next to him on the floor to review a few things.
“JJ to the principal’s office,” assistant Kyle Church announces.
After their visit, May is back on his feet. For another 75 minutes, the staff dives into tape like it’s prepping for a test. Joyner asks a manager to get him film of the 2019 WCC title game, when St. Mary’s held Gonzaga to just 47 points. (The next morning, coaches joke the managers probably needed a VHS converter.) Around midnight, after May finishes watching the bulk of Gonzaga’s first two Players Era wins, he calls it quits and retreats to his room.
By morning, Joyner is even more convinced the no-switches scheme will work — so much so that he sends a manager to a local FedEx to print signs that Michigan’s staff can hold up to alert players to which coverage they’re in. May trusts Joyner’s judgement.
“We’re starting,” May says, “on third base.”
Chatter bounces off the walls of Michigan’s meeting room Wednesday morning as players simulate guarding Gonzaga on a makeshift carpeted court, lined off with thin white tape. Boynton stops the action when he cannot hear Mara — the soft-spoken Spanish center who, after two years of yo-yoing in and out of UCLA’s lineup, is finding his confidence and establishing himself as the best rim protector in the sport.
One reason Michigan’s staff feels so good about its chances is its trio of bigs, who have the length and muscle to prevent Gonzaga’s centers from burying them in the paint, like they’ve done to other opponents all year. Joyner stresses preventing Huff and Ike from turning over their right shoulder and getting to their left hand.
“A lot of respect for them,” Joyner tells the Wolverines, after sharing that Gonzaga has won more games over the last decade than any program in college basketball. “They’ve won at a high level — but absolutely zero fear. We have the horses. We have the team to win this game.”
The Michigan players go through a walkthrough Wednesday morning before facing Gonzaga. (C.J. Moore / The Athletic)
Nearly every minute of prep is spent on defending the Zags. Finally, during the morning scout, May goes through the plan for attacking Gonzaga’s ball screen coverages.
“Take one minute to process those three things,” he says of the different coverage solutions, “and then we’ll turn the page to defense.”
May’s coaching has been guided by the research of Doug Lemov, a former teacher and principal who has authored multiple books on the science of teaching. Lemov says it’s important to stop and let the information sink in, so it is more likely to get stored in a person’s long-term memory.
May’s information is easily digestible. The Wolverines thrive by keeping things simple. They push the ball at every opportunity, space out and play to advantages. For a team with seven newcomers, they’ve blended quickly because of a willingness to share the ball.
Through their first six games, the Wolverines assisted on 57.7 percent of their made baskets, a top-100 rate nationally. Lendeborg, a UAB transfer who could have been a first-round pick in last June’s NBA Draft, attempts just 20.5 percent of the team’s shots when he’s on the floor, a low usage rate for a team’s star. Michigan’s usage rates are almost equal across the rotation.
“This is the most ego-less team I’ve ever played on in my life,” junior point guard Elliot Cadeau, who transferred from North Carolina, says hours before tip-off against Gonzaga. “You can’t point at any single player and show a selfish play that they made this whole tournament.”
The Wolverines play with freedom and without fear of getting chastised for shooting their shot. May delivers information quickly — like a podcast on 2x speed — but he coaches with a resting heart rate. Even when he disagrees with the officials, he’s laughing with them a minute later.
Cadeau, meanwhile, is Michigan’s shot of espresso. He vocalizes the Wolverines’ burning desire to annihilate opponents from start to finish. On a team of relative giants, the 6-foot guard’s voice is the soundtrack of Michigan’s first two days in Vegas, reminding teammates to max out the score differential to ensure their spot in Wednesday’s championship — and for a shot at $1 million.
“Elliot gives us a swag,” May says, “like an irrational confidence, nobody can mess with us.”
Elliot Cadeau provides a spark for Michigan and had 13 assists in 24 minutes against Gonzaga. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
On Wednesday afternoon, Cadeau lowers his headphones to share his mindset heading into the Gonzaga game. He says he believes the Wolverines can “tap into another level,” and he’s eager to finally get challenged in this tournament.
“We don’t really like blowout wins,” Cadeau says. “We like close games better because it’s more fun.”
