The Search

Michigan was dead silent until May was announced during a hockey game I was very mad about. This was a surprise to the basketball world, which widely expected May to get hired by Louisville—historically a top-20 job. John Beilein reportedly met with May, along with Warde Manuel, and was able to sell him on Michigan relative to a very good program.

This space has had a lot of Warde Manuel complaints over the last few years but I have to give it up here: they picked up the leading candidate of the cycle almost immediately after he was available and snaked the guy out from under Louisville. A+.

Now, about that candidate:

Background

Well, if you were looking for the exact opposite of a guy who had a 17-year NBA career, this is it: May's college career is 404 File Not Found. He was a student manager under Bobby Knight at Indiana, then went into various analyst roles his first few years after college before landing an assistant gig at Eastern Michigan. He quickly climbed the ladder, going from EMU to Murray State to UAB to Louisiana Tech. There he was retained by Mike White after he took over for Kerry Rupp and quickly became his right hand; he followed White to Florida.

May jumped to FAU after three years, and it's encouraging that his departure seemed to have a deleterious effect on White's tenure. After an NIT year one, Florida went to the Elite Eight in year two, finishing second in the SEC at 14-4. In year three they were 11-7 in the league and a six seed. Those teams ranked 5th and 22nd in Kenpom, respectively.

White's teams slowly deteriorated after May left. White never had a top 25 team again; after May left they went 26, 32, 41, and 59 before White was shown the door.

[After THE JUMP: resume, recruiting, analytics, the near future]

Resume

May's tenure at FAU is the final six dots here.

May's at Michigan largely because he took a program that had a total of two top 200 Kenpom finishes since 1997 and put up back-to-back top 50 years, with a Final Four run in 2023. It is difficult to overstate how blah Florida Atlantic has been for decades. Prior to May's arrival they had one bid in their D-1 history, which dates back to 1993. That was a 15 seed in 2002.

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.

Florida Atlantic ran it back this year and while they dropped off slightly, they beat Butler, A&M, Virginia Tech and Arizona in the nonconference schedule while moving up to the American. They got an eight seed in the tourney and lost to Northwestern in OT. May was clearly going to be somewhere else after this season, but it's worth noting that he was willing to come back this year, confident that FAU was not a flash in the pan. This was not an out-of-left field run by a team that got an easy draw; FAU beat three top-25 teams to reach the Final Four and was a buzzer-beater away from playing for the national title.

Meanwhile, the "took mid-major to Final Four" track record is pretty dang good:

What a terrible take. They were one shot away from the title game.

Here's EVERY mid-major Final Four coach since 2000:
Brad Stevens
Jim Larranaga
Porter Moser
Brian Dutcher
John Calipari
Tark
Kelvin Sampson
Mark Few
Rick Majerus
Gregg Marshall
Tom Crean
Shaka Smart
Bob Huggins

— BaylorBearer (@BaylorBearer) March 22, 2024

Jury's still out on Moser. Everyone else on that list is a very good basketball coach. Crean is probably the worst name on that list and he has two Big Ten titles at perennial also-ran Indiana.

Roster Construction

Perhaps the most impressive part of May's run at Florida Atlantic is how much of his roster was developed at FAU. This year's Owls are is #1 in Kenpom's "minutes continuity" stat, which measures how similar your playing rotation is to last year's. That might be expected since FAU went to the Final Four and everyone decided to run it back, but the team that went to the Final Four was 26th. May developed this team in Boca Raton.

Just three players in his rotation this year were transfers, and May can take a large part of the credit for two of them. Center Vladislav Goldin left Texas Tech after a freshman year where he barely played; over the last three years he's evolved from a middling rotation guy (18 MPG, 109 ORTG, 21% usage) to a legit star (24 MPG, 126 ORTG, 26% usage). Brian Greenlee also barely played in his one year at Minnesota; he's not a great offensive player but has been a four-year starter for a steadily improving team.

