NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP - FINAL FOUR: FLORIDA ATLANTIC VS SAN DIEGO STATE

March 30, 2023

Dusty May

NRG Stadium

FAU Owls

Semi-Finals Pregame Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: FAU coach Dusty May joins us.

COACH MAY: What an exciting time for the students at this time.

Q. When you're on the outside looking in and you see George Mason and VCU and Loyola get to the Final Four, what are you thinking? Is it good for college basketball? Do you think they have a lot of rooters? Because you seem to be the darlings of the country being in this tournament.

COACH MAY: I love to see it just because it's an opportunity for those outside of the national spotlight to be on the big stage and show what they can do.

The Loyola team resonates the most because I have personal relationships with some of the people in the administration. And we played that team when I was an assistant at Florida. And we were really, really good, and they came into Gainesville and beat us.

I think it's great for the game to have new faces, new people on the scene. I think it's really cool.

Q. Having a team like you guys, a VCU, a George Mason, in some ways that's nothing new, you've had Cinderellas before, whatever you want to call it, but this is happening during the NIL transfer portal world. That's affected you guys in some ways. You also kept a lot of your players. Developed a lot of your players. I'm wondering from your perspective what's it like to be a coach in this era where in some ways things are changing rapidly, but you've improved, especially for a program that 20 years ago, 10 years ago, people never would have thought that you might be on this stage?

COACH MAY: You threw a lot at me. As far as the transfer portal, players have transferred for years. They had to sit out prior. And so obviously that discouraged them from doing it as frequently.

Here's our approach. We're going to put our guys in the best situation, environment, every single day, to be the absolute best they can be. We are who we are. If they want to be part of it, we love our guys and want them here.

But if they want something different, and we've had some want something different, we support them, give them a hug, we still talk to their parents and support them. It is what it is. We're going to be on the phone recruiting the next player to replace them. It's all part of it.

And sometimes change isn't bad. So all these things we're talking about, I'm not complaining. I'm not endorsing. They are what they are. Our job is to do the best we can for our guys every day.

Now, the downside of it there's never any quiet time. Your season ends and usually you can decompress for a week or two. I'm not sure we can decompress for 20 seconds, but that's part of it. And we're very blessed to do what we do.

Q. Can you go back to when you were first hired at FAU and just when you walked in and saw the facilities, locker rooms, coach's office, everything, can you just maybe describe some of the things that you saw?

COACH MAY: Well, I've bought a lot of homes in this profession. I've had buyer's remorse before. I don't think it was buyer's remorse. It was a lot that went into it. Number one, I was incredibly happy at Florida working with the staff I was working with, coaching the players we were coaching. My family was ingrained in that community. I had moved my kids all over the country.

So there were a lot of external variables. And then the people, the area, the campus at FAU, it blew me away how impressive it was. And then when we went to the other side of the campus, at that time, it was the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

I think it's just a lot of raw emotions and variables went into that moment. And fortunately my wife is tough as nails and she said, You'll figure it out, get to work, or something along that. You made the decision, it's now time to live with it.

At that point it was take a deep breath, refocus, figure out what was next.

Q. Going to go a little bit off the map here. In the midst of all this chaos and this run and this magical run here to Houston, who's the coolest person that you've heard from or maybe somebody that reached out and you said whoa?

COACH MAY: There's been so many. These coaches you idolize growing up, and you watch them in the Final Four, giving you advice how to handle this, handle that. But probably the person that really I've been most impressed with is a gentleman named Doug Lemov. He teaches teachers how to teach. He's wrote a couple of books, "The Coach's Guide to Teaching." And during COVID I became obsessed with becoming a better teacher and communicator. Read all his books and podcasts.

And he reached out the other day, invited me to a conference that he's going to be in Miami. Probably not the national celebrity you guys are wanting to hear, but in my world that was the coolest text.

Q. What's important to you in any basketball coaching job you have? What do you look for?

COACH MAY: Just a feeling, can you win there? Can you recruit quality people and can you win? It's that simple. And there's different layers in every job. Sometimes it's a facility. Sometimes it's a fan base.

