No, Dusty May doesn’t have to take the North Carolina job if he wants to win. He’s winning now with Michigan basketball.
And if he wins in his Final Four semifinal against Arizona on Saturday, April 4, and again on Monday in the national championship game, what would be the point of heading to Chapel Hill?
More resources?
Hardly. U-M can match any figure it puts its mind to, and it already is a top 10 player in NIL funds.
More history?
Why not? Then again, history is fluid – it’s there to be made, and has anyone seen a UCLA Bruin anywhere near the men’s game’s final weekend lately?
Better crowds?
Yeah, sure – at Duke.
UNC’s Dean Smith Center is in some ways a bigger Crisler Center, a cavernous gloom room where not enough students ring the lower bowl, and the buzz is too dependent on the action on the court, or the jersey worn by the visiting team.
Sound familiar?
It should. Like U-M, North Carolina had to add some lights a few years ago to brighten the mood.
True, more fans fill the Tar Heels’ arena more consistently. And May has previously mentioned wanting to change the attending habits of Wolverine fans. (There were still too many empty seats in the upper bowl at Crisler five weeks ago, for example, when Minnesota came to town. Despite the 25-2 team hosting the Golden Gophers at the time.)
Yet the Dean Dome, as it’s affectionately known, isn’t exactly Purdue’s Mackey Arena or Michigan State’s Breslin Center or Indiana’s Assembly Hall (or Illinois’, for that matter) – or, obviously, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Arena.
In fact, there’s a debate raging within the borders of Tar Heel Nation regarding its future. Some want to renovate. Some want to build elsewhere.
Either way, the discussion centers on improving the game-day atmosphere for what’s supposed to be one of the jewels of college basketball, which brings us to this:
What is a blueblood program, anyway?
Seriously, what are the advantages?
Because they’re getting harder to see, other than some amorphous sense of history. Just ask those Bruins, whose cardiovascular system turned powder blue with their 10 titles in 12 seasons under coach John Wooden in the 1960s and ’70s. They’re basically the definition of a blueblood … except for their one title (1995) in the past 50 years.
Or Indiana.
The Hoosiers haven’t won a natty (in basketball, at least) since 1987, or a whopping two years before Michigan won its national title. Indiana’s most recent Final Four came in 2002, its most recent Sweet 16 in 2016 – that’s 10 years without making the second weekend of March Madness.
But UCLA had Wooden and IU had Bobby Knight. Remember, bluebloods become bluebloods because of a coach. The coach wins. The crowds follow. The writers mythologize, which is how we got the term in the first place
That’s it. Just as Duke is on the list because of Mike Krzyzewski, and we’ll see how long his shadow lasts or if the Blue Devils’ blood turns a faded cerulean.
Yes, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina have achieved blueblood status thanks to multiple coaches’ success. But each is defined by a singular coaching force – the kind they name streets and arenas after: Adolph Rupp, Phog Allen and, of course, Smith.
For some, UConn is a modern blueblood, and Villanova had some bluish bona fides before Jay Wright retired. Michigan State’s Final Four runs under Tom Izzo have brought the Spartans close, though MSU, really, is still nouveau blue with only two NCAA tournament titles in the past 46 years.
The ghosts of Tar Heel titles past
So, no, May doesn’t need to take the Carolina job to win big or recruit big or make big history. That can happen anywhere, as … well, history tells us.
And, no, he doesn’t need to take the North Carolina job to coach in a rabid and packed home arena. The Tar Heels don’t have one, relative to the most electric spots in the sport at the moment.
Also, May entered Saturday just one win from the national championship game with a team he put together on the fly over barely two offseasons.
If he could do that in Ann Arbor, in the maize and blue of Michigan (truly a football school, first and foremost), why would he need to go to Chapel Hill? For a lighter shade of blue? The chance to follow the Jumpman logo to its roots? The nebulous mystique of bluebloods?
Last I checked, Michael Jordan is busy with NASCAR. Meanwhile, the Fab Five are partying with the country on their own “alt-cast” on national TV during the Wolverines’ semifinal against Arizona. The revolution will be televised, and it will wear long shorts.
Speaking of the Wildcats – their coach, Tommy Lloyd, reportedly turned down North Carolina – and more money – Friday, agreeing to a five-year deal to stay in Tucson.
College basketball is where you make it these days, and its narratives turn over faster than ever. NIL and the transfer portal may or may not have drained March’s pool of Cinderellas, but it has turned some bluebloods, well, green.
Kentucky hasn’t won an NCAA men’s basketball title in 14 years. Duke hasn’t won one in 11 – more than half a high school recruit’s life.
North Carolina last won in 2017, back when Michigan guard Trey McKenney was in elementary school. He’s old enough to remember the Tar Heels’ win over Gonzaga that season, perhaps, and maybe even old enough to remember Roy Williams’ tears.
Or not.
He definitely doesn’t remember Smith, who coached his last game nearly a decade before McKenney was born (in 2006). Or Frank McGuire, who got the Tar Heels riding high in the first place.
He may have heard about the coaching legends, but young players operate in a world that turns over with lightning speed, and May understands that as well as any coach in the game.
Yes, May could chase after legends from his own childhood in North Carolina, and maybe that would fill the heart of a homegrown Hoosier transplant with basketball in his blood (red, though it is still).
Or he can stay in Ann Arbor and try to make his own legend, in the area of the country he loves, and at a school which, despite its unabashed love of football, has made clear it’ll do just about anything to keep him.
And should.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Only blue Dusty May should worry about is worn by Michigan basketball
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