Guard Jalen Gaffney is the only player May had during this run who was a plug and play transfer. He came over after three years at UConn where he was a rotation guy on a couple of top-25 UConn teams. And May did not exactly rely on Gaffney: unusually for a down-transfer, his usage plummeted. He's been at 13% in his two years at FAU.

The rest of this roster came to FAU out of high school.

Recruiting

Ask again later. At FAU's level recruiting rankings more or less don't exist. Johnell Davis, FAU's star, was not ranked by 247. Only a couple high school recruits on the roster actually drew a 247 ranking. White's first two classes at Florida consisted of a four-man class ranking between 116 and 203 on 247 that ranked #21 nationally and a three-man class with #20 Andrew Nembhard, #82 Keyontae Johnson, and #107 Noah Locke that was 19th. (Variable class sizes make overall recruiting class rankings nearly meaningless in basketball.) Nembhard was at Montverde and Johnson at Oak Hill, so May has some experience going after big recruits at basketball factory high schools. Locke, meanwhile, is a guy Florida yoinked away from one John Beilein—Locke visited Flordia two weeks after a Michigan visit and committed a few days later.

One signal we do have is May's ability to grab Gaffney out of the portal. A guy who'd been a rotation piece for a top-25 team was likely in high demand at the mid-major level, and May was able to grab him coming off a 19-15 season that was an improvement for FAU but not exactly indicative of a pending Final Four run.

Also, this can't hurt:

Recruiting note: Dusty May, Eastern Greene HS graduate and former IU manager, will be active recruiting the state of Indiana.

May had Gary native Nelly Davis on his 2023 Florida Atlantic Final Four team, is well-connected and well-respected in Indiana. https://t.co/sxeRlgtwSS

— Jeff Rabjohns (@JeffRabjohns) March 24, 2024

His rapid tour of Michigan, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida as an assistant will hopefully mean he's got a diverse set of connections.

Vibes

May with Rich Eisen last year:

Here's some video of May teaching closeouts if you want a feel for what he's like:

FAU head coach Dusty May teaches his preferred technique for closeouts 1 pass away in a recent presentation where he covers FAU's Defensive Concepts

Watch the full video from the FABC clinic now:
https://t.co/2maQj61eoM pic.twitter.com/ekC6jasbkq

— Coaching U (@Coaching_U) March 20, 2024

I haven't seen anyone say anything remotely negative about him personally; instead, the opposite:

On a personal note, Dusty May was one of the first coaches — he might’ve been the first — that made me feel welcomed in media.

Nothing was ever a dumb question. No interview was too minor. He always made time.

Congratulations to @CoachDustyMay and his family. They deserve it. https://t.co/FQMNQd2P7Y

— Kevin Fielder (@RivalsFielder) March 24, 2024

Dusty May is a class act and tremendous coach. What he did to elevate Florida Atlantic's basketball team, which then directly had a huge impact on the university, is impressive to see. He's laid a strong foundation for the next coach that will come in. https://t.co/RZaoDWYNuj

— Mid-Major Basketball (@midmajorball) March 24, 2024

When Matt Norlander asked coaches in the tourney who their favorite artists are, he responded with "Rod Wave," drawing disbelief:

Going on @dpshow in 30 minutes. Dusty May has sent this text for all those who have doubted his love of Rod Wave.

He also tells CBS Sports: “I support Hubert.” https://t.co/uVMsn82bin pic.twitter.com/akzi0O2p7r

— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 20, 2024

I do not know who Rod Wave is. I also do not know who "Lil Durk"—Hubert Davis's pick—is.

Here is a small child being serenaded by the FAU locker room:

Sad to see character of this FAU team questioned. I have seen its true merit. My nephew is a fan. On his birthday, Coach May waved him into the locker where the team cheered, sang, presented him a signed card. They were all genuinely happy to make his moment. This is fau… pic.twitter.com/KvSjRDq1VJ

— GatorBrent (@gator_brent) March 20, 2023

I'd say the vibes are good.

