Michigan's Dusty May Uncovers Huge Reason For Failing To Repeat As Big Ten Tourney Champs

Michigan's Dusty May uncovers huge reason for failing to repeat as Big Ten tourney champs originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Michigan Wolverines were upended by the No. 7-seeded Purdue Boilermakers Sunday afternoon at the United Center in the Big Ten Tournament championship game, 80-72, as the tournament's No. 1 overall seed.

It was a game largely won by Purdue's dominant presence from center Oscar Cluff, who finished with 21 points and kept the Wolverines in check from 3-point territory by only shooting 29 percent. Michigan failed to find the spark that guided it to a semifinal victory against the Wisconsin Badgers the day before, securing a 68-65 win in the final seconds thanks to forward Yaxel Lendeborg's heroics.

Wolverines coach Dusty May is fully aware of this as his team prepares for an opening-round NCAA Tournament matchup opposite the UMBC vs. Howard Bison winner this Thursday (7:10 p.m. ET, CBS) in Buffalo, N.Y.

"Typically, the NCAA Tournament, I don't think, is going to be quite this physical, but you never know," May told a pool of reporters about needing to be matchup-heavy. "We've got to do a better job of adjusting however the game is being called. If it's called close, we need to adjust. If it's prison ball, we need to adjust. We have to do a better job."

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It starts with leadership, something guard Nimari Burnett is taking greater responsibility for as the season goes on. Having him and his teammates believe in the same thing makes everyone's job easier, he says.

"The lesson that we'll take away from this will be applied directly to practice as we go and get ready for [the] NCAA Tournament, to be more physical in areas that we need to and to fight through ball screens with a little bit more aggression as far as guards and the bigs doing what they do," Burnett said.

Even with the loss, Burnett, a Chicago native who finished with a 12-point outing, still recognizes the goals he and his teammates have in front of them.

"Although we didn't want this to happen, we plan to go three-of-three: Big Ten, Big Ten tournament championship, NCAA," Burnett said. "But this is a part of the process, and we're going to use this as fuel into this next month of basketball."

With March Madness looming, the season could be over momentarily for any team in the field. Anything is possible, but for the Wolverines, the goal is simple: win at all costs.

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"As he said, we're going to watch film, and we're going to try to know what we did wrong and just keep getting better as a team," center Aday Mara said. "I think that this loss and, well, all the losses we had this season make us know that we are not unbeatable. We can lose games too. So we cannot relax during the games. I would say that just keep learning, keep improving, and make sure that we don't relax during the games."

While the Wolverines (31-3) try to move past this loss, the Boilermakers (27-8) will attempt to keep their momentum going by continuing postseason play in the opening round against Queens NC in St. Louis this Friday (7:35 p.m. ET, truTV).

We'll see which path both of these teams take, but it's clear the preseason rankings didn't fail to deliver, as both of these teams made it to the championship after being projected to finish near the top of the conference.

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Michigan's Dusty May uncovers huge reason for failing to repeat as Big Ten tourney champs

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