Michigan will hire Florida Atlantic’s Dusty May to be its next head men’s basketball head coach, per both Matt Norlander of CBS and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski..The move comes less than two weeks after the program parted ways with former head coach Juwan Howard.
May has established himself as one of the fastest rising coaching commodities in the sport for the work he did at FAU. Through six seasons, he took a program that had been an afterthought in Division I and elevated it to being one of the rising mid-majors in college basketball. After recording a winning season in each of his first four years in Boca Raton, FL, the Owls experienced a major breakthrough during the 2022-23 campaign, winning 35 games and making a run all the way to the Final Four.
Jumping up to the American Athletic Conference, that success carries over into this season with key players like Johnell Davis, Vladislav Goldin, and Alijah Martin all deciding to return. FAU ended up winning 25 games and made a return trip to the NCAA Tournament, falling to Northwestern in a first-round overtime loss.
The head coach had been identified as a top candidate for a handful of power conference openings around the country and was initially most linked to Ohio State. With the Buckeyes deciding to stick with interim Jake Diebler, however, that opened the door for their mortal enemy to swoop in and court him. Now that May is heading to Michigan, the question now is how quickly he can turn around this fallen power… or if he can at all.
He’ll be tasked with restoring the Michigan Wolverines to a competitive place in a Big Ten that will be as challenging as ever with the addition of UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon in 2024-25.