What To Expect

May's teams have some fingerprints you can glean from the statistics:

• Lots of made threes. Not quite Beilein level but this is the first year of May's six at FAU that the Owls have not been in the top 100 in three-pointers attempted. They were top 100 in 3P% three of the last four years, backsliding to 121 this year.
• Lots of made twos. Top 50 the last three years.
• Lots of good shots. The last two years FAU was 98th percentile in the proportion of catch and shoot opportunities that Synergy filed as "unguarded." The previous two: 79th and 95th. Even the pre-breakout FAU teams took a ton of open shots.
• Relatively few long twos. Three of the last four years they've been around 50th in long twos attempted—by that I mean 50th fewest long twos. The outlier was the Final Four year, when they were 9th. May's teams aren't quite as rim-or-three oriented as, say, Nate Oats, but they're not far off. This year they were 15th percentile taking jumpers out to 17 feet and 8th percentile taking long jumpers; last year they were 6th and 7th.
• Relatively plentiful long twos for opponents. Same deal: around 50th three of the last four years and popping up to 21st for the Final Four run.
• Limited easy shots for opponents. This year FAU was 2nd percentile(!!!) in catch and shoot attempts allowed, 98th percentile at forcing jumpers off the bounce, and 99th(!) percentile at forcing runners. Those numbers are virtually identical to last year. They were 20th and 12th percentile in shots at the rim. 
• Defensive assist avoidance. IE, how many of the opponents' baskets are assisted. May's teams were top 5 nationally the last two years and have been inside the top 100 every year except his first.

This is great. May's teams are forcing opponents into the toughest shots in basketball and getting tons of open looks themselves. That is traceable back to coaching, especially since these trends started before FAU blew up into a top 50 program.

The Immediate Future

Michigan's current roster is Terrance Williams, Nimari Burnett, Will Tschetter, and Jace Howard. Durral Brooks and Christian Anderson remain committed. (247's Davis Moseley said that he expects Brooks to stick and Burnett to stay, FWIW.) This is a considerably insufficient number of basketball players. Michigan will look to supplement in various ways:

• FAU's top three players—Davis, Goldin, and Alijah Martin—all have a COVID year left and could come over as grad transfers. Since they were willing to run it back with May after the final four run when any and all could have up-transferred for NIL money, I'd imagine there's a good chance all three decide to take a run at the Big Ten.
• May is likely to be on the phone with Tarris Reed and George Washington about returning. Dug McDaniel, too, but since a lot of people expected him to leave even if Howard was retained that seems like a long shot.
• FAU has three guards committed—novel idea to have more than one guard on a roster—and one or more could decide to follow May. Elijah Elliott is the highest-rated at #185, so all are likely to be developmental prospects.
• May could try to pick off players committed to other schools who have recently undergone a coaching change, a la Caris Levert. The lack of major jobs open this year—and OSU deciding to go with an assistant—means the top-100-ish pickings will be slim. Liam McNeeley decommitted from Indiana and says he'll go through a whole recruiting process, there's also, well, Khani Rooths. Those are both unlikely, but LeVert was committed to Ohio. There are gems down in the hinterland of the rankings and May seems adept at finding them.
• And then there's The Portal Writ Large. May has not emphasized the portal but hasn't been a teetotaler about it, and given the distinct Year Zero vibe of the current roster he'll likely have to go find some guys. His experience walking into three guys his first year at FAU will be helpful here.

The other open question is who May will tap as his assistants. He's likely to bring in some or all of his FAU guys, but schools at FAU's level often go with an internal promotion after they lose a successful coach. If he has an opening May could take a shot at an assistant who's been at the high major level a long time for recruiting purposes, and if Beilein's involved with the program he will probably suggest that May look at Saddi Washington, Lavall Jordan, and Luke Yaklich. That, too, is a rumor that's out there: Beilein may return in an administrative capacity. 

Etc.: Deal is five years, 3.75 million per.