The Michigan basketball team put together the best regular season in program history, winning 29 games, 19 of 20 in the Big Ten, on the way to an outright Big Ten championship.
That was only the third outright Big Ten title for the Wolverines since 2014. Michigan lost a home game against Wisconsin, as well as suffering a neutral-court loss to Duke. Outside of that, the Wolverines dominated the competition.
Only four of Michigan's 20 Big Ten games were decided by single digits. It helps, of course, if you have three projected first-round picks on the roster, as Michigan does with Yaxel Lendeborg, Aday Mara, and Morez Johnson. They have each been projected in the top 30 not long ago.
Dusty May pushes back on idea that Michigan basketball team was "bought"
That led some to accuse May and the Wolverines of "buying" a "super team."
As May recently pointed out, nobody was saying that at the start of the season. Michigan was a top-10 team, but nobody was calling the Wolverines a "super team."
In fact, after a slow start, some analysts even questioned if May's idea of playing Yaxel alongside Mar and Johnson would even work. It did, because May had the foresight to be patient.
Not many would have tried running the big-man pick-and-roll as the Wolverines did what Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf in 2024-25. May was willing to recruit Yaxel, even though he had declared for the NBA draft. No other college team was in the Yaxel sweepstakes. Frankly, they didn't have the stones.
Dusty May did.
Now, that fans and pundits are accusing him of cheating and tampering, May had a brilliant response to the critics on Thursday, saying he was willing to invite the IRS to examine Michigan's books if it would finally get people to give up the false narrative.
"I'm ready for the IRS to come in and open up the books and show what people spent versus what the spin zone has said they spent," May said via The Wolverine.
May didn't buy a championship-caliber team. He developed it. He's an elite coach, one of the five best in college basketball. This next month will be his opportunity to prove it.