In our situation, it was the area, the growth of the university, my faith in the administration, and then the recruiting base. I recruited the state of Florida for a long time, and we've had great success with guys that were a little bit under the radar, underrecruited, but had boulders on their shoulders.

Q. Wondering how painful the '94, '95 sectional losses were for you, and whether you were a proponent of single-class basketball or you wanted multi-class?

COACH MAY: I loved single-class basketball. I loved challenging going against the big boys. Those losses were painful. But when you look back at who you lost to, you understand why. It's almost like that at our level, where the conference championship, getting to the tournament is almost our state championship at that time in one-class basketball.

So getting to the tournament is almost like the national championship for all of us in one big league fighting for a seat at the table.

And once you get in, then you realize, you know what, we've got a shot against anybody we play against. Matchups are important, all those things. But once we got on this stage, then we knew we belonged.

Q. Between the school being near the beach and you being in the Final Four, how much do you think this is going to help recruiting going forward? Do you have any sense for, are you going to be able to get involved with kids now that maybe you weren't a year or two ago? And just other schools like George Mason and VCU had similar kind of berths after they got to the Final Four, do you expect something like that could happen?

COACH MAY: Absolutely. And we already are. But we have most of our roster coming back on paper. And we love our guys. We want our guys, but if some of them did want something different, then we're going to get a bigger name or a bigger reputation. I don't know if we're going to get better players than we have now. But we'll definitely get guys with higher profiles or get involved with guys with higher profiles.

We need to make sure we keep taking the right guys that are right for us. That's why we've been able to retain the roster. They're like-minded. They love each other. The relationship in our locker room is authentic and it's real among the player, staff, support staff, everyone involved.

Q. When you finally have the locker room upgrade and when the bubble finally was the thing that was at your players' disposal, how much easier did the recruiting pitch get? Were you kind of dancing around some of the limitations you had before that?

COACH MAY: I think any job you want to show off your strengths and limit your weaknesses. Our guys, they want their strengths when they're playing; as a coach, I hire staff that complements my weaknesses.

We have everything we need to be successful. We take bus trips. It's not easy, but it's also what makes us closer. And we've been in the foxhole together. Our assistant coaches share an office. And I don't think I've ever been around a closer group of assistant coaches.

So we think all of that goes hand in hand. Is it ideal when you're trying to have a conversation and Kyle Church is eating his lunch next to you? No, but there could be worse things, and we love everything about us.

Q. You guys are obviously here, North Texas, UAB are rolling in the NIT. Do you think there's anything that needs to be reevaluated about how we pick those at-large spots? Obviously you're here. You won your conference tournament. But those two have proven the ability to beat high major teams. And we spend so much time talking about bubble and teams that are just not very good. And it feels like teams like North Texas, UAB, et cetera, have been squeezed out.

COACH MAY: This is a tough question. I've learned through the process that certain things can be construed differently than intended. And once again, I'm not complaining about that either. But to me the problem is it's not the end-of-the-day selection because when you look at the body of work and the goalposts moving, things like that, I see why the Selection Committee does what they do.

But the problem is we can't play these teams at home or on a neutral site. We can go for a money game. We all know what money games mean.

So I think that's the biggest issue, that we don't have an opportunity to prove ourselves, and then you're just going through a season where you can only lose. We felt like for about two months this year we can't win. We can only lose. And that's what makes what our guys have done that much more impressive because they've been able to do it with that in the back of our minds.

Q. You mentioned something, underrecruited guys, and one in particular is Giancarlo Rosado, who had no offers, I think, out of high school besides you guys. Was unranked by most recruiting services. How did you stumble upon a guy like him playing at a local high school, and what was his recruiting like?

COACH MAY: I'll turn a long story short. Giancarlo lost -- he went and tried out for Each One Teach One. Steve Reece runs a national AAU program out of Orlando. Went for a tryout. Coach Reece saw some things in him. Invited him back for another tryout or whatnot. He went on a mission to lose 30, 40, 50 pounds. He was heavier than he is now.

Then we saw him on the AAU circuit. He actually had really good programs recruiting him, such as Wofford, some smaller schools, Georgia Southern. I think that was his final three, Wofford, Georgia Southern, and us. Those are good programs with good teams. He was local. The staff did a great job recruiting him, developing a relationship.

