Dusty May Leaves Michigan

Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May has left the university to pursue an NBA head coaching opportunity with the Dallas Mavericks.

With the move, Dusty becomes the latest Wolverine head coach to vacate Ann Arbor following a national championship. Oh, how terrible it must be to be a Michigan fan.

The choice to leave Michigan comes as little surprise following recent comments by Dusty May about what it was like winning a national championship. May grew up in Indiana and once hoped to be lucky enough to be a high school basketball coach someday. Yet after he won the college basketball national championship, his comments to the press have been about how there was no enjoyment of the title and that he didn't see himself coaching Michigan in three to four years.

Fast forward a few weeks and that three year timeline shrank to three weeks.

Dusty May is a great basketball coach. Whatever you believe about the allegations of roster tampering - personally I think there's a lot of complaints coming from a lot of programs - the guy can coach basketball. Yet he became the latest college coach to leave the college level in the NIL and transfer portal era.

Why did May leave? The pressures of 24/7/365 portal recruiting certain had something to do with it. Hours after the national championship game, May was conducting a transfer portal Zoom call at 2 AM. That's life when the portal opens at midnight after the championship. Beyond that, the NBA offers May an opportunity to test his coaching ability against the top of the sport and likely gifted him a pay increase.

Somehow I doubt we've seen the last of May on the college court. Although he's a very good coach, the NBA has spit out plenty of great coaches including last decade's wonderkid Brad Stevens. The NBA is less about coaching and more about the players. Perhaps May sticks around the NBA. Perhaps he retires in 10 years when the Mavericks fire him for problems in the front office. But don't be surprised if we see him again.

Where Does Michigan Go From Here?

Michigan has already named assistant coach Mike Boynton Jr. as interim head coach for the upcoming season in an attempt to stave off the likely transfer portal departures. It's the correct move even though it punts the coaching search until next spring.

Boynton has a 119-109 career head coaching record accumulating at Oklahoma State. In seven seasons, Boynton made the NCAA tournament just once - as a 4 seed in 2021. Notably, Boynton did have the #1 NBA Draft pick Cade Cunningham in that spring's draft. The 2022 team was ruled ineligible due to former assistant coach Lamont Evans - Evans was an assistant for the 2017-18 season - accepting bribes to steer athletes to Oklahoma State and one Cowboy player being paid $300. Imagine being ineligible for paying a player $300 today. Simpler times.

While the NCAA sanctions - there was also a loss of 3 scholarships - didn't help Boynton didn't show a ton of promise in his first stint as a head coach. Oklahoma State isn't the hardest place to win at: current Illinois head coach Brad Underwood made the NCAA Tournament in his lone season in Stillwater, the mediocre Travis Ford went dancing 5 of 9 seasons, and Eddie Sutton went to two Final Fours. Only nepo baby Sean Sutton was definitively worse than Boynton in the last 30+ years (the jury is still out on current coach Steve Lutz).

While the above recap of his coaching career isn't a ringing endorsement of Boynton to take over the job permanently, he's still the right call for the interim. Assistant Justin Joyner already departed for the head coaching job at Oregon State earlier this offseason and Boynton was the only assistant on staff with head coaching experience. There's no guarantee that Michigan would be able to hire a better coach than Boynton at this point in the carousel cycle. Offseason hires are how you end up with Chris Holtmann.

Although Boynton will have the opportunity to remove the interim tag, he will have to earn it over the course of the full season. There will be no removing the interim tag after a 12 game stretch like in Columbus. If Boynton doesn't pan out, Michigan should be one of the better job openings next March. St. Louis's Josh Schertz, New Mexico's Eric Olen, and Wilmington's Takayo Siddle should be names to watch but don't be surprised if Michigan steals an established coach from a power conference either. Tom Crean, Travis Steele, and Doug Gottlieb would be highly entertaining options but I doubt Michigan has the guts to hire any of them.