I don't think this is a real thing. Jeff Goodman asserted that May had received assurances that admissions wasn't going to be as much of a problem for him as it was for Juwan Howard, something that Sam Webb said he had not heard. My assumption is that this is a game of telephone several persons downwind of this conversation:

Sources say Beilein sat in on the first hour or so of the meeting between Manuel and May, answering a number of basketball specific questions about how he built his program, how he recruited, and how he dealt with admissions. It was a meaningful assist.

I doubt there has been a conversation between Santa Ono and the dean of LS&A about letting guys into school, unfortunately.

Staffers. Potential names from 24/7's Davis Moseley:

Got some interesting names to monitor in various staff roles:

LaVall Jordan, Bill Armstrong, Adam Howard, John Beilein.

— Davis Moseley (@DavisMoseley) March 24, 2024

Two of those names will be familiar. Adam Howard is a grad assistant at Indiana currently who knows May well; Indiana fans are bizarrely upset at the prospect of losing him because they credit him with a lot of the recruiting grunt work. Bill Armstrong is a wild name: he was the associate head coach at LSU until Will Wade got sent to Bolivia by the NCAA. He's cooling his heels at Link Academy—the school Tarris Reed was at—this year. If that came to fruition that would be your recruiting guy, I'd imagine. I'm skeptical it does.

[After THE JUMP: portal time]

Get ready to learn Spanish, buddy. This tidbit in an Athletic article from before last year's tournament is fascinating:

[May] had always loved the Spanish Liga ACB. “It’s much closer to the college game than the NBA,” he says. He was able to study those offenses like never before, even landing on Zooms with some of the league’s top coaches.

May added to his playbook and also identified some professional players who shared some similarities to his players, then figured out what type of actions they thrived in. For starting center Vladislav Goldin, he looked at how Fenerbahce utilized Jan Veselý in the pinch post. A lot of the ball-screen action Goldin is involved in is stolen right from the ACB.

May has recruited a lot of European players over his tenure at FAU; Goldin is Russian. This 24/7 article goes into more depth on that:

“It’s such a team brand of ball. There’s ball movement, player movement, there’s physicality. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed watching and always tried to steal pieces of,” May said. “It’s probably not as different from college, and the NBA as people say. It’s just stylistically something that our staff, we appreciate, we value and we definitely borrow things from.”

Off-ball movement is an advantage for any team, but its success against zone defenses separates the offense. Unlike the NBA, where most teams play man-to-man coverage, zone is a major part of college basketball defenses, even if it’s just a change of pace from their base defense.

“European basketball plays zone a lot, so it’s really an extension of college basketball,” said Davis, who’s now the head coach at Detroit Mercy.

Both articles go to great lengths to describe May as a guy who is constantly searching for new stuff to put in his offense.

A couple of portal names. Wisconsin's Connor Essegian hit the portal yesterday after a disappointing sophomore year. Essegian was an instant starter for Wisconsin as a freshman; he lit up Michigan for 24 and 23 points. This year his minutes evaporated:

In the season opener, Essegian was landed on and suffered a back injury just over five minutes into his season. The lingering effects of the back injury caused Essegian’s play to suffer, starting with glaring lapses defensively and eventually bleeding into his offensive game.

"We can't afford to let him play through it," Gard said of Essegian in mid-December. "The stakes are too high in terms of what this team wants to accomplish."

Essegian torching Michigan was particularly painful because the television broadcast kept putting up pictures of a ten-year-old Essegian at Crisler decked head-to-toe in Michigan gear. If May's interested it's likely to be mutual.

EMU's Tyson Acuff, who went to Cass, is also in the portal as a grad transfer. Acuff was a 30% usage guy with a 105 ORTG on a very bad team, so he could probably be relatively efficient if that usage was slashed. His younger brother is a big-timer in the 2025 class.

More vibes. Local high school coaches love May:

“He’s not one of those guys that’s going to be overwhelming with energy,” O’Connell said. “But he’s such a class guy, you just trust in him. There’s no doubt he’s going to be able to sell his program at Michigan. He treats everybody with so much respect.

“Everybody I talk to, every college coach I know, nothing but glowing remarks about Dusty. Everything was always so positive. He had to be one of the most popular people in the college game. Every assistant coach, every head coach, knows Dusty.”

He opened a lot of practices to them; I'd imagine the same will happen in Ann Arbor.

Spring items. Spring ball is underway and dubious information is starting to leak into the wider world. Sherrone Moore had a press conference; in it he named a few defensive players as early risers:

DJ Waller, who played a little bit last year, he's been awesome. He's been super impressive, super long, super athletic. He's going to be a phenomenal player. Jyaire Hill, call him 'Sug, he's phenomenal. He made two big plays yesterday, he's been awesome.

Defensive ends TJ Guy and Enow Etta also came in for praise, so pencil those guys into the two-deep. Meanwhile, CB2 is the biggest question mark on the defense for the second consecutive year—give or take who starts with Ernest Haussman at LB—so you have to take spring chatter about them in context. Waller was playing in the first half of games last year so there's at least a little meat on the bones.

Talent resumes entering. Brandon Naurato's first real class has a number of high-end talents in it. Scott Wheeler of the Athletic ranks incoming forwards Michael Hage (#14), Matvei Gridin (#37), and Christian Humphreys (#47). Aidan Park makes his honorable mentions list. Wheeler on Hage:

Hage is a natural center who has it all. He’s got pro size and skating, he’s got dual-threat skill as a shooter and passer, he’s naturally talented as a handler, he can create for himself or elevate a line, he plays hard, he stays on pucks, he battles, and he reads the game at an advanced level with an intelligent, studious approach to the way he maneuvers around the ice. I like him in puck control/protection. He's got detail and work ethic. He's also, I'm told, taller by an inch or two than his NHL Central Scouting listing, with room to fill out his lean and athletic frame after lost time in the gym. And he has driven and produced offensively to stamp himself as one of the USHL's best players despite there being little around him and after missing most of last season.

Etc.: FOX is going to broadcast the spring game. Like, actual FOX. Everyone hates Greg Sankey. Louisville getting weird in the aftermath of May to Michigan. Correction: staying weird. Mason Graham is not going to transfer to Ohio State, guys.