Quick story on him. We went to do a home visit. And we pulled in, we had a 6:00 a.m. home visit set up with his family. He had no idea we were coming. We were trying to surprise him. The staff is sitting in my SUV four deep at 5:45 a.m., and a minivan drives into his driveway. We're thinking, What the heck is going on? It's 5:45 in the morning. Who else is here? Is this another school? He got out of his car. He just got back from a morning workout.

Those are the guys we've recruited and signed. I don't know how many stars any of them have, but I know they all have that type of work ethic and drive.

Q. You said no stage is too big as the stage got bigger and bigger. And now it's beyond. Number one, what makes you think, once again, that it won't be too big for them, and these two days important to get acclimated?

COACH MAY: I think these two days are important just to get comfortable. Any different environment or surrounding you want to acclimate yourself and feel more comfortable when it's time to perform.

I still don't think our guys are going to be fazed by the 70-plus-thousand the lights, the attention, because they love ball. They love to compete. And they have a lot of faith in their teammates. I think it's what's gotten us to this point.

We have a lot of guys who are really good players, and some of them are exceptional on given nights. So I'm very confident they're going to show up and do what they've done for the last, I guess, close to 40 games when you consider exhibitions and scrimmages.

Q. COVID shutdown came at a unique time for you guys, right after year two. I know people talk about year three is the biggest year in a rebuild. You talked about the teaching stuff you were trying to learn. How did you approach that time? And obviously it was a critical time in terms of when you were guiding some of these key guys like Alijah and Greenlee and guys like that. Could you speak what you were able to accomplish during that time?

COACH MAY: Early in COVID, we hit a home run signing a couple of these guys. Nick Boyd, we had recruited all year. And we got him done during COVID, because at that point the official visits, everything was done, and we had done a lot of the homework and legwork. He was already done. Johnell Davis had already signed.

Alijah Martin, we had a player unexpectedly go into the portal maybe in May, Friday in May. We recruited Alijah. We didn't have a scholarship. And we told his mother we didn't have one.

Immediately after one of our players go into portal. I called Todd Abernethy, who had done the legwork on Alijah, and said is Alijah still out there, we had a scholarship open. This is what happened.

He said, Let me call his mother. We did a Zoom the next morning. We got an iPad and a golf cart and we drove around campus and showed them everything we could think of in a two-, three-hour period. We were fortunate enough to sign him.

During the shutdown, we had a lot more time than we ever had. As a coach, I considered a sabbatical much like professors take where they go really try to broaden their horizons. Myself and the staff, we dove into becoming better teachers, more knowledgeable, better in every facet. Instead of sitting at home watching, binging on Netflix, we all tried to really improve as basketball coaches. And I know I'm 100 percent better of a coach because of that experience.

Q. The question I asked before about, can you just describe what some of the facilities and offices that you walked into for those of us who obviously weren't there.

COACH MAY: It was a transition time. It was a transition period for everyone. Our athletic director had just been hired. The previous staff had just been let go. The players didn't know whether they were coming or going.

Some were on their way out. So there was a lot that went into it. And they just weren't ready yet to present that part of campus from a facility standpoint. And they were already in the process of building a new athletic complex, which is now done, academic center, theater rooms, all the stuff that we needed that are now there, they weren't there at that time.

So other than the campus where we were, we were still in kind of a time warp. And I think, more importantly, it just didn't present well at that particular moment.

Q. A lot of your offenses look sort of suspiciously familiar to Wyoming and Jeff Linder. Are you a fan of his? Do you know him? Or is that a coincidence?

COACH MAY: It's definitely a coincidence. We have a similar background and belief the way the game should be played, or we enjoy it being played. There's a clinic in the state of Florida every year in August, more of a roundtable type of clinic, and we sat together this year and spent a couple days together. We have spoken throughout the season.

But a lot of respect for their program. I watched them play a couple times last year. I'm an Indiana grad. They played IU. Naturally I was going to watch that game. We both have a certain affection of the way the game looks at certain times. So big fan of those guys.

I love Mountain West basketball. One of our former players is at Nevada. I watched them play several times and also with Coach Alford. I've seen a lot of Mountain West basketball this season.