The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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82 THE WOLVERINE ❱ MARCH 2025 "He's exceptional." S o said former Michigan basketball coach John Beilein during a conver- sation last month … and what praise coming from a College Basketball Hall of Fame member and the best coach in program history. In his 12-year career in Ann Arbor, Beilein beat the odds in winning championships, get- ting to national championship games, as the "cleanest coach in the country" in a vote of his peers, in an era we'll un-fondly remember as one in which you almost didn't stand a chance if you weren't at least wandering deep into the gray areas. Truth be told, coaches like Beilein almost had to work twice as hard to identify talent they could recruit and then develop five stars out of three- and four- star prospects. It made sense, then, that Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel turned to Beilein during the Dusty May "re- cruiting process." The former U-M coach drove 110 miles from his home in Naples, Fla., to Fort Lauderdale to meet with May and Manuel. After their discussions, all three felt great about May's fit at Michi- gan. "Coaches will listen to ADs when we talk about administration, how we talk about how someone is as a person," Manuel said after May's introductory press conference. "They don't listen to me when I talk about basketball: 'Here's what you need to do.' "But him and John? They know the language. ... His basketball questions can be better answered by him." It's taken one season — one — for May to bring Michigan basketball back from the dead and in the regular-season conference title hunt with six games re- maining. While the portal and one-year transfer rules have something to do with that, success still requires identifying talent and putting a roster together in which the pieces and personalities fit (something previous coach Juwan How- ard had a problem with), and they will hard work to win. We go back to the first weeks of May's arrival, when folks at the Bill Davidson Player Development Center told us the coach would be there at 5 a.m. to work on assembling a roster, likely watching film of those in the portal to put the pieces together. That came as no surprise to a former colleague of May's who knew him when he was just getting his start. "There were times he didn't want to get up to use the restroom because he was afraid he would miss something," he said. "You'd see him jogging back to get to his desk." Now that's dedication to a craft. More than anything, though, the man- nerisms, the class, and the dedication to players being great teammates is remi- niscent of the "best of Beilein" — and yes, the basketball brilliance. When Beilein needed a play to stop an opponent's rally late in the game, he al- ways had something up his sleeve. Down the stretch at Ohio State on Feb. 16, May pulled out two for former Buck- eye Roddy Gayle Jr. that went against the Wolverines' ten- dencies and led to four critical points in a three-point win. The two aren't exactly the same — May is willing to put up with some turnovers for tempo on offense, while Beilein's strat- egy required elite ball protec- tion — but both acknowledged in their first few months there was more than one way to win a basketball game. Both have proven to be cor- rect. They also both knew there would be tough stretches in any season, especially in the rugged Big Ten. Not letting a team get too high or too low while they con- tinued to push buttons (for May, that meant inserting Rubin Jones into the starting lineup for Gayle) is a strength both possessed. "We're still optimistic we've got a big, big jump to make as a group," May in- sisted after an ugly road win at Rutgers, U-M's fifth tough game in a row. "We've been fairly consistent with some bumps in the road. And we still think we have a much higher ceiling than we've played at. I don't think that's just me having a lot of confidence in the guys in our locker room." He was right, of course, just as Beilein was so many times with his "stay the course, and you'll be rewarded" ap- proach. The key now is to lock him up for years, something Manuel and Co. are working on as we speak. We strongly believe May wants to be here, and as his former col- league told us after the Ohio State game, "That guy is perfect for this place. I hope everyone realizes it." We believe "everyone" does, and we hope to see May in Ann Arbor for a long, long time. ❏ A former coaching colleague recently said of Dusty May and Michigan: "That guy is perfect for this place. I hope everyone realizes it." PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL Chris Balas has been with The Wolverine since 1997. Contact him at cbalas@ thewolverine.com and follow him on X (Twitter) @Balas _ Wolverine. INSIDE MICHIGAN ❱ CHRIS BALAS Is Dusty The Next John Beilein?