INDIANAPOLIS — Monday’s NCAA Tournament championship game will not be Dusty May’s finale at Michigan.
May, whose 36-3, top-seeded Wolverines play Monday for the NCAA title against No. 2 seed UConn, has spent a week fielding questions about the vacant North Carolina coaching job. But May is off the board, sources told CBS Sports, after he communicated this weekend to all concerned parties that he’d be staying in Ann Arbor moving forward.
May, 49, is coaching in his second Final Four in four seasons’ time; he took FAU to the big stage in 2023 and lost on a last-second shot to San Diego State. His overall record is 189-82 (.697) in eight seasons. That kind of winning clip with two huge rebuilds is why May was on the short list of top candidates for the Tar Heels, in addition to Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, who announced his decision to stay with the Wildcats on Friday afternoon in the lead-up to Saturday’s national semifinal against May and the Wolverines.
After guiding Michigan to the title game in just his second season, sources said May was all too happy and excited to stay on because he’s proven in short order what is possible at the Big Ten program. He’s quickly brought the Wolverines back to prominence, owning a 63-13 record at U-M going into Monday’s night’s clash with the Huskies. Over the past 48 hours, May privately determined that there was no reason to chase a blue-blood job when he already was in command of something as coveted as Michigan.
When you’ve taken a school as prominent and powerful as Michigan to the final night of the season in just two years, what’s the point in leaving North Carolina to try and do the same thing? Proof of concept has already been established.
As for UNC and its athletic department, things are in a state of flux both with this weeks-long coaching search and with a change inbound at athletic director. Industry sources told CBS Sports there are some concerns about the state of UNC basketball and its momentum and infrastructure amid the costly Bill Belichick experiment in football. The program, while still one of the best jobs in the sport, doesn’t carry the irrefutable cachet it once did. As a result, UNC has effectively been turned down by May, Lloyd and Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger. None of the coaches were formally offered the job, but all were contacted as primary candidates and all removed their names from the search on varying timelines and for different reasons. (As did Celtics president Brad Stevens, though that was an initial pipe dream from the start.)
With Carolina’s search shifting yet again, there is a big name out there who might be possible … if the school is willing to wait at least one more week. Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, who won consecutive national championships with Florida in 2006 and 2007 and is a Naismith Hall of Famer, is at least open to the possibility of coaching North Carolina, sources said. But there is no guarantee as of this point that UNC would offer Donovan the job nor if Donovan would take it. Keep in mind, he could have another NBA opportunity in short order if his time with the Bulls is up at the end of the season.
Donovan isn’t engaging in any conversations about his future until the Bulls’ season ends oApril 12, one source added.
The college basketball transfer portal opens Tuesday, the day after the title game. If UNC wants to pursue a college coach and prioritize an active name over playing the waiting game with Donovan, the four names the school is now looking to talk with, per sources, are: Vanderbilt’s Mark Byington, Baylor’s Scott Drew, Texas Tech’s Grant McCasland and Iowa’s Ben McCollum. Drew is the winningest of the four (502 victories) and the only one who has won a Division I national title. McCollum won four D-II national titles and has the best career winning percentage (.806). Byington has flipped Vanderbilt immediately, though he recently announced a restructured contract that, per a source, now has a buyout more than of $10 million. McCasland is has made three straight NCAA Tournaments in his first three seasons at TTU and gone 74-31 in Lubbock.
