The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1533441
30 THE WOLVERINE ❱ APRIL 2025 BY JOHN BORTON O nly in the land of serious early overachievement could Dusty May's first regular season with Mich- igan men's basketball be considered any- thing less than a resounding success. So goes the expectations meter — low, then soaring, and finally, realistic. Back in the summer months, talk in- volved whether or not May's first crew in maize and blue could somehow claw its way into the top half of the 18-team Big Ten and somehow, some way, make the NCAA Tournament. Sure, May cob- bled together a pretty decent roster in the weeks following his March 23 hire. He'd pulled in a pair of 7-footers — re- cently named All-Big Ten performers — and an array of other talent from across the nation. But how would they coalesce into a unified crew on the court? How would they bond, fighting off the natural urge to establish themselves individually? What roster holes and other deficits might a rugged Big Ten slate expose? Before the season began, any Michi- gan fan guaranteed 22 regular-season wins and 14 in the Big Ten (half of them on the road) would have signed on in a heartbeat. Following an 8-24 campaign (3-17 in conference) in 2023-24, that sort of promised production in the first chapter of a new era would have been embraced like Buckeye tears in The Big House. Ah, expectations. The Wolverines blazed out to a 6-1 start headed into early Big Ten play. They won their first five conference games — including road wins at Wisconsin, USC and UCLA — sandwiched around narrow neutral- site losses to Arkansas and Oklahoma and a pair of easy wins over Purdue Fort Wayne and Western Kentucky. Then came wins over Washington and North- western along with an inexplicable overtime loss at Minnesota in mid-Jan- uary. Following a humbling hammer- ing (91-64) at Purdue's Mackey Arena, Michigan responded with six straight Big Ten victories, including road wins WILD RIDE Sizzling Start, Frustrating Finish Bookend Dusty May's Regular-Season Debut At Michigan May and his staff led the Wolverines to 22 regular-season wins, including a 14-6 mark that tied for second in the Big Ten, in his first season in charge at Michigan. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL