May Reflects on How These Wolverines, Whose Season Ended Friday in the Sweet 16, Responded to So Much Adversity
No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed Auburn, despite trailing by as many as nine points in the second half, came back by turning off Wolf's scoring show and going on an 18-2 run
Photo Courtesy of University of Michigan Photography
Wolverine point guard Tre Donaldson, shown driving to the basket in a game this season at Crisler Center, was a key player who helped see to it that this Michigan team added another championship banner — like those seen hanging from the rafters.
By Steve Kornacki
The first thing entering my mind – and likely yours, too -- as the game drifted away Friday night was everything these Wolverines had to be proud of this season.
They couldn’t reach another Final Four in San Antonio as they’d dreamed. Getting hammered down the stretch in a 78-65 loss to No. 1 overall seed Auburn ended what was a dream season.
However, Michigan went from 8-24 and last in a 14-team conference in 2023-24 to 27-10 with a Big Ten Tournament championship after finishing tied for second in the regular season. The Wolverines recorded a mild upset of Texas A&M to reach the Sweet 16 after failing to so much as reach the NCAA Tournament the last two seasons.
They more than tripled the victories under new Michigan coach Dusty May, and so now there are high expectations for 2024-25. Sometimes those expectations aren’t realized, but sometimes they are.
But you know what? Without special aspirations and those expectations, you’ve got no foundation for success. And that is something the Wolverines most definitely have going forward.
Brian Boesch of the Michigan Radio Network asked May to reflect on this turnaround season in a one-on-one interview in a somber locker room in Atlanta.
What did May remember most about this team?
“Just the way they came together and battled through adversity,” he said. “There were several times this year when I think a team with less character would’ve just tapped out. It would’ve been too much.”
Michigan lost back-to-back nailbiters to Arkansas and Oklahoma in December, but bounced back to win five consecutive games – including those convincing wins on the road at USC and UCLA.
But its two most impressive comebacks against adversity came later.
The Wolverines were humiliated, 91-64, at Purdue. Very few, if any, teams recover from such a thrashing. But Michigan came back to beat the Boilermakers, 75-73, in Ann Arbor before dismantling them, 86-68, in the conference tournament opener in Indianapolis.
And if ever a team looked down for the count, it was the Wolverines after losing the last three games of the regular season to Illinois, Maryland and Michigan State by an average score of 14.3 points.
But what did they do then?
They won three games in three days to take the conference tourney, and then two straight in the Big Dance.
May added, “But these guys just kept pushing, bonding and getting off the mat – bringing their hard hat every day and…You know, obviously, it stings to see something like this. But when you take one big step back, you’re really grateful for the guys in the locker room and the way they performed in 37 games.”
May brought in 11 new players and returned only three, and he noted, “But the guys bought into the rules and what they needed to do to help the team function. And that’s not always easy to do, and at times we played really great basketball and created an identity in that locker room.
“They’ll beam with pride when they see the [championship] banner and the body of work after we’re able to decompress and get past this one.”
No. 5-seeded Michigan had a nine-point lead in the second half against mighty Auburn, but then the Tigers went on an 18-2 run that became a 31-8 stretch that spelled doom.
“They had us completely discombobulated,” May said. “And just their ability to defend one-on-one with physicality, knocking us off our spots. Credit them.
“Their physicality was the difference.”
Danny Wolf had a team-high 20 points, but didn’t score in the final 13 minutes, when everything changed.
“Well, I thought he had some good looks down low that just didn’t drop,” said May, “and there’s a lot of contact, and guys are flying in from behind to disrupt a few of them. We just weren’t able to generate any real offensive rhythm.”
Vlad Goldin and Nimari Burnett, both with 10 points, were the only other double-figure scorers against a team that just had too much.
In explaining the Auburn surge that put away the game, radio analyst Terry Mills, a member of the 1989 national champs, said, “They imposed their will on the Wolverines.”
The Tigers said “enough is enough” and played up to their capabilities.
So did Michigan for 30 minutes of this loss, and also for the vast majority of all 37 games. It learned how to dig down deep and accomplish far more than anyone imagined possible.
Take a bow, guys. You made Wolverine fans so very proud of you.
And that’s all anybody can ask.
I agree with everything you wrote here, Steve. This was a highly successful season no matter what metric under which you examine it. I’m already looking forward to next season!
For all the well deserved accolades and tributes that Dusty May and the Wolverines rightly earned, I still cannot help but wonder why they refused to fix a couple of their most glaring weaknesses, namely turnovers and allowing offensive rebounds. There’s a coach 63 miles up the road that would have lost his mind over these issues and would have gone overboard to straighten them out. That coach and his team are on the cusp of a Final Four while we're supposed to accept that improving from 8-24 to 27-10 is the best we are allowed to have. That’s called settling.