Tell ’em how you really feel, Mike.
Even in the aftermath of Michigan basketball’s national championship, rival fans have done their best to try to invalidate the outcome, claiming that not only did the Wolverines somehow win illegitimately, but that there was something nefarious afoot.
The thruline from the regular season dominance to now has come mostly from in-state, where a certain fanbase has claimed — without a shred of proof and nothing but insinuation — that head coach Dusty May assembled the maize and blue team that just won the national championship through illegal means, particularly tampering.
But Michigan assistant coach Mike Boyton is having none of it.
He spoke with Matt Norlander at CBS Sports about the allegations, and he spelled everything out pretty succinctly across three quotes.
“It’s nonsense,” Michigan assistant Mike Boynton told CBS Sports. “I wish people would just write the truth. People are fairly envious of Dusty, and it’s because we’re doing this. The truth of the matter is most of the people who are frustrated or angry or talking (expletive deleted) online are Michigan State fans, Ohio State fans, because Dusty came in and instead of trying his hardest to keep every player on an 8-24 team, he allowed the guys who wanted to leave to leave, and so then, what do you do? Who do you recruit to play at Michigan in April, six high school kids? No. So we went out and tried to be competitive (in the portal) and we were.” (…)
“People just trying to find a reason to bring down what’s a pretty remarkable dude, because there’s really nothing else to get him on,” Boynton said. “He’s pretty open, he talks to everybody, he works his (expletive deleted) off. He’s been successful. And so the only thing is this, when the hate don’t work, they start telling lies.” (…)
“People making up just complete (expletive deleted) lies about the guys we were trying to supposedly tamper with, like (Purdue guard) Braden Smith,” Boynton said. “The narrative was we were trying to recruit Braden Smith at the Big Ten Tournament last year. I’ll say this: If we could recruit Braden Smith and he went into the portal, we would, but we couldn’t recruit Braden Smith because you cannot get juniors into school at Michigan. And people just ran with it. They still run with it. It’s irresponsible. It’s sad, but because it’s a high enough profile name that it would draw attention, people are just lazy and go with it.”
He’s not wrong.
Ultimately, it’s hatred and jealousy that have created these narratives. The narrative that it’s not a legitimate national championship run because the team was comprised mostly of transfer portal players is absurd. The transfer portal is here, and May and company have simply done better at evaluating and assembling a team than others.
Yet, this narrative persists for Michigan, but not Indiana, which just won the football championship with the vast majority of the playmakers in Bloomington having come via the portal over a two-year period. And yet, the Hoosiers are celebrated (and rightly so). Thus, the game has been given away: it’s a good thing when other teams do it, but diabolical when Michigan does it.
So, if you’re a fan of the maize and blue, enjoy the championship, and ignore the noise. Boynton is right to push back on the narrative.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Michigan coach Mike Boynton blasts ‘nonsense’ tampering claims
Reporting by Isaiah Hole, Wolverines Wire / Wolverines Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