Think they’ll give you one tonight?
“Hopefully.”
In the preseason, Michigan came up with a list of words to describe who it was and wanted to be this season. They’re listed alphabetically on a screen inside the locker room, and sixth on the list is “dogs.”
May, who may be college basketball’s closest thing to a Ted Lasso, fills out the whiteboard as the Wolverines stretch in a hallway in the final minutes of the third-place game. Then he finishes with a new message in the bottom right corner:
STAKES ARE HIGH. BE PREPARED & DOGS WITH YOU.
The Wolverines return to the locker room, where May gives them their final instructions and a reminder.
“As a staff, none of us have ever been number one in any major category in all of college basketball. We are today,” May says. (The Wolverines enter the game No. 1 in adjusted defensive efficiency.) “Let’s be the absolute best every single frame of this game, and we’ll leave here tonight with more separation, more margin. We all know the stakes are high, right, fellas? Are we prepared? Hell yeah. Do we have some dogs in the room?”
“Doggggs!” the players shout back, doing their best Diamond Dogs impression: ruff, ruff, ruff. “We trust and lean on each other, and we go get it done as a group, men.”
Frame by frame, the Wolverines are almost perfect from the tip. May’s first play, a set for Lendeborg, results in a 3. The Zags come up empty on five of their first six trips, with Ike and Huff not getting one shot off from the post.
Yaxel Lendeborg gets the scoring started 🔥@umichbball and @ZagMBB battle for the @Players_Era Championship NOW on TNT 📺 pic.twitter.com/7P05pBJ550
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) November 27, 2025
“Maintain our edge defensively,” May tells the Wolverines at the first media timeout.
The lead balloons — from 10 at the first media timeout, to 15 a few minutes later when Mara dunks and pulls up on the rim, the excitement overtaking him. He gets hit with a technical. Six and a half minutes later, Johnson throws Ike to the floor while trying to box out and is tagged with a flagrant 1, but the two errors are barely speed bumps.
“Control what we can control,” May tells his team after Johnson’s flagrant.
There’s some minor slippage late in the half when Gonzaga gets a few transition opportunities, but in the final minute, Lendeborg gets a steal and the bench collectively yells “money” — their code word for trying to get off a quick shot to generate a two-for-one. Lendeborg pitches ahead to Burnett, who fires off a deep 3 from the left wing.
Money.
Huff misses a shot on the other end, and Burnett grabs the rebound with six seconds left. Then he passes ahead to Cadeau, who races down the floor and gets fouled on a layup try with 3.8 seconds left. “Too fast,” May jokes.
Cadeau misses the free throws, but Gonzaga, the No. 1 team at KenPom entering the game, heads to the locker room trailing Michigan by a score that does not seem real: Michigan 53, Gonzaga 29. It’s Gonzaga’s worst halftime deficit since Jan. 2007, four months after Michigan freshman Trey McKenney was born.
Cadeau, however, is not satisfied.
“Twenty is not enough,” he says, as the Wolverines wait for May and the coaches to join them in the locker room. “We need to beat them by 40, bro. Million dollars on the line, how can they outrun us?”
May tells his team to never play to the scoreboard; they play to a standard, and he echoes Cadeau’s message as soon as he enters the locker room. He had just watched a cutup of the Zags shooting three wide-open transition 3s — all misses — and five fast-break layups.
“If we want to be the best defensive team in the country,” he says in his halftime speech, “our transition defense has to be significantly better than that.”
Gonzaga scores two buckets in transition in the second half, but it’s not because of a lack of hustle. The standard is upheld. Every starter is pulled with 5:37 left, Michigan ahead 93-49.
ARE YOU KIDDING!? 😱 @umichbball pic.twitter.com/SNkj4zDHpR
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) November 27, 2025
The final score — 101-61 — is the largest margin of defeat in Few’s 902-game Gonzaga career. The Wolverines are the first team in Associated Press Top 25 poll history (dating back to 1948-49) to beat consecutive ranked opponents by 30-plus.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Joyner says.
