What Dusty May Did at Michigan

Chris Webber spent his Michigan segment making the case for Dusty May. Two years in, 64 and 13, with a conference title in his back pocket. Rich put the number another way. Fifty-one games over 500 in two seasons. That is not a hot start. That is a program-defining run.

Rich floated the comparison. May has a chance to be the Bo Schembechler of Michigan basketball. Schembechler never won a national championship, different era, different sport, but the archetype is the same. A program architect who stays and builds. May has that same opportunity, and he has it fast.

Webber grounded it in May's lineage. He was a student manager under Bobby Knight. Webber loves that history. He said May is a throwback to the Knight era, but without the chair-throwing. He adapted. He worked his way up. He proved the culture at FIU before he brought it to Ann Arbor. The comportment matches a Midwestern program. The temperament lets May build through frustration. Webber said the even-keel approach, letting players be silly, letting them lean on him, is what carries a program through lean years. And there will be lean years. That is what real coaches weather.

Webber then pointed at the piece that has held Michigan back. NIL. He said Michigan has only now started to invest at the scale needed. That investment is what gave a wonderful coach room to do wonderful things. To keep it going, May will need all hands on deck. That includes groups that have not historically felt part of Michigan basketball. Webber named the Fab Five directly. TNT brought them together for the alt-cast. Michigan did not. May has been vocal about that gap, even while having to win games to keep his standing. Webber noticed.

The praise for May kept circling back to culture. Webber said May knows the big picture. He is confident on his own. He does not need anyone's help. But he is a team player, and he is a Big Ten guy. Where else would he go. The Big Ten is the brightest and the best. He is Michigan.

Webber tied it to the team itself. The current group, he said, took the standard the 1989 champions and the Fab Five established and moved it forward. That is what great programs do. Someone wins, or overperforms, and the next group absorbs that and builds on it. This team did it with teamwork and family. They rebuilt locker room values.

Webber said he could talk about them all day. Rich said the same.