CHICAGO – You can’t really call Tennessee a Cinderella team.
Sure, the Volunteers certainly have outperformed their 6-seed in this NCAA Tournament, and probably most expectations leading up to their Elite Eight matchup with 1-seed Michigan at United Center on Sunday, March 29 (2:15 p.m., CBS).
Tennessee knocked off 3-seed Virginia in the second round, then 2-seed Iowa State in the Sweet 16.
But the Vols have become somewhat of a March juggernaut – this is their third straight Elite Eight under coach Rick Barnes, who has gone from being known as “Regular Season Rick” to “Regional Final Rick.”
It would be more accurate to call the Vols giant killers who wield sharp elbows to establish rebounding supremacy, rather than fairytale naïfs who’ve simply donned fancy glass footwear at just the right time for the Big Dance.
Or maybe you can just call them what Nimari Burnett did Saturday.
“I would call them a really, really good team,” the Michigan guard said. “Rick Barnes has been coaching for a while and coaching at Tennessee for a while. He knows how to win, especially at this level.
“We understand that especially at this point of the season, any team is a challenge. We’re also ready to take the challenge to them as well. We look forward to a really good, physical game but also playing our style of play on both end of the floor.”
Burnett is right. Tennessee is good and a Vols win wouldn’t be a big upset. But Michigan has some history and a couple of big advantages on its side.
It was the Wolverines, under Juwan Howard, who last kept Barnes’ Vols from advancing past the first weekend. In 2022, the Hunter Dickinson-led Wolverines, as an 11-seed, beat the 3-seed Vols in the South region’s second round, in Indianapolis.
The next year, Barnes and his Vols, now a 4-seed, made it one step further, to the Sweet 16 – where Dusty May’s 9-seed Florida Atlantic Owls knocked them off.
May didn’t show his Wolverines film of that game, but he did emphasize the lessons his team learned from that game.
“We felt like the first 17 minutes of that game, we were completely overwhelmed,” he said. “We were struggling to make passes. We were trying to do too much as individuals.
“Just before half, we made a couple of really good plays and felt like, OK, that’s it. There’s the solution. Now if we can carry that over into another half and play really good ball.”
One of the big takeaways for May was learning to counter Tennessee’s size and relentlessness.
“I think it’s just a reminder of, it’s shocking how physical they are in a good way, how hard they play, how active they are with their hands,” he said. “It’s very difficult to throw a direct pass anywhere on the court because of their effort. Obviously, their size, athleticism factors into that.”
The bigger takeaway is that May is the big variable in this matchup. He knows exactly what he needs to do to limit the Vols’ biggest strength: Rebounding. But even more than that, he understands the 71-year-old Barnes differently than Barnes understands his 49-year-old counterpart.
Barnes paid May plenty of respect “as a terrific basketball coach” on Saturday. But May gave Barnes a different kind of praise. Yes, he offered his reverence for Barnes’ coaching, but he delivered it like an admiring wraith in the shadows, or like a cobra touting the skill of the mongoose he’s about to strike dead.
When May was an assistant with Florida from 2015-18, he studied Barnes’ Vols because they were conference foes. When he was at FAU, May called former FAU deputy athletic director Ryan Alpert who left for Tennessee and asked about Barnes’ summer and preseason plans.
“When I got the FAU job,” May said, “I watched their pregame warmups and routines and just felt like that’s a team that’s really – man, they’re very intentional with everything that they do.
“I called their strength coach and said, ‘Do you have anyone in your tree I need to interview or query? I have a lot of respect with how your guys play, how well they move, how physical they are.’
“Also, there’s a different level the way they work and attention to detail. I’ve tried to absorb as much as I could from afar about his program. Couldn’t have more respect for him as a human being.”
May has taken his study of Barnes and his coaching staff so far that he’s literally guzzled it down.
“I actually started drinking kombucha tea,” May said, “because Alpert told me they have a kombucha machine.”
Michigan will have a slight size advantage against the Vols’ frontcourt, though Tennessee has a bigger advantage in offensive rebounding, ranking second at 15.8 per game. The Wolverines, though, have a huge advantage as a much better shooting (and scoring) team.
You can never tell what matchups between elite teams come down to. But you can bet whatever Tennessee throws at Michigan, May has seen it before.
And he’ll probably have drunk plenty of kombucha to settle his nerves.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Like a cobra studying a mongoose, Dusty May ready for Tennessee
Reporting by Carlos Monarrez, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