The Michigan players collect water bottles and wait to give May a celebratory bath. Will Tschetter, the elder statesman, wisely has Mara grab him some towels so he can place them over the basketball by the entry of the locker room that the players are all supposed to sign afterward.
“It’s timmmmme,” Tschetter informs them when Gilbert pokes his head in to let them know May is coming.
After the bath, May stands in the middle of the circle and has one final message.
“Great freaking effort, man,” he says. “To see how much you guys are enjoying each other and how much you appreciate the contributions from everyone in the circle. Fellas, I’m almost 50 years old, and it’s an honor to be a part of the team every day and to be part of this team with this group of people. A higher power has brought us all here together to do something great. Let’s stay about the work, stay about helping each other, and block out all the noise, and just keep getting better and better and better. This is just scratching the surface for us, fellas. This can’t be the pinnacle of our season. This has to be the starting point.
“All about the work. All about each other. And then we blink, and you’ll enjoy where we are, fellas.”
Once his media responsibilities were finished and May finally got a chance to rest in the coaches’ locker room, a memory popped into his head. It was mid-November of 2022, when his previous school, Florida Atlantic, hosted Detroit Mercy in its fifth game of its season. FAU won that night by 21, moving to 4-1, and May knew he had a pretty good team. Maybe even a contender for a conference title.
Afterward, Detroit Mercy coach Mike Davis — who led Indiana to the 2002 national championship game the year after Bob Knight was fired — entered the opposing locker room. Davis had once been May’s boss. May used to drive Davis around on recruiting trips when Davis was an Indiana assistant and May a manager. Years later, he worked for Davis as an assistant at UAB.
“You guys don’t understand what you have going on here,” Davis told the Owls. “I’ve seen it. I’ve done it, and you have it, and now it’s a matter of, will you still have it at the end of the year?”
Davis said there were about four or five “real basketball teams” in the country. Most were going to splinter apart because of outside noise or some other factor. He said if FAU didn’t let that happen, it had a chance at making the Final Four.
May remembers making eye contact with one of his players, Giancarlo Rosado. “He’s looking at me, like, this dude’s nuts,” May remembers. “The Final Four?”
Four months and 10 days later, at Madison Square Garden, FAU beat Kansas State to advance to the Final Four. As soon as the Owls reached the locker room, former FAU guard Nick Boyd told May: “FaceTime Coach Davis.”
“He believed in us way before we believed in us,” May says.
The reason for telling the story doesn’t need to be stated. May now knows what it looks like.
Chance of rain in the locker room pic.twitter.com/ATDwsJ46bx
— Michigan Men’s Basketball (@umichbball) November 27, 2025
He didn’t know this was coming. Only that the Wolverines were, as he’d said three days earlier, on the verge of being good.
“It’s kind of like seeing your kids grow,” he says. “Someone comes to see you at Christmas. They say, ‘Wow, he’s gotten tall.’ You see them every day.”
The Wolverines got very tall in Vegas. They showed the potential to end the year at the Final Four in Indianapolis, just down the road from where May grew up in Bloomington.
May opens the arena door to the Vegas night, making one last walk back to the team hotel during this magical week. I pull up KenPom on my phone. The Wolverines are now No. 1 there — the first time in school history – by a wide margin.
“That’s unbelievable,” May says. “Golly.”
On Monday, it’s possible the Wolverines could rise to No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time since 2013. And they’ll go from feeling disrespected to everyone hyping them. May has lived that life too, in the year following FAU’s Final Four season, when he returned most of his core and the expectation was to be one of the best teams in the country.
“It’s a good hard,” May says of the expectations. “I’ll take that.”
May goes on these walks in part because he doesn’t work out on game days and it’s a chance to get some steps and fresh air, but it’s also a chance to breathe and clear his head until the next challenge.
The Wolverines will return to Ann Arbor with heavier pockets, but May believes he has a strong veteran presence in the locker room and the unselfishness and sacrifice that got them here will continue.
“They’re all hearing the same thing,” he says. “They’re hearing it — shoot more, score more — everyone is hearing it. Ninety percent of this tournament, they’re all hearing the same thing. It’s just a matter of who’s mature enough and who’s self-aware enough to know the truth.”
